← catalogue

Banked Fires

by E. W. Savi · English · Gutenberg #31399 · 654,014 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Banked Fires
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Banked Fires

Author: E. W. Savi


        
Release date: February 25, 2010 [eBook #31399]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31399

Credits: E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BANKED FIRES ***


E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)



BANKED FIRES

by

E. W. SAVI

Author of "The Daughter-in-Law," "Sinners All," Etc.







     _"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
     rubies."_--Proverbs xxxi., 10.



G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1919

Copyright, 1919
by
E. W. Savi

The Knickerbocker Press, New York




                  To
          MY SISTER, A. B. B.
IN LOVING APPRECIATION OF HER INTEREST
              AND HELP




CONTENTS


       I.--The Lonely Encampment

      II.--Mainly Retrospective

     III.--The Civil Surgeon

      IV.--A Point of View

       V.--What Can't be Cured

      VI.--The Leading Lady

     VII.--An Anxious Experience

    VIII.--The Dinner-Party

      IX.--A Moment of Relaxation

       X.--The Mission

      XI.--A Sunday Observance

     XII.--Infatuation

    XIII.--Vanished

     XIV.--The Indiscretion

      XV.--The Aftermath

      XVI.--Cornered

     XVII.--Breaking Bounds

    XVIII.--Secret Joys

      XIX.--The Deluge

       XX.--The "Ideal"

      XXI.--The Real Thing

     XXII.--A Desperate Resort

    XXIII.--Temporisings

     XXIV.--Suspense

      XXV.--The Meeting

     XXVI.--The Fair

    XXVII.--A Difficult Task

   XXVIII.--The Atonement

   Epilogue: All's Well




BANKED FIRES




CHAPTER I

THE LONELY ENCAMPMENT


An autumn evening in Bengal was rapidly drawing to a close, with a brief
afterglow from a vanished sun to soften the rich hues of the tropical
foliage, and garb it fittingly for approaching night. The grass beside
the Government tents showed grey in the gathering dusk, while a blue
haze of smoke, creeping upward, gently veiled the sheltering trees. But
for the modulated chatter of servants, the stillness was eerie. The
flat, low-lying fields, having yielded their corn to the harvester, were
barren and without sign of life, for the cultivators had departed to
their homesteads, and the roving cattle were housed.

Far in the misty distance were the huts of the peasantry grouped
together, with their granaries, haystacks, and pens; their date-palms,
and the inevitable tank illustrating the typical Bengal
village--picturesque and insanitary; too far for noxious smells to annoy
the senses, or the intermittent beating of the nocturnal "tom-tom" to
affect the nerves of the Magistrate and Collector during the writing of
his judgments and reports.

The spot for the encampment had been well chosen by the blue-turbaned
_chaukidar_--the sturdy watchman of the village--who was experienced in
the ways of touring officials; for even such a little matter as a site
for pitching the tents of the _hakim_,[1] had its influence for good or
ill; and what might not be the effect of a good influence on the temper
of a lawgiver?

[Footnote 1: Magistrate.]

This one, especially, instilled the fear of God and of the British, into
his servants and underlings in spite of his sportsmanship and
generosity, for he had a great understanding of native character and,
like a wizard, could, in the twinkling of an eye, dissect the mind and
betray the soul of a false witness! None could look him in the face and
persist in falsehood. He was a just man, and courageous; and when roused
to wrath, both fierce and fluent. But the diplomatic domestic and
cautious coolie, alike, respect justice and fearlessness, determination,
and a high hand.

Servants, engaged in culinary duties before open fire-places, gossiped
in lowered tones of standing grievances: It was like the exactness of
the Great to require a five-course dinner, served with due attention to
refinement and etiquette in untoward circumstances, such as an
improvised cooking-range of clay and bricks, a hurried collection of
twigs, some charcoal, and every convenience conspicuous by its absence!
And what a village to rely upon!--no shops; only a weekly market with
nothing suitable to the wants of white men fastidious and difficult to
please.

Yet, the day that sahibs condescend to study the convenience of their
Indian domestics, the prestige of the British Raj will be at an end.

"Ho! _Khansaman-jee_!" cried an agitated voice in Hindustani. "With a
little clemency, look quickly in the rubbish heap for the pepper pot.
The _masalchi_,[2] out of the perversity of his youthfulness, has lost
that and every other ingredient for the flavouring of the soup; and now,
what can I do? Of a truth, this night will the Sahib give me much abuse
for that which is no fault of mine. I shall twist the idle one's ear the
moment he returns with firewood from the jungle, just to stimulate his
mind and teach him carefulness."

[Footnote 2: Scullion.]

The _khansaman_[3] uncoiled his legs and rose from the ground where he
had been peeling potatoes at his leisure with a table knife, and
proceeded to do as he was bid. He was of an obliging nature and could be
relied upon to perform odd jobs not strictly his duty, so long as they
did not establish a precedent.

[Footnote 3: Butler.]

After some diligent searching among loose charcoal, dried twigs, kitchen
rags, utensils, and vegetable parings, a rusty tin box was discovered
and handed to the cook. Old Abdul grunted approval of his own
intelligence, and after liberally sprinkling the soup with pepper from
between a dirty finger and thumb, he wiped both, casually, in the folds
of his loin-cloth.

