by M. M. Kaye
Winter had not seen Conway again until Colonel Moulson had appeared to lead her to the drawing-room. The sight of Colonel Moulson, whom she had never liked, and whom later, following the incident on the night that the Sirius had anchored off Alexandria, she had actually disliked, was a shock to her. She had forgotten that he would be in Lunjore, and although she knew him to be acquainted with Conway, she had not expected him to be on such intimate terms with her betrothed as to warrant his being asked to give away the bride. She would rather have had anyone but Colonel Moulson to give her away, when but for Alex—
She had a momentary and disturbing vision of Alex’s face, as real and as sharply defined as though for a fractional moment he were standing between her and Colonel Moulson - Alex who had lied to her and tried to prevent her from marrying Conway. Well, he had not prevented her and he did not matter any more. As for Colonel Moulson, Conway must know that she had met him, and it was out of delicacy and consideration for her that he had asked Colonel Moulson to give her away rather than some stranger. He could not be expected to know that she would have preferred a stranger.
Winter looked at Colonel Moulson, her pale cheeks pink, her eyes very bright and young and a little frightened; not seeing him at all, but seeing instead the old, familiar picture of Conway, golden-haired, blue-eyed, wearing bright armour and standing between her and Cousin Julia and unhappiness.
That picture did not fade when she looked through the mist of her veil at the gross elderly man with the pale protuberant eyes, greying hair and slack, twitching mouth who stood or knelt beside her, and whose damp fleshy fingers were so unsteady that it was only with difficulty that he managed to put the ring upon her finger.
There was nothing about this bulky stranger that was familiar; but he was Conway, and he had been ill. So ill, and so disfigured by illness, that he had not wanted her to see him. That was proof enough of his affection for her, and of his kindness. The change that she saw in him was only physical, and now that she was here to nurse him and take care of him, to help him and to love him, he would recover soon enough and become strong and well again. She looked down at the ring that was too loose for her finger, as the first ring that he had given her had been, and her eyes were suddenly full of happy tears.
Through the mist of those tears and the gossamer whiteness of her veil, she turned to look up at her bridegroom and saw, beyond his shoulder, that there was, after all, another woman at her wedding - a young woman, slight and fair, with enormous shadowy eyes and wearing an unusual style of dress. But it had only been a trick of the light that filtered through the heavy split-cane chiks that hung before the line of french windows, for when she blinked the tears away there was no one there except Colonel Moulson and a Major Mottisham, the Reverend Eustace Chillingham whose weak eyes were already bright with fever, and Conway Barton - who was now her husband.
But half an hour later there had been a good many more people, and a considerable quantity of champagne.
The Reverend Chillingham had left immediately after the ceremony, but to Winter’s distress Conway had refused to return to his bed.
‘Bed? Nonsense! Nonsense! Never felt better in m’ life. Told you I was on the mend. Don’t get married every day of the week. I’ve sent out to tell some of m’ friends, and they’ll soon be over. They’ll want to see the bride. You’re the Commissioner’s Lady now, m’dear. You’ll have to learn to do the honours. Have some champagne. Capital stuff for putting life into you. You’ll find we keep a good cellar. Hey there, Rassul, bring another bottle!’
He toasted Winter and looked her over with considerable approval. Between pain and nausea, and fear that her unexpected arrival might result in his losing the fortune that she represented, he had been able to spare little attention for her personal appearance. Now, however, secure and in triumph, he took stock of his bride and decided that fate had indeed been kind to him.
Who could have believed that the plain, skinny, owl-eyed child whom he had last seen six years ago would have turned out so well? She was not precisely in his style - there were enough dark-haired women in India, and when it came to European ones he preferred ’em blonde and buxom - but she was well enough. Those eyes were magnificent, and if he knew anything of women, that mouth promised a very pleasant wedding night. As for her figure, if her riding-habit did not lie he would find little to complain of.
‘Fred told me you had turned out quite a beauty,’ said the Commissioner, ‘and by Gad, he was right! A fortune and a beauty too - I’m a lucky man.’ He put an arm about Winter’s slim waist and squeezed it, and the champagne slopped over and splashed down his waistcoat.
