The Tigress
Sandy-haired, pale blue of eye, his firm chin a trifle long, he was not ill-looking. But his age must have doubled Nina's on their wedding day.
Before he and Andrews had chatted for five minutes a mutual liking was established. They were both passionately fond of sport, and the fact developed and was exchanged in that brief period of intercourse.
"If you've nothing better to do to-morrow," Darling suggested, "I'd be glad to show you some of my trophies. What do you say to tiffin with me? My wife is still in the hills, and we can talk big game without fear of boring the other sex. Shall I expect you?"
Andrews knew that he should say he had met Mrs. Darling at Simla, but he was so eager to answer "yes" that the opportunity got away from him at the moment; and as it didn't again present itself, his failure to make the truth clear was a harassing worry from that time on.
Moreover, though he could not repent, he reproached and upbraided himself for having fallen in love with Nina. All that he had learned since arriving at Umballa appeared only to add to her desirability. Absence had indeed, in this instance, made the heart grow fonder.
That he had broken his journey here, not so much for the sake of pumping Dinghal as for the chance of getting one more look at her – possibly one more word with her – he had candidly to admit to his better self. But he wished with all his heart that she was maid or widow, or – if there must be a husband, that he was some other – almost any other than Darling. He would have felt less a brute had it even been Dinghal.
It was a psychological contretemps of the rarest sort, and distinctly uncomfortable. He had found the colonel as infatuating in his way as his wife was in hers, and, naturally, there were no means by which he could reconcile the liking and the loving.
Even when he appeared at the Darling bungalow, the next day, the thing got him by the throat, as it were, at every turn. For the trophies of the sportsman and the all-too-feminine evidences of the chatelaine clashed side by side; every clash echoing in young Andrews's soul.
Again and again he found his attention straying, for instance, from an especially fine tiger-skin or the mounted head of a curiously horned markhor to a dainty writing-desk that he knew at a glance must be Nina's, or to a framed photograph of a group on an English lawn, in which, instinctively, he detected Nina in the tall, girlish figure in the white frock.
Indeed, the drawing-room seemed to be all Nina. He saw her everywhere – in every chair, on every window-seat, and on every couch. The dining-room was more divided; but the gun-room, of course, was all Darling.
They lingered there the greater part of the afternoon. Every rifle, every fowling-piece had its story, and there were many of them; for Darling boasted a veritable armory.
It was here, too, that Andrews got some comprehension of the extent of the officer's unbridled indulgence. He drank and smoked practically continuously. One peg followed another with but the briefest intermissions; and the civil-service man made no attempt to keep pace with him.
If any effect was observable it was merely in a readier flow of narrative, in a more extended and richer vocabulary. But, strangely enough, from first to last, there was no mention of Mrs. Darling. And his visitor, taking this in the nature of a warning, knowing what he did, deemed it not only wiser but safer, now, to guard the fact of his acquaintanceship.
In his closer study of Darling he had made a discovery which accounted, he believed, in a measure, at least, for his strange appeal. Even in his gayest moments there was a certain pathos in his expression.
Andrews had noted this the previous evening at the club, but had failed to trace it. He found it now in a very perceptible droop, at intervals, of the corners of his mouth. And it was as though he knew this and struggled to avoid it which gave the impression of bearing up against odds that were too great for him.
The afternoon was well spent before Darling would listen to his guest's going. They were still in the gun-room when, at length, he rose for departure. And then the colonel delayed it further by a proposal that he consider joining Major Cumnock and himself on a hunting trip they were planning.
"I'd love to, of all things," Andrews returned heartily. "But the fact is my leave ends in another week, and I've got to report at Junnar by the twenty-fifth. Otherwise, I shouldn't hesitate a second. I – "
And there he suddenly paused.
It was something in Darling's expression that arrested him first; something that he couldn't just interpret. Afterward he told himself that it was a most singular combination of rapture and pain.
Then he, too, caught the echo of voices – women's voices – and, the next instant, one woman's voice rose clear above the chorus. It was Nina's.
CHAPTER III
The Cobra in the Corner
"My wife!" said Colonel Darling. And the way he said it was almost reverential.