Altogether, the task of preparing dinner in camp was no mean effort. The
business of the moment was to produce a clear soup with its artistic
garniture of sliced carrots and turnips; to be followed by tank fish
captured that afternoon from the property of a local Hindu landowner
and, in the serving, robbed of its earthly flavour by a miracle of
savoury dressing. Considering the lapses of the mate-boy's memory, this
was a marvel of achievement. Next, the _entrée_ of devilled goat (called
by courtesy, mutton) was also a difficulty; nevertheless with a lavish
addition of mango chutney, it was on its way to completion. The "chicken
roast" was a tolerable certainty in a deep vessel where it baked in its
own juices, stuffed with onions, cloves, and rice. But the
pudding--alas! black despair, invisible owing to natural pigment, was in
possession of Abdul's soul. What to do, he grumbled, but to serve, in
fear and trembling, that abomination of sahibs, a "custul-bile" (boiled
custard), since every possible ingredient for a respectable pudding had
been left behind at the last Rest Bungalow! What the master would say,
might well be imagined, for these were not the easy-going days of his
bachelorhood, when such makeshifts, varied with "custul-bake," could be
imposed upon him with the regularity of the calendar; for, after a
successful day's _shikar_, with a tiger spread at full length on the
grass before the tent for the benefit of an admiring semicircle of
enthusiastic villagers, the quality of a meal used to be a secondary
consideration.

Well--what use to repine? Even a cook must sometimes be excused, since
he was not God to create something out of nothing. Peradventure, the
timely indisposition of the babe within the tent would offer
distraction. In the interludes of stirring the pots and declaiming
against fate and the misdemeanours of the _masalchi_, the cook soothed
his ruffled spirits with a pull at his beloved _hukha_.

Yes, the Sahib was married, worse luck! and lived, above all, to please
his Memsahib who, to him, was the sun, moon, and stars; the light of the
world. And she?--of a sort wholly unsuited to the conditions of his
life; a flower plucked to wither in a furnace-blast. The rough soil of
the country was no place for a delicate plant; and such was also
apparent in the case of her infant. Since its arrival from the hills
where it was born, it daily faded as though a blight had descended upon
its vitality; and now it was stricken with a fever.

Devil take sahibs for their folly! This one had been content enough as a
bachelor, hunting and shooting in his spare time, and consorting with
his kind where games were played to pass the time away; what-for did he
allow himself to be shackled thus during his visit to _Belait_? It
passed understanding; for there were many _Miss Babas_ in the country,
already acclimatised, from among whom he might have selected a suitable
wife; one who could at least have made herself intelligible to his
servants in their own language, instead of this one who created endless
confusion by non-comprehension. But no! he had been unable to stand the
allurements of her person. The rounded outlines of her slender form and
the bloom on her flawless cheek had enslaved him, depriving him of the
power to resist. Truly she was good to look upon, as every masculine eye
betrayed by its open homage.

In all the annals of the District, never had there been a more
picturesque creature than this girl-wife, with her hair like ripe corn
and eyes like full-blown flowers of heavenly blue. Even the servants in
gazing on their wonder forgot to heed the orders she delivered through
the ayah, whose linguistic powers commanded the respect of the entire
establishment.

The subject of the little lady from _Belait_ was a favourite theme of
conversation when domestics congregated in the region of the kitchen to
gossip and smoke, and criticism was condescending and tolerant because
of her good looks, which made their inevitable appeal. But opinion was
agreed that no longer was Meredith Sahib the same man. Henceforth, if
they would keep their situations, they must satisfy his lady. Her little
hand would point the way he must in future tread.

And he, the respected Magistrate and Collector, representative of the
Government in the District--a sahib whose word had authority over
thousands on the land, and before whom all delinquents trembled!

Such was the influence of beauty!

According to the words of a local poet who sang his verses in the
Muktiarbad bazaar to an accompaniment of tom-tomming:

    _A beautiful wife is as wine in the head to her husband; as wax is
         in the palm of her hand.
    His wisdom cometh to naught in his dwelling; his will is bartered
         for the things in her gift.
    Beguiled is he by the words of her mouth, and he taketh only the way
         that will please her.
    Bereft is he of his power to govern, yet happy is he in the bonds of
         enslavement._

And these did he compose out of the rumours current in the market-place
respecting Meredith Sahib and the Memsahib he had taken to wife. _Yah,
Khodah!_ the white race were amazingly simple!

The sound of an infant's distressed wail broke the calm of the
descending gloom. Voices within the tent conferred together in agitated
whispers. There was a call for hot water, and in a moment the Madrassi
ayah rushed forth for the steaming kettle which was boiling for scullery
needs, and carried it off without a question. The waterman, clad only in
a loin-cloth, hurried round to the bath tent, and a diminutive, tin
bath-tub was extracted. Apparently the child was to be immersed.

"What has happened?" called the Sahib's body servant, the _bearer_, who
was the major-domo of the camp. But the waterman, fully appreciative of
his temporary importance, refused to reply as he disappeared from view.

"Ice--ice!" the lady cried dashing through the bamboo chick and almost
tearing it from its fastenings. "Give me ice quickly." She looked
haggard and distracted. Dark circles ringed her eyes; her sleeves rolled
above the elbows revealed rounded arms from which water dripped; her
skirt was splashed; her blouse and hair were in disarray.

"There is none, _huzur_," said the _bearer_ in Hindustani. "Hourly is it
expected from Muktiarbad, but as yet it is not in sight."

"What is he saying?" she cried vaguely in her distress, refusing to
believe that there was none, which the corroborating action of a hand
had implied.

"No ice got it, Memsahib," volunteered the _khansaman_ in his best
English, learned from a teacher in the Station bazaar. "All
finish--melting fast--making saw-dust one porridge."

"No ice?--my God! My child will die if I cannot have ice." She
disappeared within the tent, wringing her hands, leaving the servants to
hold council together on what was the best course to pursue.

"Without doubt the little one is in a fit," ventured the cook. "Such is
sometimes the case when the teeth press their way through the gums."

"What folly," sneered the _khansaman_, "when the infant is barely three
months old!"

"Without doubt it is a fit," the cook repeated, "else why the hot bath?
Such is the treatment the doctor-_babu_ ordered for the son of Amir
Khan, my relative in Benares when, from fever, his eyes fixed and his
limbs grew rigid."

"Thou speakest true words," said the waterman approaching the group in
visible excitement. "To see the limbs twisting and the eyes strained
upward turns my stomach. Assuredly it will die--and the master
away!--_ai ma!_--what a calamity!"