Winter said anxiously: ‘Conway, please sit down. I’m sure that you cannot be strong enough to stand. Colonel Moulson, please persuade him to return to his bed.’
‘Persuade him to go to bed?’ exclaimed Colonel Moulson, who had been lacing his champagne with brandy and had already downed three glasses in rapid succession. ‘You shouldn’t have any difficulty about gettin’ him there! If I were in his place, the difficulty would be in holdin’ me back from it - the lucky dog!’
Winter had not fully understood the allusion, but the coarseness of the laugh which accompanied it had made her colour hotly and draw back from the Colonel in shocked distaste, her slim body stiffening with disgust. But Conway had only laughed and said: ‘Time and to spare for that, Fred - time and to spare!’ And then carriages and men on horseback had begun to arrive and the room had filled with noisy strangers.
There had not been many of them - perhaps a dozen in all - and only two of them had been women; but to Winter there had appeared to be twice or three times that number. The noise, the loud laughter and congratulations, the curious, appraising stares and the bold approval of the men bewildered and disconcerted her, and the women were neither of them of the kind whom she would ever have felt drawn towards. They made her feel young and stiff and gauche, and they appeared to know Conway very well, for they addressed him - and every other man in the room - by his Christian name, so that Winter had some difficulty in deciding which were their husbands.
Mrs Wilkinson was small, plump and pretty, and made no secret of the fact that she used rouge. She jangled a great many bracelets, smelt strongly of violet essence and had rolling blue eyes and a high-pitched laugh.
Mrs Cottar, on the other hand, was tall and thin, red-haired, green-eyed and ugly. She was dressed with extreme smartness, though in a somewhat outré style, and she appeared to be a general favourite with the men. Her remarks were invariably greeted with a burst of laughter and applause, but as they were mostly delivered sotto voce Winter heard few of them, and since those she did hear conveyed nothing to her, she could not understand why they should so amuse the gentlemen who hung on Mrs Cottar’s words, applauding her and addressing her as ‘Lou’.
Winter herself stood silent, a small rigid smile fixed on her face and her anxious eyes on Conway. Once, when a particularly uproarious burst of laughter had greeted one of Mrs Cottar’s more audible sallies, he noticed that his bride had failed to join in the general mirth, and urged her in rousing tones not to be such a little innocent.
‘She ain’t likely to remain one long; not in your company, Con,’ observed Colonel Moulson with a hiccough.
‘Damn you, Fred,’ protested the bridegroom; adding jovially: ‘Not that I wouldn’t say you were right.’
‘Not like you to take to milk and water after years of champagne and country-brewed brandy, eh, what?’ said Colonel Moulson. ‘Shouldn’t have said it would suit you at all.’
‘But then I do not suppose that he will be disposing of his cellar,’ said Mrs Cottar softly.
There was another burst of laughter in which the Commissioner joined uproariously, and Mrs Cottar looked from the bridegroom’s face to the bride’s, and frowned.
Lucy Cottar possessed a caustic and malicious wit, and little kindness towards her own sex; an attitude which the majority of them reciprocated with active dislike, since despite
her lack of beauty many men found her attractive as well as entertaining, and Mrs Cottar enjoyed playing with fire and had no conscience in the matter of other women’s husbands. But something in Winter’s bewildered eyes gave her a momentary twinge of compunction.
‘Con,’ said Mrs Cottar in an undertone, ‘you shouldn’t have done it. It isn’t decent.’
‘What ain’t decent?’ demanded Mr Barton.
‘You aren’t. What possessed that child’s family to send her out to you? Why, it’s no better than rape. Didn’t they know you?’
‘I took dam’ good care that they didn’t!’ said Mr Barton, and shouted with laughter. He was feeling light-headed with triumph. All over - all the waiting. All the work. He’d married a fortune. He was a rich man. A rich man and a dam’ clever one! He’d planned it all, and it had all come about just as he had planned it. Not a hitch. Clever!
