_ BOOK II CHAPTER XIX. IT'S NOT MAJOR WYNDHAM
"I will endure; I will not strive to peep
Behind the barrier of the days to come."
--OWEN MEREDITH.
For a few hours Honor slept soundly. But so soon as her bodily exhaustion was repaired, grief and stress of mind dragged her back to consciousness. She woke long before dawn; woke reluctantly, for the first time in her life, with a dead weight upon heart and brain; a longing to turn her face to the wall and shut out the unconcerned serenity of the new day.
But though hearts be at breaking-point, there is no shutting out the impertinent details of life. And on this particular morning Honor found herself plunged neck-deep in prose. Domestic trifles thrust themselves aggressively to the fore. Parbutti assailed her after breakfast with a voluble diatribe against the dhobi's wife, whose eldest son was going to and fro in the compound unashamed, wearing a shirt made from the Memsahib's newest jharrons. She did not feel called upon to add that her own under-jacket had begun life upon Evelyn Desmond's godown shelves. It was not a question of morals. It was the lack of a decent reserve in appropriating her due share of the Sahib's possessions which incensed the good lady against the dhobi's wife. Such unreserve in respect of matters which should be hid might rouse suspicion in other quarters; therefore it behoved Parbutti to be zealous in casting the first stone.
Honor listened with weary inattention, promised investigation of the matter, and passed on to the godown--a closet of broad shelves stocked with an incongruous assortment of household goods, and smelling strongly of kerosine oil and bar soap.
Here it was discovered that the oil had been disappearing with miraculous celerity, and Amar Singh cast aspersions on the
kitmutgar and his wife. A jealous feud subsisted between him and them; and as ruler-in-chief of the Sahib's establishment, the bearer made it a point of honour to let no one cheat Desmond save himself. He had a grievous complaint to lodge against a
sais, who had been flagrantly tampering with the Desmonds' grain, adding a request that the Miss Sahib would of her merciful condescension impart the matter to the Sahib. "For he sitteth much occupied, and his countenance is not favourable this morning."
Honor complied, with a half-smile at the irony of her own position, which, until to-day, she had accepted without after-thought, and which of a sudden seemed unendurable.
Desmond, much engrossed in regimental concerns, and anxious to get off to the Lines, was inclined to irritability and abruptness; and the delinquent, who, with his charger ready saddled, awaited the Sahib's displeasure in the front verandah suffered accordingly. He bowed, trembling, to the ground, and let the storm sweep over his head; making no defence beyond a disarming reiteration of his own worthlessness, and of his everlasting devotion to the Protector of the Poor.
Turning back to the hall for his helmet, Desmond encountered Honor in the doorway, and his wrath gave place to a smile of good fellowship that brought the blood into her cheeks.
"Hope my volcanics didn't horrify you," he said apologetically. "It seems almost as cowardly to fly out at those poor chaps as to strike a child; but they have a genius for tripping one up at critical moments."
He paused, and scanned her face with kindly anxiety. "You're all right again now? Not troubled any more--eh?"
"No. I'm perfectly well. Don't bother your head about me, please. You have so much more important things to think about."
Her colour deepened; and she turned so hastily away that, in spite of his impatience to be gone, Desmond stood looking after her with a troubled crease between his brows. Then he swung round on his heel, vaulted into the saddle, and straightway forgot everything except the engrossing prospect of the campaign.
But for all his preoccupation, he had not failed to note the wistfulness in Evelyn's dutifully smiling eyes. He was more than usually tender with her on his return, and successfully banished the wistfulness by giving up his polo to take her for a ride. Honor stood watching them go, through tears which rose unbidden from the depth of her lonely grief, her haunting sense of disloyalty to the two she loved. She dashed them impatiently aside the instant they moistened her lashes; and betook herself for an hour's rest and refreshment to Mrs Jim Conolly,--"Mrs Jim" was her station name,--whose open-hearted love and admiration would give her a much-needed sense of support.