"It will die, and we shall all be blamed because there was no ice,"
sighed the _bearer_ feeling the weight of his responsibility.

"God send that he be even now returning," prayed the _khansaman_
devoutly. "The sun has long set, and any moment he may be here, for who
can shoot a leopard in the dark?"

"Tell Hosain to drive the _hawa-ghari_[4] quickly to the Station for the
doctor and the ice. If he meet not the ice cart on the road, let him
borrow all they will lend him at the houses of the sahibs," said the
cook. "_Jhut!_--lose no time. In these illnesses the life of a child is
as the flicker of a candle. A breath, and it is out; and once dead, who
can restore it to life again?"

[Footnote 4: Motor-car.]

Servants ran to do his bidding while he returned to his pots and pans,
anxious lest the roast should burn at the bottom of the pan, and the
soup boil over.

"For what dost thou concern thyself?" jeered an old watchman who stood a
spectator of the scene. "All that thou cookest will be given to the
sweeper's family. Who will eat of thy cooking tonight when the child is
like to die?"

"Not the sweeper and his family, _bhai_,[5] but we of the kitchen shall
have a feast, have no fears." "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good,"
was the essence of the cook's philosophy, and since there was no
swine-flesh in the menu, there was no reason why Mohammedans should not
enjoy the repast he was cooking for the Sahib's table. It was a
dispensation of Providence that had not made him at birth a Hindu like
the watchman, who took pride in the exclusiveness of his caste, yet
feasted on the sly, on things forbidden.

[Footnote 5: Brother.]

Inside the tent the lady and the ayah together ministered to the small
sufferer lying in the warm bath. The sympathetic servant supported the
light body which had relaxed its rigidity, while the mother bathed the
brows and head with cold water.

"He is better, ayah, don't you think?" asked Mrs. Meredith, dependent on
the woman's superior knowledge.

"Plenty better, Ma'am. Heaven is merciful."

"Or do you think he is dying? Don't lie to me."

"He not dying, oh, no! See that black round his mouth?--now fast going.
This is what they call _bahose_."

"Thank God if it's only that. Children recover from fainting fits, don't
they? Oh, ayah, I could not bear to lose my baby!" she cried in choked
accents.

"Say not like that. Got is goot and the baba will live. Now take out of
the water, dry, and keep head cool," said the woman whose experience in
the management of infants had gained her her present post at some
considerable advantage to herself.

They placed the limp form, when dried, on the cool sheets in its crib
and hung upon its every breath.

"Barnes-_mem_ saying, when bad with fever, lap plenty hot place, bed
goot," the ayah remarked; "Barnes-_mem_," a former mistress, being a
standard reference in nursery difficulties.

"Had she many children?"

"Children? My lort! Every year a child. She was plenty blest. One child
for every finger, and a grand-child older than her last. Master, he
shake his head and say, 'Damn-damn,' but Barnes-_mem_, she say, 'Let
come; the Lort will provide.'"

"Were they all brought up in India?"

"In Calcutta they were born and grew up; no Darjeeling _pahar_;[6] no
Munsuri _pahar_! All living; all plenty strong."

[Footnote 6: Mountains.]

"Yet most children cannot thrive out here--English, I mean."

"English Memsahib making much fuss, like there is no Got Almighty.
Everywhere there is sickness, also in _pahar_."

Mrs. Meredith shivered at the cold consolation. After a short interval
spent in anxious suspense, a clatter of hoofs announced the return of
the Sahib. Raymond Meredith galloped into the camp and flinging his
reins to a _saice_, leaped to the ground. A messenger had met him on the
road with the disturbing news of his infant's bad turn. In another
moment he was beside his wife, eagerly sympathetic and anxious to
comfort her.

At any other time she would have received him affectionately upon his
return from a long day's outing, and he marked the change, excusing it
on the plea of anxiety and distraction.

"This is very sudden, darling," he said in lowered tones, placing his
arms tenderly about her. "How did it happen?"

His wife explained emotionally. "Baby was feverish when you left. You
remember, perhaps, that I was worried and did not like being left
alone?" she concluded resentfully, her eyes refusing to meet his.

"He seemed a bit out of sorts, but nothing to alarm one," her husband
allowed in self-defence. "You know, sweetheart, you are often needlessly
anxious." He would have kissed her to soften the reproach, but she
turned her face aside. "Anyhow, I had to go, you know that? The leopard
had done enough damage in the village and was a danger to human life. An
infant had been carried off from the doorway of its dwelling the moment
its mother's back was turned. I simply had to hunt and shoot the beast,
or let the people think I funked it. I managed to bag it in the end, but
the fellow gave us a devil of a time," he continued, warming to his
subject. "Had it not been for the pluck of the _chaukidar_, I might
never have returned at all--" He waited for some evidence of concern.
"He's a fine sportsman," he went on, though disappointed at her lack of
interest. "With only a stout stick in his hand, he--" his voice trailed
away as he became convinced that he was talking to an inattentive mind.
"Don't worry, I'll send post-haste for Dalton. He'll be here before
morning."

"Anything might happen before morning," she cried brokenly.

"You mustn't be so pessimistic."

"The car was sent for the doctor when Baby was in convulsions," she said
coldly. "It was terrible not having you here to advise. I have been
desperate, and you--" a sob--"you were enjoying yourself in the
jungles." She had not an atom of sympathy for the sport.

"Surely you are not blaming me?" he cried deprecatingly, afraid that he
had injured himself for ever in her sight.

"It is not a question of blame; you have failed me, that is all."

"That's a cruel thing to say, dearest!" he cried kissing her
unresponsive lips at last, in the hopes of melting her hardness. "It is
only that you are in a mood to be unjust, that you say so. You know I am
happiest with you."

"This is a cruel country which I shall hate to the end of my days," she
returned miserably. "It is trying at every turn to rob me of my little
baby."