Mrs Cottar, still under the influence of that unexpected feeling of compunction, left him and addressed herself to his wife:
‘You must find it a little bewildering at first - meeting so many people whom you do not know and who all know your husband so well. But you will soon get to know us just as well as he does. Though you must not expect much gaiety in Lunjore. We do our best, but if you have been led to expect a gay life from what you will have seen of Calcutta and Delhi, I am afraid you may be sadly disappointed in Lunjore.’
‘Oh, but I never expected it to be gay,’ Winter hastened to assure her, ‘and I know that Conway - Mr Barton - will be far too hard-worked, once he is well again, to have much time for entertainments.’
‘Has he been ill?’ inquired Mrs Cottar in some surprise. ‘I did not know. But then I have not seen him for above a week. You must know that that is most unusual, for we all meet a great deal. Your husband has been used to give a small party as a regular thing each Tuesday night for his special cronies, and you do not know how welcome they have been during the hot weather. To sit at home all day in the heat is bad enough, but to be compelled to sit there every night as well would be insupportable! And this is such a cool house. But I had a migraine last week and could not attend, although Josh went - the selfish creature.’
She saw that Winter was looking at her with a stunned bewilderment and said in explanation: ‘Josh - Joshua - is my husband. The large dark one by the door—’ She pointed with her fan.
Winter said slowly and as if she found it difficult to articulate: ‘But - but Conway - Mr Barton, has been ill you know. Since - since late August.’
‘Ill? Feathers! Did he tell you that? He was joking. Perhaps he meant you to believe that he was sick for love.’
‘But Mr Carroll told me—’
‘Carroll? Do you mean Jack Carroll? So you know him? Oh, that would be just his way of saying that Con gave one of his bachelor parties when Jack was last here, and they were all in a melancholy way the next morning. I know Josh was! I told him that the next time he came home from one of Con’s bachelor dinners he could sleep it off on the verandah. I am afraid that the men will sadly miss those parties now that Con is married, but I hope that you do not mean to discontinue our Tuesday sociables? We gamble, you know. Not very heavy stakes, but enough to make it exciting. Do you play cards?’
‘No,’ said Winter. ‘No, I - I have never …’
‘We must teach you. And you need not be afraid that Con will be too overworked to enter into our few entertainments. Why, he is the idlest of creatures - and so we all tell him. He lets Alex Randall do all the work while he takes all the credit. Quite shocking - is it not, Con?’
‘No idea what you’re talking about, Lou, my witch. But I am ready to be shocked,’ said Mr Barton coming to anchor beside them. ‘What is it? A new scandal?’
‘On the contrary. An old one. It is you I was referring to. I was telling your wife that you allow Alex Randall to do all the work while you take all the credit.’
‘What’s shockin’ about that?’ demanded Mr Barton. ‘Randall likes work. Meat and drink to the man. Peculiar taste. Shockin’ fool I’d be if I wore myself out doing what someone else will do for me. I’ve better use f’ my time, m’ dear. But Alex is a cold fish.’
‘Oh, no, he is not,’ said Mrs Cottar with a twisted smile. ‘You’re out there, Con.’
‘Ha! I am, am I? Trust you to know! Speakin’ from personal experience, Lou?’
‘No, alas.’
‘Which means that you tried your lures on him, eh?’
‘But of course. Any woman of spirit would have done the same. But he does not mix business with pleasure, and Lunjore is business. Such a pity.’
‘Not for me,’ said the Commissioner, holding out his glass to be refilled by an obsequious khidmatgar. ‘He deals with the business while I take care of the pleasure. Very satisfactory arrangement, Lou, my love.’ He drank deeply and looked down at his wife’s white, rigid face. ‘Mustn’t forget I’m a married man now. Have to watch m’self. Not so much straying from the straight and narrow, eh, Lou? Eh, m’dear?’ He pinched his wife’s chin and slopped a quantity of brandy down her dress in the process.
The rest of the evening was a nightmare to Winter. A dreadful, feverish dream of babel and noise and the clink of glasses, in which she did not hear one word of what was said. She sat on a sofa with her back straight and her head high and a small social smile frozen on her face. She answered when she was spoken to, but her voice did not seem to belong to her any more.
