Star of India by Alice Perrin (ereader ebook txt) 📗
- Author: Alice Perrin
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[Pg 50]
As he roamed round the room, doubtful, undecided, his eyes fell on the group of coloured clay models of Indian servants set out on a papier-mâché bracket, and he paused, for they recalled the existence of Sher Singh, his Hindu bearer, who for the past twenty-five years had been his right hand and chief of his domestic staff, and who perhaps knew more about Robert Crayfield than any other living being. Sher Singh would not welcome a memsahib. At the same time, the fellow would hardly be such a fool as to jeopardise his own valuable position by making trouble; the almighty rupee would soon settle Sher Singh's objections, and Stella must be made to understand that interference with the head servant's authority in the household could not be permitted.... Thus the Commissioner of Rassih endeavoured to exorcise the inopportune vision of his confidential retainer, who, he was aware, bore a faint, fantastic likeness to himself. People would sometimes remark, laughing, "Like master, like man."
He looked out of the window to see Stella crossing the lawn, a basket on her arm; and he noted afresh the splendid promise of her young form, the grace of her proportions, the perfection of feature and colouring. Truly she was well worth a drastic upheaval of his mode of life, a price that was hardly too high, all things considered. Involuntarily as he watched her, he began to make plans for the future. The big bedroom that overlooked the gardens at Rassih? No, it was not so cool in the hot weather as the one he had hitherto occupied himself,[Pg 51] which gave on to the vast desert area at the back of the house. True, his present room held tragic associations; his predecessor in the appointment had committed suicide from the balcony, throwing himself over the parapet down on to the rubbish and scrub far below, where in the night time hyenas and jackals yelled and fought and made diabolical merriment.... And then there was the bathroom door, scarred with sabre cuts and bullet holes, hideous reminders of a mutiny massacre where women and children—— But that all belonged to the past. Stella need never be told of such horrors, nor of the stories of footsteps, and cries, and unaccountable noises—servants' superstitious nonsense that, of course, he scoffed at and suppressed, though sometimes, when the heat kept him awake at night, he had even imagined that he heard them himself.... The drawing-room should be renovated; he had never used it; he would order a piano from Calcutta.
Stella disappeared round the corner of the house, and Colonel Crayfield realised with a sense of mingled triumph and incredulity that he had actually made up his mind, that he had done with all hesitation. And when Robert Crayfield once made up his mind he did not alter it.
A timid cough in the doorway disturbed his reflections. It was Ellen Carrington, driven back to the drawing-room by her mother under pretext that good manners did not permit of a guest being left solitary, unentertained. She fluttered to a seat, prepared to make polite, impersonal conversation; but Colonel Crayfield trampled on the intention.
[Pg 52]
"Well, and what do you think of it all, Miss Ellen?" he inquired confidentially; at any rate, she seemed to him the most human of the three females. His tone gave her a nice little sense of importance.
"I expect you are right. We may have taken things too seriously. But Stella's conduct did seem very—rather——"
He broke in abruptly. "Can you keep a secret?" And as his companion looked up alarmed, he added, smiling, "Only for a short time?"
"I—I hope I can." She had so little experience of secrets, and the very word "secret" savoured of deceit!
"Well, it's this. I intend to take Stella back with me to India. I intend to marry her."
Ellen gasped. Totally unprepared as she was for such a disclosure, it left her dumbfounded, also vaguely shocked. To her maidenly mind there was something indelicate in the notion of Stella, who was little more than a child, married, and to a man so very much her senior. Oh, dear! In all her bewilderment Colonel Crayfield's voice sounded oddly distant.
"I'm so—so surprised!" she faltered.
"I admit that she is young enough to be my daughter, but surely the drawback goes for nothing if I am prepared to accept it. Consider the advantage for Stella!"
It was beyond Ellen's power to voice her feelings. She was only aware of a nebulous resentment that she could not define even to herself, much less aloud to the man who had caused it.
[Pg 53]
"As my wife," he went on, glad to give utterance to his arguments, "she will have an assured position, she will be suitably provided for, and she will be well looked after—I can promise you that!"
The last sentence sounded to Ellen more like a threat than a promise. Her silence puzzled Colonel Crayfield, annoyed him. He had anticipated expressions of delight, of gratitude; he felt he had every reason to expect them; yet this limp, bloodless old maid appeared totally unimpressed by the benefits he proposed to shower upon her niece, seemed even to disapprove of the whole business. He brushed from his mind the impatience her odd behaviour had aroused.
"I am in no doubt as to Stella's reception of my purpose," he could not resist telling her, with pointed satisfaction; and had Miss Ellen been capable of such vulgarity she would have sworn that she saw him lick his lips.... She shrank, instinctively disgusted, and gathered up her knitting with trembling hands.
"Will you excuse me?" she stammered; even her mother's orders could keep her no longer in the room; she felt as if Colonel Crayfield had suddenly turned into a sort of ogre. "I—I have a letter to write that must catch the post." And with this, one of the few lies she had ever told in her life, she sidled past him to the door.