Meredith winced almost as though he had been struck. It was not the
first time that she had expressed disgust for her life in India, which
gave them their living, and every time her words gained in feeling.
Early in the summer he had sent her to the hills because of an episode
with a snake that had unnerved her and imperilled her condition as an
expectant mother. He had not forgotten that her first arrival at the
Station had synchronised with an outbreak of cholera, so virulent, that
half the community of Europeans among whom she was to live were
demoralised. It was a crying shame that Life should be so perverse. He
yearned for her to settle down and take kindly to Station ways and
doings, but fate eternally intervened. Muktiarbad was a merry little
station, full of friendly souls eager to accept the youthful bride as a
social leader for her husband's sake, he being the most popular of men.

Meredith was aware of his own popularity and enjoyed it as a
healthy-minded individual usually does when success has crowned his
efforts to govern a large District with sympathy and tact. But already
the young wife and mother was pining for "home," and was declaring that
the India he loved was a "cruel country," which she would hate to the
end of her days. How should he be able to pin her down to his side in a
land she detested and feared? She was too young and uninformed to
appreciate his position in the Government and her possibilities as a
_Bara Memsahib_; and too delicately nurtured to endure the rough and
tumble of life far from towns and cities, where money could not buy
immunity from inconvenience and climatic ills.

He had expected, as many another husband of a very young wife, to mould
her ideas to fit his own; instead, his peace of mind was being steadily
whittled away.

"There is not even any ice to be had in this God-forsaken spot!" his
wife's voice was saying helplessly.

"Damnation!" he swore under his breath, enraged that the servants should
have supplied him at the cost of the child; for he recalled the very
acceptable iced beer he had drunk in the jungles after a dangerous
exploit that had exhausted his energies and reduced him to a perspiring
rag of humanity, even though it was autumn.

The urgent need to find a scapegoat to suffer for this miserable muddle
sent him outside with a stride and malignant intentions at heart. Never
again while he toured with his family would he drink iced stimulants,
however damnably hot it was in the sun.

"What can I say?" whined the _bearer_ in indignant sympathy, cleverly
averting the storm he saw ready to descend on the head of the guilty.
"Such unusual heat for this time of the year, and that swine, the
carter, who is now many miles distant, left the ice-box on the sunny
side of the tent! Without sense is he, and possessed of a mind equal
only to that of a sheep. So much shade to be had, yet of a perversity
must he commit this brainless act! What can I do? Had this pair of hands
not been incessantly occupied in performing urgent tasks for the comfort
of the Memsahib, I might have cast eyes on the packing-case earlier, and
myself have removed it to safety. But alas! how much can one poor
servant do among so many who are idle and indifferent? So there it lay
out of sight and the water running freely through the joins till there
was one tank, and my bedding beside it, floating! Tonight I am without
bedding, but what of that? With the child ill, will any one care to
sleep?" He cast a triumphant eye around on a semicircle of admiring
fellow-servants who were envying him his resourcefulness and powers of
invention.

"Who sent ice with me into the jungles?" Meredith asked fiercely.

"Who, indeed, Image-of-God? Such an act of folly while the tender babe
lay sick is not to be forgiven. Peradventure, it was the mate-boy of the
cook who is of an imbecility past understanding, owing to his extreme
youth. Not even the intellect of a cow has he. _Urre bap!_ Did he not
leave at the Rest Bungalow----"

"Be silent, you talk too much," said Meredith. "Go and chastise him for
his interference. If I strike him I shall break every bone in his body.
Never again let ice be sent anywhere with me if it is likely to run
short at the camp, remember that," he said, impressing the fact on the
_bearer_, as he knew full well that, in the native mind, very little
importance is attached to a woman's needs in comparison with her
lord's,--the superiority of the masculine sex being unchallenged. When
ice travelled by rail some hundreds of miles three times a week to
Muktiarbad, it invariably fell short when the servants were careless or
assisted to make it vanish. Every silent witness of the colloquy knew
that the Sahib's _bearer_ considered an iced whisky-and-soda his
perquisite at the close of a strenuous day, and would continue to have
it as long as ice came from Calcutta for the alleviation of sufferers
from the climate.

"Buck up, darling," said Meredith comfortingly, "you'll have the doctor
here in no time. Dalton is a clever fellow and prompt. They say he will
make a name for himself some day, he's such an able physician and
surgeon. What he doesn't understand concerning the ills that flesh is
heir to is not worth knowing, so we are jolly lucky to have him in such
a potty little station as ours. What got him sent here is a mystery;
usually we get fossils of the Uncovenanted service at Muktiarbad,
whereas Dalton is--" "Sorry," interrupting himself as his wife put her
hands to her head. "You've a headache, sweetheart, and it's not to be
wondered at."

"Is there nothing you can suggest for Baby in the meantime?" she
questioned.

"I shouldn't like to experiment, knowing nothing of kids--infants, I
mean," he replied with irritating cheerfulness. "Had it been a horse or
a dog"--he discreetly ceased and made tender love to her instead, for
his darling girl was sobbing piteously. "Don't worry," he advised with
masculine lack of understanding of maternal feelings, "babies are
marvellous creatures; like sponges, my dear. Squeeze them dry and they
swell out again. See how the youngsters swarm in the bazaars and
villages. Nothing seems to kill them," he asserted ignorantly. "They get
over almost any illness without a hundredth part of the care you lavish
on our little scallywag. Keep his head cool and you'll see, he'll be as
right as rain in the morning."

"Cool without ice!" she said witheringly.

"Cold water on the head with a dash of vinegar in it will do to carry
along with till the ice comes."

Somehow he was less concerned with the child's case than his wife's. Her
distress, the added reason for her abhorrence of India, cut him to the
heart and made him a coward of consequences. It was the child, that
insignificant atom of indefinite humanity, that had intruded itself
between them and was daily usurping his place in his wife's thoughts. At
first he had been fool enough to imagine that it was going to be the
link that would bind them closer together, instead of which it was the
wedge that was surely driving them asunder. For its sake she was ready
to put the seas and continents between them, and treat him as if he were
of secondary importance in her life--the being who had to provide the
wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own
personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence and lack of
spirituality.