The sun sank and the room filled with shadows. Lamps and candles were lit and the chiks rolled up to let in the cool night air, but still the noise went on and still no one left. Hours later - or so it seemed - a meal was served in the big dining-room, and Winter sat beside her bridegroom at the head of the table, white-faced and dry-eyed, smiling with stiff lips and trying to force herself to eat the food that was placed before her. Toasts were drunk and speeches were made, and still she sat there as if she were held in a strange trance in which her body had turned into some inanimate jointed thing and her mind had ceased to function. She was aroused from it at last by someone plucking at her arm, and turned stiffly to see Mrs Cottar.
‘Do forgive me, dear Mrs Barton, but I do not expect you are used to playing hostess as yet, and we are waiting for you to leave the table,’ explained Mrs Cottar. ‘If we do not leave the men to their port soon, we shall none of us get to bed this night.’
It was midnight before the guests departed, and they would not have gone then but for Major Mottisham, the second witness at the marriage ceremony, who, suddenly recollecting that this was a wedding party and not a carouse, had made a short and garbled speech full of distressingly broad allusions, and herded the wedding guests into the hall.
Winter stood on the porch steps beside her husband with her hands hanging at her sides and her face still wearing that frozen smile, while carriage wheels rolled away and horses’ hooves scattered the gravel. They had gone at last, and the house was quiet.
The garden was full of moonlight, and in the drawing-room the servants were stacking glasses and removing cigar-stubs, turning out lamps and blowing out candles. ‘Well, we may not have had a full-dress weddin’,’ said Conway, ‘but we cer’nly had a capital celebration. Don’t get married every day of yer life, s’just as well to enjoy it. Eat, drink and ge’ married! That’s it, ain’t it, m’dear?’
He appeared to expect some reply and Winter said in a stiff, expressionless voice: ‘I am very tired. I think, if you do not mind, that I will go to bed.’
‘Tha’s right. You go to bed. I won’t keep y’ waiting!’ He laughed uproariously and Winter turned away and walked slowly and unsteadily to her room, as though it were she and not Conway who was drunk.
Hamida was waiting for her, and the sight of the girl’s white face and dazed eyes filled her with clucking alarm. But Winter paid no attention to her words and did not even hear them. She allowed herself to be undressed and bathed and put to bed as though she were not even a child but a large doll. Her world - the dream world that she
had built up for years and planned for and longed and lived for - was in ruins about her, but she could not even think.
At least it was quiet at last. The noise and the babel, the meaningless talk, the incomprehensible jests, the shouts of laughter and the clink of glasses had stopped, and she was alone; for now even Hamida was gone. Now perhaps she could think again - could cry, to ease the terrible pain in her heart. And then the door opened and Conway was there.
Winter sat up swiftly, pulling the sheets up about her, wondering dully why he was here and what he wished to say to her so late at night. She had not taken in the sense of his last remark to her, and in the dazed nightmare of that terrible wedding party she had forgotten that people who were married shared the same bed. She watched stupidly while he came towards her, weaving a little in his walk, and put his candle down upon the bedside table and began to remove his dressing-gown. And then, quite suddenly, the numbness left her and gave place to sheer panic and horror.
This man - this gross, repulsive, drunken stranger - was going to get into the same bed with her. To lie down beside her - perhaps touch her - kiss her! She dragged the sheets up to her chin and her eyes widened until they were enormous in her white face.
‘Go away! Please go away at once!’ Her voice was hoarse with fear and loathing. ‘You cannot sleep here tonight - not tonight. Go away!’
Conway gave a drunken chuckle of approval. ‘Coy are you, my shy little virgin? Tha’s as it should be. But yer a wife now.’ He looked down at her and his red-rimmed eyes lit with a look that she had seen before. A look that had been in Carlyon’s eyes.
‘By gad, yer a beauty after all!’ The thick voice held a note of awe. ‘It would a’ been worth marryin’ any ugly wench with that fortune, but to get a beauty into the bargain—!’
