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Wessington everything. She knew it already. "So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear." Then, without a moment's pause: "I'm sure it's all a mistake a hideous mistake. We shall be as good friends some day, Jack, as we ever were." My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying woman before me like the blow of a whip.
Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet here, look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.
Now and again I appealed passionately to the Terror in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to release me from a torture that was killing me. As I talked I suppose I must have told Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington, for I saw her listen intently with white face and blazing eyes. "Thank you, Mr. Pansay," she said, "that's quite enough. Syce ghora lao."
Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely wished Mrs. Wessington "Good-evening," Her answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the end; and replied that I had heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything further to say.
Wessington leant forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head I used to know so well, and spoke. If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no one no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of justification of my conduct will believe me, I will go on. Mrs.
Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely wished Mrs. Wessington "Good-evening." Her answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the end; and replied that I had heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything further to say.
I even repeated the multiplication-table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have prevented my hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time. Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and entered the level road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was left alone with Mrs. Wessington.
Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might walk by the side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in conversation. The second and most tormenting of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the Prince in Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts."
The wretched horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our old-time walks and talks.
Several years ago Bob Wessington was giving one of his famous booze parties on board his yacht 'The Water-Wain, and this chap was in on it somehow. When everybody was tanked up, they got to doing stunts and he bet a thousand with Wessington he could swarm up the backstay to the masthead. Two others wished in for a thousand apiece, and he cleaned up the lot.
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