"I don't think you half realise what a wonderful thing has happened,"
she had once said in the midst of her baby-worship. "Here is a miracle
straight from God. A man-child who, if properly cared for, will become a
useful citizen of the Empire; and he is my VERY OWN--yours, too," she
condescended to add with her exquisite smile.

"But where do I come in? I, who am already a useful citizen of the
Empire?" he had delicately insinuated. "With due regard to nature and
the multiplication table----"

She had considered him coarse and had refused to smile. The matter of a
family was entirely in God's hands and not to be treated with levity. He
could have added a rider to that, but refrained; she was only a little
girl of nineteen lacking the logical sense in the usual, adorable,
feminine way. He was not hankering considerably after a family in the
plural sense when in imagination he could see an intensification of the
present situation which was forcing him into the background of domestic
life. The baby, waking and sleeping, and all its multifarious concerns
occupied its mother's time to the exclusion of all else, and it was no
wonder that the father was feeling injured and a trifle lonely.

Yet, in her childish way, she was fond of him, while unconsciously
learning from him that, after all, men were truly long-suffering and
unselfish creatures, patient, and forgiving.

So he possessed his soul in patience, never tired of recalling the
supreme episode of their married life, when, after the birth of their
son, she had embraced him with a new affection, spontaneous and sincere.
She had been so utterly ill that for a day and a night her life had hung
in the balance, while he, like a maniac, had paced the footpath in mist
and rain, praying as he had never prayed before for her restoration. It
was in Darjeeling where he had gone hurriedly on receipt of a telegram,
and never should he forget the anxieties of that journey. He had been
ready to register any vow under the sun that he might ensure her
recovery; and when he had crept with broken nerve and sobbing breath to
her bedside, she had clung to his neck with blessed demonstrativeness
kissing him of her own accord on the lips. Generally, he had kissed her.

"You love me still, my precious?" he had asked fearfully. Mark the
"still," for by her agony he was ready to believe he had forfeited the
right to her love.

"Aren't you my baby's Daddy?" she had replied happily with shining eyes
and quivering mouth. "Of course I shall love you better now than ever."

She loved him only through the child! However, Meredith did not quarrel
with the process, so long as the fact was full of promise. It had always
been a calm and unemotional affection, not in the least of the quality
he craved, but his love and patience were equal to the demand made upon
them, his mind having realised the unawakened condition of hers. "All
things come to those who know how to wait," and he was learning
patience, for his life was wrapped up in the person of his girl-wife.
She was so infinitely lovable even when least comprehending his man's
nature and holding herself aloof. Again, her charm was indescribable
when, with adorable grace, she offered compensation, sorry for her
uncomprehending selfishness; and he eternally rejoiced that, by the law
of marriage, she was irrevocably his till death should them part, a
bondage which he endeavoured to make her Eden, as it was his.




CHAPTER II

MAINLY RETROSPECTIVE


Dinner that evening was neglected as neither could eat.

Tired and hungry though Meredith had been, his appetite for food
vanished under the lash of his wife's resentment. She once said: "If my
baby is taken from me, I shall cut this country forever. I shall hate it
with an undying hatred. Nothing will induce me to live in it again and
risk a repetition of tonight. It is not fit for Europeans--and yet, the
tragedy of it is, we can only know it by experience!"

"That is to say, if you had foreseen this, you would never have married
me?" he put in sulkily.

Silence gave consent.

"Why shouldn't you give up, and find something to do at home?" she asked
unreasonably.

"You don't know what you are talking about," he returned shortly. Give
up the "Indian Civil" and his splendid prospects, liberal future
pension, and the life of sport men loved? For what? A desk in a city
office; most likely a mercantile job on a third of the pay, and a life
to which he was as much suited as a square peg to a round hole. All
this, that the babe might be spared the illnesses that mortal flesh, in
infancy, is prone to, particularly in the East. It was utter nonsense!
For the first five years there would be need for special care and
intervals spent in a hill climate. In due time would come the change to
England and English environment necessary for the proper physical and
mental training of his child. This was the course usually followed by
English families in India of any social standing, and one which involved
submission on the part of the husband to short periods of separation
from the wife in the interests of the absent children. Thousands of
married couples faced these conditions; why not they?

He felt rebellious.

What was the matter with his luck that it threatened not to work? He had
no fortune on which to retire, only a modest return from savings
judiciously invested, while his wife would have nothing more than a
trifle till the death of her parents; and they were still young. To give
up the Service would, under the circumstances, be madness and folly.

Moreover, he loved the East. The climate had no grudge against his
English constitution, and had been kind to him. He enjoyed the freedom
of the life, India's great spaces; and the lurking risks made existence
a great and continued adventure. In England it would be monotonous and
flat. Though he loved the Motherland and was proud of her traditions, he
was of the stuff that made empires, and his tact and understanding of
the natives under his rule, made him an officer of exceptional ability
and service to the Executive Government. Then there was big game
shooting which he enjoyed, and all the happy freedom from narrow
conventions. Give up, indeed!

Time enough to think of retiring when past middle age with shaken nerves
and a growing appreciation of golf. Not while he could ride a
buck-jumper, handle a hog spear or a polo stick, and shoot straight. The
thrill of tracking a wild beast to its lair was something to live for,
and the hazards of his life made up its charm.

The greatest of all hazards, had he realised it, had been his marriage
with Joyce Wynthrop of Eagleton, Surrey.

She had put up her hair to attend the hunt ball the year he was home on
furlough and staying with his widowed sister, Lady Chayne, a neighbour
of the Wynthrops, and it was love at first sight, with him. He had been
forced to attend the ball against his will, only to meet his fate, it
would seem.