She entered her friend's drawing-room without formal announcement, to find her seated on a low sofa, barricaded with piles of cotton frocks and pinafores, which had suffered maltreatment at the hands of that arch-destroyer of clothes and temper--the Indian dhobi.
"Don't get up, please," the girl said quickly, as Mrs Conolly gathered her work together with an exclamation of pleasure. "I've just come for a spell of peace and quietness, to sit at the feet of Gamaliel and learn wisdom!"
She settled herself on the carpet,--a favourite attitude when they were alone together,--and with a sigh of satisfaction leaned against her friend's knee. The older woman put an arm round her shoulders, and pressed her close. Her mother's heart went out in very real devotion to this beautiful girl, who, strong and self-reliant as she was, turned to her so spontaneously for sympathy, counsel, and love.
"Arrogant child!" she rebuked her, smiling. "Remember who it was that sat at the feet of Gamaliel! But what particular kind of wisdom are you wanting from me to-day?"
"No particular kind. I'm only liking to have you near me. One is so sure of your faith in the ultimate best, that there is encouragement in the touch of your hand."
She took it between both her own, and rested her cheek against the other's arm, hiding her face from view.
Mrs Jim smiled, not ill pleased. She was one of those rare optimists who, having frankly confronted the evil and sorrow, the ironies and inconsistencies of life, can still affirm and believe that "God's in his Heaven; all's right with the world." But an unusual note in the girl's voice perplexed her.
"Are you in special need of encouragement just now, dear?" she asked. "Is that big baby of yours making you anxious on account of this expedition?"
"No--oh no! She is going to behave beautifully. The shock upset her at first, and she wanted Theo to stay behind. It was hard for him; but he held out; and I think I have helped her to see that he was right. He has taken her for a ride this afternoon and she is very happy."
"She has a great deal to thank you for, Honor," the elder woman said gravely. "I felt from the first that you were in rather a difficult position between those two, and you have filled it admirably. I have said very little to you about it, so far; but I have watched you and thought of you unceasingly; and I believe Major Meredith would be prouder of you than ever if he could realise that you have turned your time of waiting to such good account."
Honor's cheek still rested against Mrs Conolly's arm, and the warmth that fired it penetrated the thin muslin of her blouse. She wondered a little, but said nothing; and after a short pause Honor spoke in a low voice and with an attempt at lightness which was not a conspicuous success.
"You think too well of me, so does John. I have done little enough. Only, I care very much for--them both, and I want them to be happy--that's all."
"There are always two ways of stating a fact," the other answered, smiling. "And--do you know, Honor,
I care very much for you--if you were my own child, I could hardly care more--and, frankly, I want to see
you happy in the same way." She laid her free hand over the two that held her own. "It would be a sin for a woman like you not to marry. I take it for granted you have had chances enough, and I have sometimes wondered----"
The girl lifted her head and sat upright. She had come here to escape her trouble, and it confronted her at every turn.
"Please--please don't begin wondering about that," she said decisively, "or I shall have to get up and go away; and I don't want to do that."
"No, no! my child, of course not. We will talk of other things."
But the shrewd woman said within herself: "There
is some one after all," adding a heartfelt hope that it might be Major Wyndham. Thus her next remark was more relevant to the forbidden subject than Honor was likely to guess.
"I hear Major Wyndham's squadron remains behind. You are glad, I suppose? You seem to be good friends."
"Yes; it will be a great comfort to have him when one will be missing--all the rest. There are very few men in the world like Major Wyndham; don't you think so? He has the rare secret of being in it, yet not of it. I sometimes wonder whether anything could really upset that self-contained tranquillity of his, which makes him such a restful companion."
Here was high praise, and Mrs Jim echoed it heartily; yet in spite of it, perhaps because of it, she was far from content. "It is not Major Wyndham," she decided, regretfully. "But then,--who else is it likely to be?"
