Bombay, a very dream-city, was fading—ever more dreamlike, enwrapped in pale-tinted sunset mists—into the distance.
The salt breeze was in their faces; in their ears was the rushing of the waters from the sides of the ship as she cut her way through. Already the something of England that the sea must always bring her children, the surroundings of an English ship especially, was about them! They seemed to have come from the land of languor and secret doings into open life, into simple action, into a busy, wholesome stir.
Beneath them pulsed the great heart of the ship, white foam pointing her way as she forged ahead. Behind her stretched the furrow of her course, two long lines, ever wider divergent till they lost themselves to the eye. And now, by some fantastic mirage effect, the great oriental port, with its glimmering minarets and cupolas, showed as if caught up into the sky itself. Let but this iron heart labour on a little while longer, let but this eager prow cut its way a little deeper towards the sunset, and the East would have vanished altogether.... The travellers would not even see the first glimmer of her evening lights hung a jewel necklace on the horizon, so swiftly had the sea laid hold of them.
Homeward bound! The step from pier to steamer had already severed the link of their strange affinity with the East. Its mystery had fallen from them. Already this was England. Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia, side by side, watched the shores retreat, fade, sink, and vanish.
"Good-bye, India!" said Aspasia, her head sentimentally inclined, dropping at last the little handkerchief with which she had been frantically signalling long after there was any possibility of the vessel being descried from the land otherwise than as a black spot; "Good-bye, India, and hey for home!"
Lady Gerardine fixed the fading vision with wide, abstracted eyes.
"God grant," she said, under her breath, more to herself than to the girl beside her, "that I may never see those shores again!"
"Amen!" said Aspasia, cheerfully.
Rosamond laid her hand upon Aspasia's wrist as they leaned against the railings and pressed it with a grasp that almost hurt.
"An accursed land!" she went on, this time in a low, intense voice. It was as if she flung anathema to the retreating shores. "Cruel, cruel, treacherous! Oh, God, what has it not already cost us English! Is there a home among us that has not paid its blood tribute to that relentless monster? Listen, child. I was as young as you when I last beheld its shores—thus—from the sea. It was in the dawn (it is fit it should now be dusk), and we stood together as I stand beside you to-day. And I saw it grow out of the sky, even with the dawn, a city of rose, of pearl, beyond words beautiful—unimaginable, it seemed to me, in promise! He said to me: 'Look, there is the first love of my life; is she not fair? And I am bringing to her my other love ... and you two are all that I will have of life.' And then he laughed and said: 'It would be strange if I wanted more, with two such loves.' And, again: 'Not even for you could I be false to her.'"
Aspasia, mystified, turned her bright gaze full upon her aunt's face. In the pupils of Rosamond's eyes there was enkindled a sullen fire.
"He came back to her," she went on; "and she—that land—lay smiling in the sunrise to receive him. Oh, how she can smile and look beautiful, and smell fragrant, and caress, with the dagger hidden under the velvet, the snake in the rose, and the sudden grave yawning! I've never been home since," she said, with a sudden change of tone, bringing her glance back from the misty horizon, to fix it upon Aspasia with so piteous and haggard a look that the girl lost her composure. "And now I am coming home alone, and he remains there." She made an outward sweep with her left hand towards the north. "I am coming home alone. The other has kept him. She has kept him. I am alone: he is left behind."
"Who?" cried the bewildered Baby, who had utterly failed to seize the thread of her aunt's strange discourse. And, upon her usual impulsiveness springing to a conclusion of mingled amazement and derision: "Who—Runkle?" she exclaimed.
No sooner had the foolish cry escaped her lips than she could have bitten out her tongue for vexation.
A change came over Lady Gerardine's face, colder and greyer than even the rapid tropic evening that was closing upon the scene. The light went out in her eyes, to be replaced by a distant contempt. The features that had quivered with passion became set into their wonted mask of repose; it was as if a veil had dropped between them, as if a cold wind drove them apart.