Thereafter, he had been obsessed with one ambition, and that was to win
Joyce for his wife, in spite of the fact that he was fifteen years her
senior and held an appointment in the East.

Touched by his devotion and influenced by the opinion of others, she had
yielded, feeling that Destiny was calling to her to fulfill her
obligations to Life. Marriage with a good man of irreproachable
antecedents, and children to rear in godliness and wisdom, was the
religion of her upbringing. It had been impressed upon her as the
natural vocation of woman so that the race might continue. She had
played with dolls as the proper playthings of her childhood, and was
prepared to exchange them for the children God should send her in some
mysterious way to which marriage was the true gateway. Raymond Meredith,
good-looking, kind, eligible, and full of love for herself was obviously
the "Mr. Right" of schoolgirl tradition; the man to whom it would be
correct to give herself in the bonds of holy matrimony, even as her
mother had long ago given herself to her father--an example of
unemotional attachment and tranquil orthodoxy.

At first it had been wofully embarrassing to be made love to; and she
wondered if her mother had been kissed so often and called all those
silly love-names by her father before they were married?

She also resisted the strange effect on herself of those ardent kisses,
and was afraid to encourage feelings she had never before experienced,
believing them immodest to indulge, and something she had to subdue with
a determined effort. She would die sooner than confess to them. Passion
might be all right for men with whom every initiative of life lay, but
unbecoming for women to acknowledge, even to themselves. In fact, Joyce
Wynthrop was a product of Early Victorian views on the subject of a
girl's training, and an anachronism in modern times. She had been reared
in rigid ignorance of life, her reading having been heavily restricted,
her associates selected, so that when the time came to hand her over to
a husband, he should find her beautifully unconscious and unique.

To Meredith, her shy submission to his caresses, and her passionless
response were the surest guarantee of her virginal past, and he was in
no hurry to awaken the sleeping beauty to a deeper knowledge of herself.

Joyce eventually decided for her peace of mind, that love-making
belonged mainly to the period of Engagement, when everything was so new.
Once having attained the object of his desire--that is, the possession
of a wife--her lover would settle down to normal life, and no longer
regard her eyelashes with wondering admiration, or exact kisses because
her mouth was shaped like Cupid's bow. Men were so disturbing, if they
were all like Ray Meredith!--delightfully disturbing,--only they must
not know it, or peace and tranquillity would be impossible! After
marriage there would be other things to think about, such as having a
home, and, if the Lord willed it, a baby all their own, presented to
them in some extraordinary and mysterious fashion.

She had always adored babies and could rarely pass one in a perambulator
without wanting to kiss it and know all its little history. To have a
baby of her very own was a prospect so full of allurement, that she
offered no coy objections when Meredith wanted the marriage fixed at the
earliest possible date. Indeed, her calm was the despair of her girl
friends who envied her openly. Wasn't she "terribly" in love with him?
Wasn't she just "thrilled to death" with excitement at the prospect of
having a husband and going all the way out to India?

Joyce did not believe there was such a thing as being "terribly in
love," which was a phrase invented by cheap novelists, whose literature
she had never been allowed to read. She admitted she was growing very
fond of her Mr. Meredith, and preferred him to any other man. Not that
her experience of men was great--nevertheless, he was a "perfect dear."

Her sister Kitty of the schoolroom, a young woman of rather decided
opinions, reproached her severely for lack of enthusiasm over her very
presentable lover. In her eyes, Ray Meredith was the ideal of a Cinema
hero, with his clean-shaven, ascetic face, his muscular build, and
adorable smile. "You should be flattered, my dear, that he condescended
to choose you out of the millions of girls in the world," she remarked
sagely. "You may be pretty, but hosts of girls are that. One has to be
clever, and ... are _you_?... Why, you spelt vaccination with one 'c,'
and vicinity with two only yesterday, and but for me, reading over your
shoulder, you would have been disgraced for ever. I am not sure that he
would not have broken it off! Then you know nothing whatever of
politics--or football. Men are crazy about both, so you really are
rather stupid, darling, or cold-hearted. Surely you must feel all
squiggly down your back whenever Ray hugs and kisses you?"

"What do you know about it?"

"I'd be thrilled to my boots. Why, I feel like that every time they kiss
in the film--really I feel an intruder, and as if I shouldn't look."

"Silly penny stories untrue to life!" Joyce said as an echo of her
father's scorn, but blushing, nevertheless.

"Well, if you don't appreciate your lover, tell him to wait for me. I'll
put up my hair year after next and take him like a shot."

"Of course I appreciate him, or I should not be going to marry him,"
said Joyce with the dignity of eighteen. "But it's folly to make so much
fuss about marriage, seeing that it's the most ordinary thing in life,
like being born, or dying."

"The most incomprehensible thing in life, I should imagine," retorted
Kitty, wide-eyed with curiosity. "Especially when you come to think of
going away for good--or bad, maybe!--with a strange man you know next to
nothing of; and all at a blow, having to share the same apartments with
him. Merciful Providence! I am sure the Queen never did!"

"It's supposed to be the correct thing," said Joyce rather scared.
"Mother says, 'husbands and wives are one,' and 'to the pure, all things
are pure'--whatever that has to do with it--so it would be illogical in
the face of that to object to such a trifle as sharing a room. 'One has
to tune one's mind to accept whatever comes, and to follow in the
footsteps of one's parents,'" she quoted.

"How I wish you were not going right away with him, immediately," sighed
Kitty enviously. "You might so easily have told me all about it. Nobody
tells one anything worth knowing, just as though there was anything to
be ashamed about!"

Joyce made no response for the good reason that her mind was wrestling
with disquietude. However, in spite of so much that was mysterious, even
alarming, she decided, as a prospective bride, to assume the dignity and
reserve she had noticed in others and smile patronisingly on inquisitive
sixteen.

Shortly afterwards she was married, and she accompanied her "strange
man" on their journey to the Unknown, much as a confiding child trusts
itself to the guardianship of a loving nurse; prepared to accept as a
duty whatever path he might require her to tread.