At this moment children's voices sounded in the garden and Honor sprang impulsively to her feet. "Oh, there are Jimmy and Violet!" she cried. "Let me go and be foolish with them for a little and give them their tea. We can play at wisdom again afterwards--you and I."
With that she hurried out into the garden; and in surrendering herself to the superbly unconscious egotism of childhood, found passing respite from the torment of her own thoughts. But it was some time before Mrs Conolly returned to her interrupted work.
Paul Wyndham dined again at the blue bungalow that night; and it soon became evident to Honor that something had succeeded in upsetting the schooled serenity which was the keynote of the man's character. Desmond kept the conversation going with unflagging spirit, obviously for his friend's benefit; but he never once mentioned the campaign; and Honor began to understand that Paul rebelled, with quite unusual vehemence, against an order which sent his friend on active service without him. Then it occurred to her that he must have been unlike himself the night before, and that she, in her blind self-absorption, had noticed nothing. Remorse pricked her heart and gave additional warmth to her manner,--a fact which he was quick to perceive, and to misinterpret.
The men sat a long while over their cigars, and thereafter went into the study at Paul's request.
Honor had been right in her guess. The fiat of separation, coming at a time of active service, had roused him as he was rarely roused; had proved to him, if proof were needed, that in spite of the strong love, which had opened new vistas of thought and emotion for him during the past year, his feeling for Desmond was, and always would be, the master-force of his life. That he should be condemned to play the woman's part and sit with idle hands while his friend risked life and limb in the wild mountain country across the Border, seemed for the moment more than he could accept in silence.
He was obliged to own grudgingly that the Colonel was justified in his decision,--that as Second in Command he was the right man to remain in charge of the station. But the acknowledgment did not make the necessity one whit less detestable in his eyes; and to-night the two men's positions were reversed. It was Paul who moved to and fro with long restless strides; while Theo, enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke, sat watching him in profound sympathy and understanding, making occasional attempts at consolation, with small result.
* * * * *
During the next ten days Honor Meredith discovered how much may be achieved and endured with the help of use and wont; discovered also that habit is the rock on which man's soul shall be wrecked or anchored in his evil day.
She forced herself to speak of Theo more often than she had done hitherto; for she now understood the reason of her instinctive reserve where he was concerned; and the mere effort of breaking through it was a help. She succeeded in talking to him also, if with less frankness, still with something of her old simplicity and ease; and in playing his favourite preludes and sonatas, even though they stirred unsounded depths of emotion, and made the burden laid upon her shoulders seem too heavy to be borne.
One habit alone seriously hindered her. Her spirit of candour--which was less a habit than an elemental essence--chafed against the barrier between her and those she loved. For she now found herself constrained to avoid the too discerning eyes of Paul and Mrs Conolly, and, above all, of Theo himself. Men and women whose spirit hibernates more or less permanently in its temple of flesh have small knowledge of the joy of such wordless intercourse; such flashes of direct speech between soul and soul; but Honor felt the lack of it keenly. She experienced, for the first time in her life, that loneliness of heart which is an integral part of all great sorrow.
But when things are at their worst we must needs eat and sleep, and find some degree of satisfaction in both. Honor was young, practical, healthy, and her days were too well filled to allow of time for brooding; nor had she the smallest leaning toward that unprofitable occupation. She sought and found refuge from her clamorous Ego,--never more clamorous than at the first awakening of love,--in concentrating thought and purpose upon Evelyn; in bracing her to meet this first real demand upon her courage in a manner befitting Theo Desmond's wife.
And she reaped her measure of reward. Evelyn bore herself bravely on the whole. Theo's manifest approbation acted as a subconscious pillar of strength. But on the last day of all, when the strain of standing morally on tiptoe was already producing its inevitable effect, an unlooked-for shock brought her back to earth with the rush of a wounded bird.