The tone struck young Andrews dumb. His chance had come again. He should have said: "Yes? I had the pleasure of meeting her at Simla." But he said nothing at all.
In dead silence he followed his host to the front veranda, where he came plump upon Nina Darling and the Ramsays. That is to say, upon Mrs. Ramsay, who was an American devotée of Kipling on a pilgrimage to the shrines, and her daughter, Jane.
Mr. Ramsay, busy in Chicago or Milwaukee, or some other place in the States, was not in evidence, and had not been.
It was clear to Andrews that Colonel Darling was about to greet his wife with a kiss; but she forestalled it. She nodded to him perfunctorily; said: "Oh, there you are, Jack!" in the most matter-of-fact fashion; and turned away to stoop and caress the Irish terrier that was frantically pawing at her skirt.
A lump rose in Andrews's throat at sight of the rebuff. His hope was that the Ramsays hadn't noticed, for their eyes were on him at the moment, and their surprise at seeing him there was manifest.
Darling made to cover up the awkward moment by presenting him all around. Nina, whose astonishment at the meeting must have exceeded even that of her friends, took refuge in the chilliest civility.
From nothing that she said could her husband possibly gather that she and Andrews had so much as ever touched fingers before. And the Ramsays were quick to follow her lead.
Nevertheless, the situation was far from comfortable, and the young man got away at the very earliest opportunity.
Before he had reached the gate of the compound, however, the voice of the colonel caught him up.
"I say, Andrews," he called, "don't forget to bring over that new automatic pistol you were speaking of. I should like to have a look at it if you don't mind."
And this eleventh-hour reminder gave him the excuse which later, in his superconscientiousness, he deemed a necessity. More than ever now honor and duty bade him flee; but a more insistent impulse urged another and final talk with Nina.
For forty-eight hours he fought it, only to yield at the forty-ninth. Having made sure that Darling was safely housed at the club, he rode over to the bungalow with the excuse spoiling the set of his coat.
Nina saw it almost at once and spoke of it. For, the devil being good to him, he had found her at home and alone.
"I knew your nose was out of joint," she said, "but what under the sun has happened to your hip?"
"Oh, yes," he replied, taking the excuse from his hip-pocket and placing it on a table close at hand. "I brought it over for the colonel. He's rather keen about the new safety device and wanted to see it." And he looked a trifle sheepish as he asked: "Does he happen by any chance to be at home?"
"You may thank Heaven he isn't," she answered with a light laugh. "I'm never at my best when he is within hailing distance. And you didn't come to see him. I know that."
Then he looked more sheepish still.
"I dare say you've learned his habits in the last week, and you could have found him at the club, you know," she added.
His laugh was rather mirthless as he said:
"Of course. What's the use of pretending? I saw him go in before I started."
"Then you've forgiven me, I suppose. That is sweet of you."
"It's harder to forgive myself. I feel like a cur."
"I've known some very nice curs."
"But I don't feel like that sort," he insisted. "No, it's the sneaking, thieving mongrel that I – " He broke off suddenly.
She had sat down and he dropped into a chair facing her.
"I'll tell you," he went on. "I've been persuading myself that I owed you an explanation of my continued presence in Umballa and the narrowly averted embarrassment of two days ago. I've been trying to make myself believe that in that and that only lay my reason for wishing to see you again."
"And there was another reason?"
"There was another reason," he admitted. "I wasn't honest with myself. Gad! When a chap isn't honest with himself – "
"All men are like that," she told him. "The higher their ideals the less frankly honest they are with themselves. They just won't admit the old Adam in them."
"I haven't any will," he declared. "I haven't any pride."
She lay back in her chair, pleasantly amused.
"Of course you haven't," she said confidently. "I've taken them from you. It was very wicked of me, wasn't it?"
"Do you do that to – to all of us?" he asked seriously.
"I'm afraid I do," she admitted. "But quite unconsciously. I don't mean to. Oh, I never mean to."
"I've been trying to put you out of my mind, out of my heart. I've been trying to kill my infatuation for you; but I haven't even stunned it. When I thought I had my foot on its neck it went on binding me with stronger chains."