In matters pertaining to sex, Meredith found her little more than a
child; the result of her narrow upbringing by which she had been reared
in ignorance of the primal facts of life and all that was common
knowledge to the flapper of the day. But to his fastidious nature her
unsophisticated innocence was the most captivating of any of the
qualities he had met with in girls, and it became his most earnest
desire to preserve it undefiled. The sweet simplicity of her mind he
regarded as even more precious than her beauty. Having spent a decade in
acquiring a disgust for a certain type of woman, he was inclined to
over-estimate his surprising good fortune, and was content in the hope
that time was on his side. Like a flower unfolding to the sun, the
treasures of her womanhood would be all his one day, drawn forth by the
warmth of his steady devotion.

The obstacles in his way, however, seemed to increase as circumstances
combined to fret and tantalise his hopes.

       *       *       *       *       *

The night wore on--the Eastern night of cloudless moonlight with the
scents of the earth rising from harvested fields to mingle with the
pungency of smouldering fires. Somewhere an owl persistently hooted.

Joyce recalled the superstition that the owl was a bird of ill omen and
should not be allowed to perch in the neighbourhood of a sick room.
Immediately she was seized with foreboding and her husband was
dispatched to scare away the prophet of evil. On his return she was
trembling and hysterical.

"You must let me give you something, darling," he pleaded. "You'll
collapse for want of food, and how then can you look after Baby?" It was
inspiration which suggested the child's need of her, for she patiently
submitted and drank a glass of milk. She changed her gown for a silken
kimono, and sought rest among the pillows of her bed which adjoined the
crib. Then, in subdued tones, she reproached her husband for never
having studied the simple diseases of childhood,--so necessary in their
case, when for months together they were expected to live in camp, far
from the Station, and the reach of medical aid.

"It is criminal," she cried. "If it had been a dog you would have known
what to do. But your own child!" words failed her.

"The next time we come out we shall bring 'Good-eve.' I believe it gives
everything you want to know and a lot besides."

"There'll never be a 'next time,'" she moaned. "Please God, when my pet
is better he shall never again be taken so far from the doctor. This is
the end of all camping for him."

"So I am to be deserted?"

"You are a man and able to look after yourself. Baby needs me far more
than you do."

Meredith refrained from any argument, feeling the futility of words in
her distraught condition. In the darkened tent he brooded over his
difficulties while his eyes strayed with jealous yearning to the slim
form in the gaudy kimono. Instead of isolation in a canvas chair, he
might so easily have shared her pillows while comforting her lovingly in
his arms! but for the time being he was out of favour and unloved!

Shortly before sunrise, Captain Dalton motored in.




CHAPTER III

THE CIVIL SURGEON


From the moment of the doctor's arrival the tension of watching was
eased; the very sight of his wide shoulders in the doorway of the tent
brought instantaneous relief to Joyce whose faith, as far as her child
was concerned, was material rather than spiritual. Though she had felt
an instinctive shrinking from the man's society on the few occasions on
which they had met, her whole heart went out to welcome him with earnest
supplication. He possessed the knowledge, under God, to save her child;
therefore, surely, was he Superman--a being apart, to be reverenced
above his fellows.

Captain Dalton of the Indian Medical Service, and Civil Surgeon of
Muktiarbad, was an unfriendly being of peculiar personality, whom no one
could comprehend. Ordinarily, he was repellent to intimacies; a reserved
autocrat, and content to be unpopular. Though elected a member of the
Club, he had little use for its privileges. Having fulfilled his duty to
his neighbours by calling on them shortly after his arrival in the
Station that summer, he had retired into professional and private life,
and was as difficult to cultivate as the Pope of Rome. He rarely
accepted invitations, and issued none. Men who called upon him received
a rigid hospitality, nothing more, so that they soon ceased to visit him
at all, at which he was relieved.

That he was a gifted musician became generally known when classical
strains from a grand piano were wafted through the Duranta hedge which
encompassed his grounds, riveting passers-by to the roadway at some
sacrifice to personal dignity, that they might listen and admire.
Sometimes he was heard to sing to his own accompaniment in a voice of
extraordinary richness and sympathy. The evening breeze would carry the
tones of his fine baritone voice farther than the Duranta hedge; and
though bungalows were widely separated by private grounds of many acres,
with paddocks and lanes between, his neighbours would hang out of their
windows to catch every note, and afterwards at the common meeting ground
of the Club, discourse on the advantage of their proximity to the
singer.

All persuasions to repeat his performances in public met with obstinate
discouragement, till, reluctantly, the Station left him alone. Injured
feelings were nourished, and opinions concerning his conduct and manners
grew harsh and unrelenting the instant his back was turned. To his face
there was no failure of cordiality, for it is not politic in a small
station to quarrel with one's doctor.

It was on the polo-ground, on the occasion of a slight accident which
might have been more serious, that Joyce first met Captain Dalton,--a
bare fortnight ago. His appointment had taken place while she had been
at the hills, and at the introduction she had resented the impudent
scrutiny of his eyes, not realising the fact that she had been an
arresting picture with the hue of mountain roses in her cheeks, and eyes
like English forget-me-nots; in beauty and colouring a rarity in that
rural district of Bengal.

Perhaps the doctor wondered at the unusual combination of prettiness and
simplicity, for, in his experience, good looks without vanity were
something unique. Possibly he was sceptical, for a smile of satire
lurked at the back of his inscrutable eyes. At any rate, he had found
her an interesting study, and the jade-green orbs, reckoned his finest
feature, seemed to assess her from top to toe, critically and coolly.
Though he made no effort to engage her in conversation, he had lingered
in her vicinity, listening to her childish prattle; and, contrary to
expectations, long after the need of his services was past, he had
loitered on the polo-ground till the Merediths had driven away in their
car.

