The Bronze Bell | Page 7

train to-morrow, to join the Rolands in New York."
"You don't want to go?"
"I'm half an American, Mr. Amber. I've learned to love the country already. Besides, we start immediately for San Francisco, and it'll be such a little while before I'll be in India."
"You don't care for India?"
"I've known it for less than six years, but already I've come to hate it as thoroughly as any exiled Englishwoman there. It sits there like a great, insatiable monster, devouring English lives. Indirectly it was responsible for my mother's death; she never recovered from the illness she contracted when my father was stationed in the Deccan. In the course of time it will kill my father, just as it did his father and his elder brother. It's a cruel, hateful, ungrateful land--not worth the price we pay for it."
"I know how you feel," he said with sympathy. "It's been a good many years since I visited India, and of course I then saw and heard little of the darker side. Your people are brave enough, out there."
"They are. I don't know about Government; but its servants are loyal and devoted and unselfish and cheerful. And I don't at all understand," she added in confusion, "why I should have decided to inflict upon you my emotional hatred of the country. Your question gave me the opening, and I forgot myself."
"I assure you I was thoroughly shocked, Miss Farrell."
"You should have been--surprised, at least. Why should I pour out my woes to you--a man I've known not fifteen minutes?"
"Why not, if you felt like it? After all, you know, we're both of us merely making talk to--ah--to cover our interest in one another."
She paused momentarily to laugh at his candour. "You are outspoken, Mr. Amber! It's very pretty of you to assert an interest in me; but why should you assume that I--"
"You said so, didn't you?"
"Wel-l ... yes, so I did."
"You can change your mind, of course."
"I shan't, honestly, until you turn stupid. And you can't do that until you stop having strange adventures. Will you tell me something?"
"If I can."
"About the man who wouldn't acknowledge knowing you? You remember saying three people had been mistaken about your identity this afternoon."
"No, only one--the babu. You're not mistaken--"
"I knew you must be David Amber the moment I heard you speaking Urdu."
"And the man at the station wasn't mistaken--unless I am. He knew me perfectly, I believe, but for reasons of his own refused to recognise me."
"Yes--?"
"He was an English servant named Doggott, who is--or once was--a valet in the service of an old friend, a man named Rutton."
She repeated the name: "Rutton? It seems to me I've heard of him."
"You have?"
"I don't remember," she confessed, knitting her level brows. "The name has a familiar ring, somehow. But about the valet?"
"Well, I was very intimate with his employer for a long time, though we haven't met for several years. Rutton was a strange creature, a man of extraordinary genius, who lived a friendless, solitary life--at least, so far as I knew; I once lived with him in a little place he had in Paris, for three months, and in all that time he never received a letter or a caller. He was reticent about himself, and I never asked any questions, of course, but in spite of the fact that he spoke English like an Englishman and was a public school man, apparently, I always believed he had a strain of Hungarian blood in him--or else Italian or Spanish. I know that sounds pretty broad, but he was enigmatic--a riddle I never managed to make much of. Aside from that he was wonderful: a linguist, speaking a dozen European languages and more Eastern tongues and dialects, I believe, than any other living man. We met by accident in Berlin and were drawn together by our common interest in Orientalism. Later, hearing I was in Paris, he hunted me up and insisted that I stay with him there while finishing my big book--the one whose title you know. His assistance to me then was invaluable. After that I lost track of him."
"And the valet?"
"Oh, I'd forgotten Doggott. He was a Cockney, as silent and self-contained as Rutton.... To get back to Nokomis: I met Doggott at the station, called him by name, and he refused to admit knowing me--said I must have mistaken him for his twin brother. I could tell by his eyes that he lied, and it made me wonder. It's quite impossible that Rutton should be in this neck of the woods; he was a man who preferred to live a hermit in centres of civilisation.... Curious!"
"I don't wonder you think so. Perhaps the man had been up to some mischief.... But," said the girl with a note of regret, "we're almost home!"
They