He looked after her in contemptuous wonderment; then stepped out of the window in search of his future bride. Probably she was eating [Pg 54]gooseberries, and the kitchen garden had this advantage, that it was not overlooked by windows, though it was hardly the spot he would have chosen for love-making. But Stella was nowhere to be found, and returning at last to the house, he had no better luck: the place seemed deserted. Where had they all hidden themselves?
He could not know that Stella was an unwilling prisoner upstairs, helping Aunt Augusta to sort household linen; that Mrs. Carrington, still resting, believed him to be enjoying the society of Ellen, whereas Ellen had locked herself into her bedroom, helplessly perturbed.
Only just before dinner did he have the chance of speaking to Stella without being overheard. "I saw you come back," he said to her, a tender inflection in his voice. "Were you tired? Was the basket heavy?"
"Oh, no," she replied mischievously; "I only felt overburdened with virtue. A handsome young man wanted to carry the basket for me, and I would not let him!"
"Thought you might be found out?" he suggested with a chuckle.
"That was about it!" she said, recklessly candid. "Oh, do tell me: was anything settled this afternoon? I know you were all talking me over. Am I to stay here for the rest of my life?"
"Have a little patience," he teased, finding a subtle pleasure in her obvious disappointment with his reply.
That evening, after dinner, he discovered that[Pg 55] Stella had a voice. She sang a little song, something about a star, to Aunt Ellen's accompaniment, and though Stella herself was clearly bored by the words of the song, and despite lack of training and feeling, her voice was deep and sweet—well worth cultivation, as he quickly decided. She should have singing lessons before they sailed for India.
The song ended, he found an opportunity to whisper: "That was delightful. Stella—a star! Some day perhaps a star of India?"
"But that's a decoration, isn't it?" she asked, pleased and eager. "And not for women? Have you got it?"
He looked at her intently, narrowing his eyes. "No, I haven't got my star—yet."
"But you will have it—soon?"
"Yes, very soon."
Stella felt mystified. Had she said the wrong thing? Perhaps it was a sore point with him that he had not received the distinction earlier?
"Can you sing?" she inquired quickly, to change the subject.
"Well, I used to," he admitted.
"Oh, do let us see if we have any songs you know. Aunt Ellen, Colonel Crayfield will sing if we can find something he knows."
There followed much turning over of music, but without success. Then Stella lifted the lid of the small ottoman that served as a piano-stool, disclosing several bound books of music; she dragged them forth; beneath them lay a number of songs in manuscript. Ellen intervened.
[Pg 56]
"You will find nothing among those; they are so old," she said hastily, as again her niece delved, and produced "Wings," "Adieu," "The Arab's Farewell to His Favourite Steed."
Colonel Crayfield shook his head at them all, but he laid his hand on the next sheet of music that, in spite of Aunt Ellen's unaccountable obstruction, was excavated by Stella.
"That!" he exclaimed, mingled recognition and reluctance in his tone. Forthwith Stella placed it on the stand and began to read the accompaniment, that might have been transcribed with a pin.
"Now?" She looked up at her godfather, gaily insistent.
And Colonel Crayfield, with an air of amused capitulation, sang in a good bass voice that was not so very rusty:
Mrs. Carrington and Augusta murmured polite applause, though they thoroughly disapproved of the words. They said they had heard the song before, though they could not recall when, or by whom, it had been sung.
Ellen could have told them. Poor Ellen! The gay young cousin had sung it, sung it to her in those far-off days that now were as a faint, impossible dream. She herself had copied the music and the words with an etching pen, and purposely had buried the manuscript at the bottom of the ottoman where for so long she had guarded it jealously. Only on the rare occasions when she was alone in the house did she take it out and tinkle the accompaniment, whispering the words. It seemed a sort of sacrilege to Ellen that the song should have been exhumed by the careless Stella to be sung with zest in a loud voice that destroyed the echo of the beautiful tenor, the remembrance of which caused her heart to ache and brought tears to her eyes.
Stella, with girlish enthusiasm, pronounced the song to be "perfectly sweet," and proceeded to hunt through the rest of the pile. Colonel Crayfield watched her lithe movements; he was well satisfied with his own performance, and he smiled to himself as he recollected the last occasion on which he had sung this song—to a pretty young married woman[Pg 58] with whom at that time he was pleasantly philandering; the lady had burst into tears at the piano, an affecting scene had ensued, and the husband had all but surprised them; it had been just touch-and-go, a Providential escape. What on earth was her name? He could only remember that her hair was golden and her eyes like forget-me-nots!
Never mind, it did not matter; all that mattered to him was this exquisite child who was to learn the facts and the meaning of marriage from him and from him alone.... If only the three tiresome old women were out of the room—the two spinsters, scraggy and genteel; the old mother, austere and cold; and
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