The troops were to march at dawn; and in the evening it transpired that Theo intended to dine at Mess, returning, in all probability, just in time to change and ride down to the Lines. The programme was so entirely a matter of course on the eve of an expedition, and his squadron had absorbed so much of his attention, that he had forgotten to speak of the matter earlier; and the discovery was the last touch needed to upset Evelyn's unstable equilibrium. Her collapse was the more complete by reason of the strain that had gone before.
At the first she entreated him to give up the dinner and to spend his last evening with her; and upon his gentle but definite answer that such a departure from precedent was hardly possible, she fell to sobbing with the passionate unrestraint of a child. In vain Desmond tried to reason with her, to assure her that these big nights on the eve of active service were a time-honoured custom; and that all married officers attended them as a matter of course.
"I would willingly stay at home to please you, Ladybird," he added, "but the fellows would probably come round and carry me off by main force. It would all be done in the way of a joke, of course; but can't you see that any lack of regimental spirit on my part is a reflection on you, which I won't have at any price?"
No, she could see nothing, poor distracted child, except that he was rewarding her cruelly ill for the genuine effort at control she had made for his sake; and having once lost hold upon herself, all the pent-up fears and rebellion, at loss of him, found vent in a semi-coherent outbreak of reproaches and tears, till Desmond finally lost his patience, and went off to change for Mess in a mood of mind ill-tuned to the boisterous night ahead of him.
"Big nights," an immemorial feature of army life, are a specially marked feature of the Frontier, where the constant recurrence of Border warfare, and the hardness of existence generally, produce more frequent outbursts of the schoolboy spirit that characterises the British soldier of all ranks; that carries him unafraid and undismayed through heart-breaking campaigns; keeps him cheerful and uncomplaining in the face of flagrant mismanagement, fell-climates, disaster, and defeat. Big nights, sixty years ago, left a goodly number of men, either under the table or in a condition only a few degrees less undignified. But, in spite of the outcry against modern degeneration, these things are not so to-day; and the big nights of the Frontier Force, on the eve of active service, are singularly free from this, the least admirable part of the programme.
The week before departure was necessarily a week of hard work, culminating in the task of getting all details into perfect marching order, and setting every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This done, the British predilection for "letting off steam" resulted in a night of uproarious hilarity, incomprehensible to those ignorant of the conditions which gave it birth, and unable to realise its tonic effect on men who are setting out to face danger, hardship, and possibly a violent death.
Wild games and contests were the order of the evening,--the wilder the more acceptable. Cock-fighting, mock-polo matches, or gymkhanas,--on such occasions nothing comes amiss in the way of riotous foolishness pure and simple. The senior officer forgets his seniority; the most dignified lets fall the cloak of dignity for a few exhilarating hours.
Colonel Buchanan himself entered with zest into the maddest innovations which Desmond or Olliver could devise; and those who knew Paul Wyndham, in his normal habit as he lived, would scarce have recognised him masquerading as Desmond's polo pony, in a inter-regimental match played with billiard balls, brother officers doing duty for mounts and cues for polo-sticks. It was all excellent fooling; and the bar of grey in the east came far too soon.
Close on five o'clock Desmond re-entered the bungalow; his scarlet kummerbund disordered; his white mess-jacket in a hundred creases; yet alert and ready in every fibre for the day's march that lay before him.
The grey twilight of dawn was already creeping in through the skylights and long glass doors, as he passed through the drawing-room into his study.
Here he came to a standstill with a low exclamation of surprise.
On his cane deck-lounge Evelyn lay fast asleep, her face so turned upon the cushion that its delicate profile showed clear as a cameo against a background of dull blue. Her white dinner dress gleamed ghostly in the dusk of morning. One bronze slipper had fallen off; and one bare arm hung limply over the chair's edge, the fingers curled softly upwards. A slender chain bangle, with a turquoise pendant, had almost slipped over her hand.
Desmond drew nearer with softened tread, and stood looking down upon her, a world of tenderness in his eyes;--tenderness touched with the reverence a finely tempered man is apt to feel in the presence of a child or woman asleep. For by some mysterious process sleep sanctifies a face; perhaps because it is half brother to death.
