IV
INTRODUCES THE READER TO MRS. WILDER IN A SECRETIVE MOOD
Draycott Wilder was a man who hoarded his passions and concentrated themupon a very few objects. His work came first, and his intense ambition,and after his work, his wife. She was the right sort of wife for a manwho put worldly success first, and through the years of their marriagehad helped him a great deal more than he ever admitted. Clarice Wilderwas beautiful, and had a surface cleverness combined with a natural giftof tact that made her an admirable hostess. She could talk to anybodyand send them away pleased and satisfied with themselves, and she hadmade the best of Draycott for a good number of years. She had marriedhim when marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and hercountry home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where nothing everhappened, and where life was one long Sunday at Home, and Draycott, backfrom the East, had appeared as interesting as a white Othello.
For a time she received all she needed out of life, and she threwherself into her husband's promotion-hunger; understanding it, becauseshe, too, wanted to reign, and it gave her an inexplicable feeling ofrespect for him, for Clarice knew that had she been born a man, she,too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the frontof the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman cancombine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and shenever awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart ofDraycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for thefirst time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better ofher common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a verytroublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come to theIndian Civil Service, was sent to their Punjaub station. He made Mrs.Wilder realize her own charm, he made her terribly conscious that shewas older than him, he made her anxious and distracted and madly,idiotically in love with him. She forgot that there were other things inlife, she put aside ambition for a stronger temptation, and she did notcare what Draycott thought or supposed.
No one ever knew what happened, but everyone guessed that Wilder hadmade trouble. They left India under the same cloud of silence, and theyreappeared in Mangadone to outside eyes the same couple who had pulledtogether for successful years of marriage; and if some whisper, forwhispers carry far in the East, came after them, no one regarded it, andthe Copplestone incident was considered permanently closed. DraycottWilder was the same silent man who was the despair of his dinnerpartners, and Clarice had her old brilliancy and her old way of makingmen pleased with themselves; and though some people, chiefly younggirls, described her as "hard," she represented a centre of attraction,and her one mad year was a thing of the past.
Among the men who went to the terraced house in its huge gardens, shealways particularly welcomed Hartley, the Head of the Police. He neverdemanded effort, and he had a good nature and a flow of small talk.Nearly every woman liked Hartley, though very few of them could havesaid why. He had fair, fluffy hair and a pink face; he was just weakenough to be easily influenced, and he fell platonically in love withevery new woman he met without being in the least faithless to theothers. Mrs. Wilder had a corner in her heart for him, and he, inreturn, looked upon Mrs. Wilder as a brilliant and lovely woman verymuch too good for Draycott. He did not know that he took his ideas fromher whenever she wished him to do so; Mrs. Wilder, like a cleverconjurer, palmed her ideas like cards, and upheld the principle of freewill while she did so, and if she had desired to impress Hartley withfifty-two new notions he would have left her positive in his own mindthat they were his own.
Thus, Clarice Wilder may be classed as that melodramatic type that goesabout labelled "dangerous," only she had the wit to take off the labeland to advertise herself under the guise of a harmless soothing mixture.
The bungalow in which the Wilders lived was an immense place, standingover a terraced garden beautifully planted with flowers. Steps, coveredwith white marble, led from terrace to terrace, and down to ajade-green lake where water-lilies blossomed and pink lotus flowersfloated. Dark green trees plumed with shaded purple flowers accentuatedthe massed yellow of the golden laburnums. The topmost flight of stepsled up to the house, and was flanked on either side with variegatedlaurel growing in sea-green pots, and the red avenue, that took itslengthy way from the main road, curved into a wide sweep outside theflower-hung veranda.
Hartley arrived at the house just as Mrs. Wilder was having tea alone inthe big drawing-room, and she smiled up at him with her curious eyes,that were the colour of granite. Without exactly knowing what her agewas, Hartley felt, somehow, that she looked younger than she was, andthat she did not do so without some aid from "boxes," but he liked hernone the less for that, and possibly admired her more. He sat down andasked her how she was, and, as he looked at her, he wondered to thinkthat she had ever fainted. Clearly, she was the last woman on earth whocould be accused of Victorian ways, and to see her in her white lacedress, dark, distinguished, and perfectly mistress of her emotions, wasto be bewildered at the memory. She treated the question with scantceremony, and remarked upon the fact that the night had been hot, andthat everyone had felt it.
"I've got an excellent reason for remembering the date," said Hartleyreflectively. "By the way, wasn't Absalom, old Mhtoon Pah's assistant,once a dressing-boy or something in your establishment?"
"He was, and then he went sick, and took to this other kind of work."
"He was quite honest, I suppose?"
"Perfectly honest," said Mrs. Wilder, with a slight lift of hereyebrows, "and a nice little boy. I hope that question doesn't mean thatyou are professionally interested in his past?" she laughed carelessly."I am quite prepared to stand up for Absalom; he was the soul ofintegrity."
Hartley put down his cup on the table.
"The boy has disappeared," he said, talking with interest, for thesubject filled his mind.
"But when, and how? I saw him quite lately."
Hartley's round, China-blue eyes fixed upon her.
"Can you tell me when you saw him?"