And at that she laughed aloud.
"You're too funny," she said. "When did you think you had the horrid thing down?"
"When I met your husband – and – and liked him."
"You did like him, then?"
"Very much indeed."
"What an odd taste! Those pale eyes of his have an uncanny effect on me. It's something that goes through walls and floors; and it makes me quite vicious. It brings out all the cat in me. I have an irresistible desire to claw and rend."
"It must have followed you all the way to Simla, that last night," said Andrews, dropping into a chair that faced her.
But Nina shook her golden head and her violet eyes slowly narrowed. He observed that in the dusk, for the room was in the semi-gloom of a single, red-shaded lamp in a far corner.
"No" – her voice was very low and purring – "I wasn't in the least catty then. I was sorry for you. I was, really; but it couldn't go on. You can see now that it couldn't go on."
"It might have gone on," he qualified, "if I hadn't met Colonel Darling."
"You seem to forget that I had met him already – am married to him."
"Yes," he said; "but with you it's different. You joy in hurting him; whereas I – why, I'd never have a moment's peace if I did anything that would give him pain. I know I shouldn't."
She pretended to be surprised; though, for some reason, she was not in the least.
"You're an odd boy," she drawled. "You mean that if I were to tell you now that I had changed my mind, and was quite ready to go away with you, you'd beg to be excused?"
He didn't answer at once. Candor bulked large in his character. Now that she put it that way he wished to be very sure. It was not a matter to be decided offhand, with Darling absent and Nina there before him, temptingly precious in the magic witchery of the tinted half-light.
"No, I – I couldn't. I couldn't do him that injury," he declared at length.
"And you swore you loved me?"
"I did. I do. I swear it still," he cried with sudden vehemence.
Nina laughed at his protestation.
"'Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more,'" she quoted. "Is that it?"
"No, that isn't it," he denied earnestly. "I – "
"You love me a great deal, but you are so fond of Darling that you would not pain him to make us both happy," she interrupted. And the sneer with which she did it cut him to the quick.
"I don't think you've any right to put it that way," he returned.
"I am putting it your way, really," she came back. "It is as plain as the nose on your face. You made the choice between us, and you took a minute or so to make it. You didn't answer on impulse; you answered after calm deliberation. I really don't see, Gerald, how you can argue it otherwise."
"But it wouldn't make you happy," he caught her up. "You've said it wouldn't."
"Did I?" she asked indifferently. "I don't remember."
"You said it would make you miserable; that you'd never care a straw in your life except for one man. You said that you'd married a man you did not love, and that – "
She lifted a slim white hand as if to ward off a blow.
"Don't! Don't!" she cried. "No matter what I said. That was then, and this is now. Besides, I don't always tell the truth. I am not as deliberate as you are, you see. Sometimes I say things on impulse; sometimes I lie with a direct purpose. And then, that night, I was not quite myself, you know. I had had a silly dream and I allowed it to affect me."
He drew his chair nearer and bent forward. He was by no means so sure of himself as he had been a moment before. It was wonderful – those tones in Nina's voice. They swayed his feelings against his better impulses. Her voice had always been her most effective weapon. Even her beauty was secondary to it.
He was conscious that his heart was pounding. It seemed to rise up chokingly with every bound. And so he stammered:
"You – you mean – you – would reconsider?"
"Ah!" she murmured. "I don't know what I mean. Only – "
"Yes, yes," he hurried her. "Only – only – "
She turned her head aside and covered her face with the hand that had checked his arraignment.
"I am so wretched!" It was little more than a whisper.
"No, no," he pleaded. "Nina, I beg of you."
His emotion swept him away, overriding all law, vaulting honor, trampling scruples. The possibility of possession revived, and the pathetic figure of Darling was forgotten.
He reached out for her, clasped her in his long, hungry arms; and, yielding, she let him draw her close to him, her head nestling against his shoulder.
"There, there," he murmured, smoothing her cheek with a hand nearly as soft as a woman's. "I did not mean it – I swear I didn't mean it. I – I love you more than anything in life."
Her arms wound about his neck, and he drew her up again until her gaze was level with his own. But, even at that moment, he saw her eyes stray across her shoulder and then suddenly grow wide as with alarm.