"I was not speaking of your uncle," said Rosamond, at length, very gently. Then she suggested that as it was growing late they should take possession of their cabin.
And Aspasia, as she meekly acquiesced, trembled upon tears at the thought of her blundering. For one moment this jealously centred heart had been about to open itself to her; for one moment this distant enfolded being had turned to her as woman to woman; impelled by God knows what sudden necessity of complaint, of another's sympathy, of another's understanding, the lonely soul had called upon hers. And she, Aspasia—Baby, well did they name her so—had not been able to seize the precious moment! The sound of her own foolish laugh still rang in her ears, while the unconscious contempt in Rosamond's gaze scorched her cheeks.
* * * * *
From the very first day, fate, in the shape of an imperiously intimate Aspasia, drew Raymond Bethune, the saturnine lonely man, into the narrow circle of Lady Gerardine's 'board-ship existence. In her double quality of great lady and semi-invalid, the Lieutenant-Governor's wife was to be withdrawn from the familiar intercourse which life on a liner imposes on most travellers. It had been Sir Arthur's care to see that she was provided with an almost royal accommodation, which, as everything in this world is comparative, chiefly consisted in the possession of a small sitting-room over and above the usual sleeping-cabin.
Into these sacred precincts Miss Cuningham hustled Bethune unceremoniously, as the first dusk closed round their travelling home on the waste of waters.
"Steward! ... Oh, isn't it too bad, Major Bethune! I've been ringing like mad, and poor old Jani's bewildered out of her wits; and Gibbons—that's our English fool of a maid—she's taken to groaning already. There's not a creature to do anything for us, and that idiot there says he's nothing to say to the cabins!"
Her arms full of flowers, she stood close to him; and the fragrance of the roses and carnations came to him in little gushes with her panting breath. Her rosy face, in the uncertain light, had taken to itself an ethereal charm very different from its usual clear and positive outline. Hardly had this realisation of her personality come to him than, under the hands of the ship's servant she had so contemptuously indicated, the flood of the electric light leaped upon them. And behold, she appeared to him yet fairer—youth triumphant, defying even that cruel glare to find a blemish in bloom or contour.
"What do you want?" he asked, with the softening of his hard face which so few were ever privileged to see.
"A vase for our flowers—a big bowl. I hate messy little dabs; and I don't want them to die an hour before they can help it. Oh, a really big bowl, at once!"
Her residence in an Indian governor's palace had been short, but sufficient to give Miss Aspasia the habit of command.
Raymond Bethune gave his dry chuckle as he set to work to fulfil her behest.
"I've captured a salad bowl," cried he, almost jovially, when he returned; "and the head steward is in despair!"
"Tell him to steal the cook's pudding-basins," said Aspasia, and swept him back with her to the minute sitting-room.
Here sat Lady Gerardine, still wrapped in her cloak but bareheaded, under the shaded light. Leaning back among her cushions, her feet crossed on a footstool, she seemed to have taken full possession of her quarters. The narrow commonplace surroundings had already received her special personal imprint. The flowers, the cushions, a few books, a great cut-glass scent bottle—the very disorder even of a litter of rich trifles that had not yet found their place, removed the trivial impression of steamer upholstery. She received him without surprise, if without any mark of welcome; and Aspasia chattered, ordered, laughed, kept him employed and amused. Now and again Lady Gerardine smiled vaguely at her niece's outbursts. Bethune could not feel himself an intruder. And certainly it was better than his fourth share of a bachelor's cabin, better than the crowded saloon and smoking-rooms, with their pervading glare and odour of high polish.
Through the open port-hole came the sound of the rushing, swirling waters, punctuated by the slap of some sudden wave against the flank of the ship. A wind had arisen, and now and again gusts, cold and briny, rushed in upon the warm inner atmosphere of flowers.
Lady Gerardine held a large bouquet of Niphetos roses, and her pale long fingers were busy unrolling the bonds that braced them in artificial deportment. Their petals, thought the man, were no whiter than her cheeks.
Presently Aspasia plunge............