Evelyn's face was white as her dress, save for the coral tint of her lips. Their downward droop, the red line along her eyelids, and the moist handkerchief clutched in her right hand, were more heart-stirring than tears.
He knelt down beside her and lightly caressed her hair.
"Ladybird," he said softly, "time to wake up."
His touch brought her back to life with an indrawn breath like a sob; and at sight of him her arms went round his neck.
"Theo, darling," she whispered, drawing his head down close to hers. "I--was dreaming--that you were gone. I suppose you are going very soon now?"
"Yes; in about an hour."
She held him closer.
"I was bad and selfish to you last night, Theo. I didn't mean to be; but--I was. Honor made me understand."
"Bless her brave heart!" he said fervently. "She comes of the best stock I know. By the way, I am sure she never told you to spend the night here."
"No. She thought I had gone to bed. But I was too unhappy to trouble about that--and----"
"You thought I might turn up before morning,--wasn't that it?"
"Y--yes." She flushed softly on the confession.
"Poor dear little soul!"
He drew her to her feet, slipped on the fallen shoe, and put his arm round her. "Come along to the dressing-room and help me to get into my khaki."
She walked beside him in so strange a confusion of happiness and misery that it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began. In the semi-darkness she tripped and stumbled on the threshold, and he caught her close to him, holding her thus for a long moment. Then he began to dress.
At this point the long lean form of Amar Singh appeared in the doorway. But at sight of the Memsahib, arrayed for dinner, he departed as noiselessly as he had come; not without a lurking sense of injury, since it was clearly his privilege to do those last offices for his Sahib of twelve years' standing.
Evelyn, anxious to show that she could be useful on occasion, followed Theo to and fro like a shadow; handed him the wrong thing at the wrong moment with pathetic insistence; and hindered his progress by a host of irrelevant questions. But some women can hinder more engagingly than others can help; and in any case Theo Desmond was in no humour to lose patience with his wife that morning.
Once her attention was caught and held by Desmond's sword and revolver, laid ready on a small table. She regarded them with a kind of fearful fascination. They were no longer mere ornaments of his uniform, but actual death-dealers, going forth to do murderous work. The short blue muzzle of the revolver had a sinister look, and a point of light at the tip winked like a mocking eye.
"Theo," she said suddenly in an awe-struck undertone, "do you know what I was dreaming when you woke me? I dreamt that you were fighting with Afridis,--ever so many of them,--and you were all alone. I thought they were going to--kill you every minute. They were running after you----"
Here Desmond dispelled the tragic vision with a shout of laughter.
"They'll never get the chance to do
that, Ladybird, so long as I have the use of my bare hands, let alone my sword!"
"But, Theo, just think, if you were all alone, and you were bound to get killed if you stayed, and there was me at home praying to get you back safe; wouldn't you be allowed to run away--even then?"
Desmond smiled; but he did not answer at once. The ludicrous suggestion, with its unconscious touch of pathos, hurt him more than he cared to acknowledge.
"It isn't a case of being allowed," he said. "I should never be left quite alone like that; and anyway, they don't lay down a code of morals for us in the Queen's Regulations. It is understood that a British officer will play the man, even in desperate straits."
She knitted her brows wistfully. "Yes, of course. Only--it seems rather hard on--the wives and mothers."
"You never said a truer word, little woman. That's why they need to have such good grit in them,--don't you see?"
"Yes--I see. But mayn't you just get out of the way of a bullet if you happen to see it coming?"
Desmond shook his head.
"One generally happens to feel it before one gets a chance of seeing it," he said. "But now, let's have done with nonsense. Buckle on my sword and we'll go to breakfast. The whole house is astir."
She set the leathern belt round his waist, and tried to fasten it; but her fingers trembled in spite of herself, and a mist blinded her eyes. He took the heavy strap from her very gently, and fastened it himself.
"You won't change and ride out a little way with us as the others mean to?" he asked.