He felt, too, her whole figure tense, and instinctively there was conveyed to him a contagious sense of lurking danger. He was about to speak, to question, when, between lips barely parted, breathed rather than whispered even, came:
"A cobra – in the corner – where I'm looking! The pistol – quick – and don't miss!"
The pistol lay at his left hand, and he must needs swing quite around to aim after getting it. But she slipped swiftly away from him to give him free play, and he managed it very well indeed.
In the dim light he marked the cobra instantly, for a ray had been caught by its glistening brown, upreared body, and its spread hood stood out fairly distinct against the glazed panes of the long casement which stood partly ajar.
Andrews fired, and the report echoed sharply against the dead silence of the room. But there echoed, too, two other sounds, both puzzling and disconcerting. One was a metallic ring, as of a struck gong, only sharper and shorter, and the other was a hoarse, but muffled and evidently restrained, cry of pain.
Man and woman were on their feet instantly. Three strides took Andrews to the spot, and there he halted in amaze with a little exclamation of astonishment. For the cobra had toppled over, not limp and outlying, but stiffly; its coils intact, facing him, disklike.
It was an admirably modeled bronze.
In the perplexity following the discovery he turned questioningly to Nina, who was close behind him. But she only lifted a warning finger and made a sibilant sound with her lips, adjuring silence. And he noticed, strangely enough, that the look of alarm which he had detected was – in a lesser degree perhaps – still present.
She passed him, stepping over the bronze reptile; and, spreading wider the casement, went out onto the veranda.
In the act of following, the fact of the muffled cry recurred to him. Was it possible that the bullet, ricochetting from the metal casting, had found a mark beyond the window?
With one foot across the sill a scream seemed to stop his heart from beating. Certainly it held him motionless for a second or more. Yet he recovered himself in time – just in time – to catch Nina in his arms as she staggered backward, stunned and half-fainting. Nor was it any wonder that she screamed and was stunned and half-fainted.
For fate chose that moment for making her "silly dream" come true. She had seen a ghost on the veranda.
CHAPTER IV
A White Slipper and a Red Stain
The native servants, startled by the pistol-shot, flocked in haste to the veranda. In the lead was Jowar, the Darlings' khitmatgar, whom Nina hated. And he saw her in Andrews's arms.
It was only for an instant, however. The presence of Jowar revived her like a cold shower, and she stood on her own feet with her chin in the air.
"I saw a man running," she explained. "It must have been he that shot through the window. Oh, how frightened I was!"
The khitmatgar inquired as to which way the miscreant had run, and Nina pointed in exactly the opposite direction from that in which she had been facing when she staggered back into young Andrews's embrace.
Jowar set off in pursuit instantly, and the others followed. All, that is, save Nina's ayah, who opportunely produced a bottle of smelling-salts and passed it to the mem-sahib.
Sniffing at it, Mrs. Darling dismissed her.
When Nina and Andrews were back in the drawing-room and again quite alone he saw that she was still trembling. Moreover, in spite of the ruddy glow from the single lamp in the corner, she was as pallid as ashes.
"Dearest," he murmured, hastily encircling her slim waist with a supporting arm, "you are wonderful! Any other woman would be in hysterics."
Very gently she extricated herself from his embrace.
"I haven't lived five years in India for nothing," she said.
"But what was it?" he asked. "Why did you want me to shoot? Why – "
"I fancied that devilish khitmatgar was spying again," she hastened to answer, slipping into a chair. "I saw something move – out there."
"And so you made me shoot at the bronze?"
"It's a very realistic bronze, isn't it?" she asked.
But he didn't answer. "Was it the khitmatgar?" he pressed.
And now she didn't answer.
"The bronze was a present," she went on instead. "Do you mind setting it upright again?"
He did so. "Odd I never saw it before," was his comment. "I thought I'd seen everything in this room. When I was here two days ago it seemed to me that every object spoke of you. I missed nothing. And yet – "
"That came this morning," she told him. "A gift without a card."
Young Andrews frowned.
"It's a horrid thing," he said. "I don't like it."
"It's beautiful!"