"One night--evening, I should say--I was out riding and I passed himgoing towards the wharf, not towards the wharf exactly, but to thehouses that lie out by the end of the tram lines."
"What evening? I wish you could remember for me."
"It was the night of my own dinner-party."
"Then that was July the twenty-ninth?"
Mrs. Wilder looked at him, and bit her lip.
"Was it the twenty-ninth?" Hartley repeated the question.
"Probably it was, if you say so. I told you just now that I had Burmahead. But where has Absalom gone to?"
Hartley took up his cup again and stirred the spoon round and round.
"Forgive me for pelting you with questions, but did you see Mr. Heaththat evening?"
"Now, what _are_ you trying to get out of me, Mr. Hartley? Did Mr. Heathtell you that he had seen me?"
Hartley stared at his feet.
"Heath has got Burma head, too, and won't tell me anything. It mighthelp his memory if you were able to say whether you had seen him or notthat evening."
Mrs. Wilder's fine eyes glittered into a smile that was not exactlymirthful or pleasant.
"I don't see that I can possibly say one way or another. I often do. . . I often do see him going about the native quarter when I ridethrough, but I do not write it down in my book, so it is quiteimpossible for me to say."
"Anyhow, you saw Absalom?"
"Oh, yes, I saw the boy. What a persistent man you are, and you haven'ttold me a word yourself."
"Absalom was to have got a gold lacquer bowl that you ordered fromMhtoon Pah?"
"Quite correct," laughed Mrs. Wilder with more of her usual manner."That old Barabbas has never sent it to me yet, either. I ordered it amonth ago. I love lacquer because it looks like nothing else, andparticularly gold lacquer."
"Well, all I can tell you is that Absalom had an order from Mhtoon Pahto get the bowl the next morning, if it was to be got, and he went awayas usual
the night of the twenty-ninth, and never appeared again. Heathsaw him, and you saw him, and that is pretty nearly all the evidence Ican collect."
"Evidence?" Mrs. Wilder's voice had a piercing note in it.
"Yes, evidence. You see the only way to trace a man is to find outexactly who saw him last, and where."
"Ah, I see. You find out what everyone was doing, and where they were,and you piece the bits in. It's like a jig-saw, and how very interestingit must be."
Hartley laughed.
"Not what the other people were doing exactly, but where they were. Itis something to know that you saw the boy, but I wish you could rememberif you saw Heath."
Mrs. Wilder got up and walked to the window.
"I do hope he will be found. Did he take my lacquer bowl with him?"
"He had not got it," said Hartley, in his steady, matter-of-fact voice.
"Are you _worried_ about it?" She turned and looked across the room."Why should you be? If Absalom has chosen to leave, I really don't seewhy he shouldn't be allowed to go in peace."
"I don't know that he did _choose_ to leave; that is just the point."
He was longing to ask her another question about Heath, and yet he didnot like to press her.
"Here are some callers," she remarked, and then, with a short laugh, "Iwonder if they were out and about that evening. If you go on like this,Mr. Hartley, you will make yourself the most popular man in Mangadone.Take my advice and let Absalom come back in his own way. Perhaps he islooking for my bowl." She turned her head and glanced at some cards thatthe bearer had brought in on a tray. "Show the ladies in, Gulab."
In a few minutes the room was full of voices and laughter, and Mrs.Wilder became unconscious of Hartley. She remained so unconscious of himthat he felt uncomfortable and began to wonder if he had offended her inany way. He looked at her from time to time, and when he got up to goshe gave him her hand as though she was only just sure that he wasreally there.
The disappearance of Absalom was taking strange shapes in his mind, andhe had so far come to the conclusion that Heath knew something aboutAbsalom, and his visit to Mrs. Wilder added the puzzling fact to hismental arithmetic that Mrs. Wilder knew something about Heath. It wasone thing to corner Heath, but Heath standing behind Mrs. Wilder'sprotection, became formidable.
Yet it was not in the Cantonment that Hartley expected to find any clueto the vanished Absalom: it was down in the native quarter. Down therewhere the Chinese eating-houses were beginning to fill, and where thenight life was only just awaking from its slumber of the day, was whereAbsalom, the Christian boy, had last been seen, and it was there, ifanywhere, that he must be searched for and found.
What possible connection could there be between an upright, Godly manwho went his austere way along the high, cold path of duty, and a womanwhose husband was madly grasping at the biggest prize of his profession?What link could bind life with life, when lives were divided by suchyawning gulfs of space and class and race? To connect Mrs. Wilder withHeath was almost as mad a piece of folly as to connect Absalom with theclergyman, and yet, Hartley argued, he had not set out to do it.Something that had not begun with any act or question of his had broughtabout the junction of the ideas, and he felt like a man in a dark roomtrying to make his way to the window, and meeting with unrecognizableobstacles.
The small tinkle of the church bell attracted his attention, and,following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down nearthe door. Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as heread the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour.Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he wasalone, and the odd imploring misery of his voice struck Hartley.--"Toperceive and know the things that we ought to do, and to have grace andpower faithfully to fulfil the same."
Heath's voice had broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells ofstrain and hysteria, but what was there in Mangadone to make arespectable parson strained and hysterical?
The Pointing Man Page 4