"N--no; I couldn't. I don't want to make you ashamed of me, Theo."
For answer he held out his arms; and there was a long silence in the dimly lighted room.
Then he led her to the door of their room, and himself went out to the breakfast-table with a brisk elasticity of tread. He would not have been the man he was, if even the pang of parting could altogether quench his ardour to be gone.
In the dining-room he found Honor ready equipped for the start. She looked paler than usual, and there were blue shadows under her eyes; but she answered his greeting cheerfully enough, and busied herself with pouring out his tea.
"Ladybird is changing into a morning gown," he explained. "She never went to bed last night poor child!"
"Oh, I wish I had known that! I did my best to comfort her."
"So she told me: and you succeeded. You generally do."
He glanced at her thoughtfully, a shade of anxiety in his eyes. "You're not looking as fit yourself as you did a fortnight ago," he said.
"Don't talk nonsense," she answered with a touch of impatience.
"Well, I hope it may be nonsense. But I feel responsible for you. Take good care of yourself, please, while I am away; and--take care of my Ladybird as well.... Hullo, there's Paul!"
Wyndham entered as he spoke, wearing the undress uniform of station life: and Honor had seldom been so glad to see him as at that moment.
The two men stood facing one another for quite a long time. Then they smiled, and sat down to breakfast. Both knew that in that long look they had said all that need ever be said between them and it sufficed.
Evelyn came in a few minutes later, pale and subdued, but not uncheerful. Her real sorrow, and no less real determination to control it, gave a rare touch of dignity to the grace and simplicity that were hers by nature;--a fact which her husband was quick to perceive and admire. Both men, by a natural instinct, were a trifle more attentive to her than usual, without the least hint of intrusion upon the privacy of her grief; and it is in just such acts of unobtrusive chivalry that Englishmen, of the best type, stand unrivalled throughout the world.
The meal over, Evelyn accompanied them into the verandah, and stood smiling and waving her hand to them as they rode away, with a composure born of a stunned sense of the unreality of it all. Theo was just going down to the Lines, and he would be back to tiffin as a matter of course. Nevertheless, half an hour later the rims of her eyes were again reddened with weeping: and donning a sun-hat, she hurried out to a point where she could watch the little force move across the space of open country between the cantonment and the bastioned fort that stands at the entrance to the hills.
By the time Evelyn reached her coign of vantage, the cavalcade was already nearing the prescribed mile where the final parting would take place, to the strains of "Auld Lang Syne"; a piece of gratuitous torment, honoured by custom, which many would have willingly foregone.
The slowly retreating mass, half enveloped in dust, showed a few shades darker than the desert itself. A patch of vermilion indicated the Pioneer band, now blaring forth, with placid unconcern, "The Girl I Left Behind Me!" Lesser specks denoted officers, riding out, like the rest of the station, to speed the parting troops.
The cavalry riding in the van were a mere moving dust-cloud, followed by artillery, infantry, ambulance doolies, borne by half-naked Kahars; while a jumble of men and animals, camp-followers and transport, formed, as it were, a disorderly tail to the more compact body. Camels, groaning under tent-poles and heavy baggage, shuffled and swayed on the outskirts, with leisurely contempt; grass-cutters bobbed cheerfully along on ponies of no birth or breeding, that appeared oddly misshapen under vast loads of grass: and at the last came miniature transport carts, closely followed by the rear-guard, a mixed body of all arms.
While Evelyn still watched, the halt was called, and the disturbing strains of parting reached her where she stood. Hill, plain, and nearer objects lost their crispness of outline; and she went back to the silent house awaiting her,--the lively strains of the return march already sounding in her ears.
As she stood still for a moment, fighting against her emotion, Owen Kresney rode past. She barely acknowledged his greeting; and he had the tact to pass on without speech. For the man saw plainly that the coveted opportunity for striking a blow at Desmond, behind his back, was very near at hand; and he could afford to bide his time. _