"It's ill-omened. I feel it is."
He saw her shiver again, but she tried to smile. Her pallor had grown no less.
"Tell me," he insisted, "was it the khitmatgar, do you think?"
"Who else could it have been? He will tell Jack Darling he saw me in your arms. And then – Hadn't you better be going? Aren't you overdue in Junnar?"
"And leave you? Never!"
"But you must," she said calmly.
"When I go you go with me. Now that I know you love me – "
"I never said I loved you. I don't. I can't. I love but one man. I know it now as never before. For just a moment I thought – " And there she stopped.
"You thought?" he questioned, suddenly agitated.
"I thought I might forget. I thought perhaps you could make me forget. I was, you see, so utterly weary of everything."
"You were right," he cried earnestly. "I can make you forget. I'll give my whole life to it. I'll – "
He bent over her, but she drew away quickly with a gesture of repulsion, which Andrews was quick to note. It cut him cruelly, and he stepped back, pained and crestfallen.
In the instant of silence that ensued he swept her with a devouring gaze from head to foot. Was he to lose her again – now, when for a second time he had been so sure?
One dainty, white-shod foot was stretched out from beneath her skirt, and as his eyes reached it a dark, smearlike stain across the toe arrested his attention and awoke a question. Impulsively he dropped to one knee and swept a finger across it.
"Nina!" he cried, springing up again, a note of alarm in his voice. "Look! There is blood on your slipper. It couldn't have been the khitmatgar. The bullet ricochetted and wounded some one. Who was it?"
She leaned forward, her heart pounding with sudden horror, and saw it for herself.
"But how – " she queried, her breath short and quick.
"From the shrubbery at the side of the veranda. Your foot must have touched the leaves. If it had been the khitmatgar who was bleeding like that he couldn't have hidden it."
She was up in an instant, crying: "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?"
"Between us," said Andrews, "we've managed to wing some prowling beggar of a native, I fancy. That's all." He said it in an effort to pacify her, but he knew in his heart that it was no native.
He had known from the first that Nina's scream, emotion, and pallor were results of the unexpected. Now he was more certain than ever that he was right.
For quite a minute she paced the floor, wringing her hands. Then there was a rap on the glass of the long window, and the tall, dusky, white-clad Jowar stepped into the room. His expression was unusually grave.
"The mem-sahib is mistaken," he said. "The fleeing sahib goes the other way. He is wounded. We follow the sahib until we see him enter the compound of the hotel. All the way the sahib leave trail of blood behind."
Nina had halted, her hand clutching a curtain as if to stay herself. At the words of the khitmatgar she swayed, and but for Andrews would have fallen, for the curtain stuff broke from its rings under her weight.
It was her companion who signed to Jowar that he might go. Then he supported her to a settee and eased her down upon it.
The cantonment at Umballa, which is four miles from the native town, boasts several hotels.
In a large upper room in one of these, not far from the bungalow of the Darlings, a burly, bearded gentleman – who had registered a few hours before as Henry Scripps, of Bombay – was at that moment impatiently and in no little pain awaiting the appearance of the English surgeon who lived nearest.
Around Mr. Scripps's left wrist was an improvised tourniquet, and the water which filled the basin on the wash-stand was claret-colored.
Mr. Scripps had just succeeded in filling a brier pipe with his right hand unaided, and was in the act of striking a match when his room door was swung hurriedly ajar to admit Mayhan, of the Buff Hussars, with his kit of surgical instruments.
"You've taken the devil's own time it appears to me," growled Mr. Scripps. "Now you're here, for God's sake, make haste!"
The greeting took the young surgeon somewhat aback.
"Sorry you think so," he returned, leisurely opening his bag and pretending that the catch had caught by way of retaliation. "As a matter of fact, I came on the instant."
Scripps rumbled under his breath and emitted a volume of gray smoke.
"Shot in the hand, I understand," Mayhan went on, wrenching the bag open at length with considerable fuss and feather.
Scripps grunted an affirmative.
"How did it happen?" the surgeon inquired, taking out a probe.
But the wounded man didn't answer. He dropped into a chair under the light and said: "Come now, make haste."