Madeline did her best to make certain changes delicately, imperceptibly, so that Innes would not, above all things, be perplexed into seeking for their reason.The walks and rides came to a vague conclusion, and Miss Anderson no longer kept the Viceroy or anybody else waiting, while Innes finished what he had to say to her in public, since his opportunities for talking to her seemed to become gradually more and more like everybody else's.So long as she had been mistress of herself she was indifferent to the very tolerant and good-natured gossip of the hill capital; but as soon as she found her citadel undermined, the lightest kind of comment became a contingency unbearable.In arranging to make it impossible, she was really over-considerate and over-careful.Her soldier never thought of analyzing his bad luck or searching for motive in it.To him the combinations of circumstances that seemed always to deprive him of former pleasures were simply among the things that might happen.Grieving, she left him under that impression for the sake of its expediency, and tried to make it by being more than ever agreeable on the occasions when he came and demanded a cup of tea, and would not be denied.After all, she consoled herself, no situation was improved by being turned too suddenly upside down.
She did not wholly withdraw his privilege of taking counsel with her, and he continued to go away freshened and calmed, leaving her to toss little sad reflections into the fire, and tremulously wonder whether the jewel of her love had flashed ever so little behind the eyes.They both saw it a conspicuous thing that as those three weeks went on, neither he nor she alluded even remotely to Mrs.
Innes, but the fact remained, and they allowed it to remain.
Nevertheless, Madeline knew precisely when that lady was expected, and as she sauntered in the bazaar one morning, and heard Innes's steps and voice behind her, her mind became one acute surmise as to whether he could possibly postpone the announcement any longer.But he immediately made it plain that this was his business in stopping to speak to her.'Good morning,' he said, and then, 'My wife comes tomorrow.' He had not told her a bit of personal news, he had made her an official communication, as briefly as it could be done, and he would have raised his hat and gone on without more words if Madeline had not thwarted him.'What a stupidity for him to be haunted by afterward!' was the essence of the thought that visited her; and she put out a detaining hand.
'Really! By the Bombay mail, I suppose--no, an hour or so later;private tongas are always as much as that behind the mail.'
'About eleven, I fancy.You--you are not inclined for a canter round Summer Hill before breakfast?'
'I am terrified of Summer Hill.The Turk always misbehaves there.
Yesterday he got one leg well over the khud--I WAS thankful he had four.Tell me, are you ready for Mrs.Innes--everything in the house? Is there anything I can do?
'Oh, thanks very much! I don't think so.The house isn't ready, as a matter of fact, but two or three people have offered to put us up for a day or so until it is.I've left it open till my wife comes, as I dare say she has already arranged to go to somebody.What are you buying? Country tobacco, upon my word! For your men? That's subversive of all discipline!'
The lines on his face relaxed; he looked at her with fond recognition of another delightful thing in her.
'You give sugar-cane to your horses,' she declared; 'why shouldn't Igive tobacco to mine? Goodbye; I hope Mrs.Innes will like "Two Gables".There are roses waiting for her in the garden, at all events.'
'Are there?' he said.'I didn't notice.Goodbye, then.'
He went on to his office thinking of the roses, and that they were in his garden, and that Madeline had seen them there.He thought that if they were good roses--in fact, any kind of roses--they should be taken care of, and he asked a Deputy Assistant Inspector-General of Ordnance whether he knew of a gardener that was worth anything.
'Most of them are mere coolies,' said Colonel Innes, 'and I've got some roses in this little place I've taken that I want to look after.'
Next day Madeline took Brookes, and 'The Amazing Marriage', and a lunch-basket, and went out to Mashobra, where the deodars shadow hardly any scandal at all, and the Snows come, with perceptible confidence, a little nearer.
'They almost step,' she said to Brookes, looking at them, 'out of the realm of the imagination.'
Brookes said that they did indeed, and hoped that she hadn't by any chance forgotten the mustard.
'The wind is keen off the glaciers over there--anybody would think of a condiment,' Miss Anderson remarked in deprecation, and to this Brookes made no response.It was a liberty she often felt compelled to take.
The Snows appealed to Madeline even more than did Carintha, Countess of Fleetwood, to whose fortunes she gave long pauses while she looked across their summits at renunciation, and fancied her spirit made strong and equal to its task.She was glad of their sanctuary;she did not know where she should find such another.Perhaps the spectacle was more than ever sublime in its alternative to the one she had come away to postpone the sight of; at all events it drove the reunion of the Inneses from her mind several times for five minutes together, during which she thought of Horace by himself, and went over, by way of preparation for her departure, all that had come and gone between them.There had been luminous moments, especially as they irradiated him, and she dwelt on these.There was no reason why she should not preserve in London or in New York a careful memory of them.