On looking back, Joyce had felt a sense of resentment at his quiet
contempt of the ladies present. His cynical study of herself without any
attempt to cultivate her society annoyed her self-esteem.

"He's positively rude!" was her indignant verdict, later. "I wonder
people put up with him. And he has perfectly hateful eyes."

"The ladies think them very handsome eyes," Meredith had insinuated.

"They are very uncomfortable; like a thought-reader's. Anyhow, I shall
not allow him to stare at me another time."

"There's a saying that 'a cat may look at the queen,'" he had remarked
mischievously.

"It's a blessing, however, that one may choose one's friends!" she had
finally stated; and her husband allowed the subject to drop, not
displeased at her repugnance to the doctor whom he marked dangerous to
feminine susceptibility and an unknown quantity.

Captain Dalton had called the following Sunday at noon, and was received
by both husband and wife for the conventional few minutes. Being the
official holiday, it was recognised as the correct day for men to pay
formal visits, and by an unwritten law, at the warmest hour in the
twenty-four.

Another time they had driven past each other in a lane, when Dalton
gravely raised his hat in acknowledgment of her bow. Lastly, he had sat
beside her at a Hindu dramatic performance held in the grounds of a
local landowner, in celebration of a religious festival, and he had
barely noticed her existence, being engaged with his host on the other
side.

On the whole, he had not made a favourable impression on Joyce Meredith.
But what did it matter, now? He had come out to their camp, many miles
away from the Station, post-haste to save her child, and for that she
was thankful. All memory of the doctor's bad manners was forgotten when
she saw him enter the tent with her husband, a strong virile being, from
his keen eyes and locked lips to his brisk tread;--God's own agent to
cure her babe; a blessed healer of the sick, to whom the mysteries of
the human frame were revealed; who could fight even death!

"Oh, Doctor," she cried piteously, the tears like great dewdrops on her
lashes: "Baby has been so bad--I thought, once, I had lost him!"

Without formal greetings, Dalton passed to the cot, and stooping over
it, began his examination of the case.

Appreciating the reproof conveyed by his silence, the little mother sat
still while the examination proceeded, answering in tremulous tones the
crisp, short questions hurled at her from time to time.

By and by, when a certain drug had been administered and there was
nothing to be done but wait for its effects to be apparent, he abruptly
turned his attention to herself. Had she eaten anything? What had she
fed on for the past twenty-four hours? He covered her wrist with his
hand, studied her highly nervous face for a full minute, and then
ordered her away to bed.

"Take her out of this, Meredith, if you wish to avoid having two
invalids on your hands. Is there another bed anywhere?"

Meredith's own occupied the dressing-tent, since he was obliged to give
up sharing his wife's on account of the baby's claim to the services of
an ayah.

"But, Doctor, I am not ill!" Joyce protested feebly, realising however
now, that it was mentioned, that a collapse was imminent.

"You'll do as we think best," he said shortly, "or I had better get
out."

"Who is to look after Baby?" she asked faintly.

"I am here for that," he said more gently.

After some futile objections, Joyce departed feeling unable to hold out
a minute longer.

"How are you feeling?" her husband's anxious voice was asking. "You are
as white as a lily, darling."

"I'll be all right when Baby is," she answered wearily.

In a little while Joyce was put to bed with a sleeping draught and
tucked in comfortably, her husband as skilful in his ministrations as
any nurse. "Won't you kiss me before I go? Love me a little bit," he
pleaded wistfully.

"Go away Ray," she cried irritably. "Don't worry."

"You've made me so miserable!"

"It's nothing to what you made me!"

"I made you!"

"You--you were absent all day when Baby was so ill. It has nearly killed
me."

"Dearest, don't blame me unjustly."

"Then let it drop. I am not wishing to discuss it; I am too tired."

So was he, but he had no thought of himself while yearning over her, his
lovely girl, more beloved in her stubborn antagonism than ever.

Remembering the doctor's injunctions that she must sleep, he reluctantly
retired to pace the grass in the dawn, a dishevelled figure in his
shirt-sleeves with hands plunged into the pockets of his trousers. The
cool air soothed his nerves and brought him a sense of drowsiness which
he indulged in a long cane chair under the eaves of the dressing-tent.
The camp was very still after the disturbances of the night, and the sun
rose above the flat horizon like a ball of living gold, its searching
rays awakening the sleeping servants in their _shuldaris_ by their glare
and warmth.

But Ray Meredith was worn out and slept heavily, oblivious, for the
moment, of his anxieties and his surroundings, for, after all, he
cultivated a broad perspective and a wide tolerance for his little
girl's humours, since she was only "a kid in years and ideas."

With the sun mounting rapidly into the heavens came sounds of life from
the distant village. Far away, cow-bells tinkled musically as the cattle
moved lazily to pasture lands; dogs barked and children's voices, shrill
and joyous, echoed over the fields.

Domestic servants at the camp were to be seen rolling up their bedding
of sacking, preparatory to beginning the common round, the daily task.
Not far from the temporary kitchen, the mate-boy squabbled with the
village milkman over the supply of milk with its sediment of chalk,
which he declared had all but killed the master's child. Let him
remember that there was a doctor sahib on the spot, and what availed his
protestations?

"A raw infant, too, with a new stomach. Assuredly will the police drag
thee into court."

"Who said there was chalk!" almost wept the indignant _guala_
gesticulating wildly in self-defence. "As God is my witness not a grain
was in the milk. Have I no fear? Straight from the udder was it milked
into the brass _lota_ and brought to the camp. Ask of all the village if
I am not an honest man paying just tribute where it is asked, and giving
full measure and pure, to one and all. Would I jeopardise my freedom for
malpractices? What evil accusation art thou, _badmash_, hurling at me?"

"We'll see who's a _badmash_!" the youth returned loftily. "Wait till
the doctor Sahib gives evidence. Presently the Judge Sahib will say, 'O
Amir, faithful one, speak concerning the sediment in the milk which thou
didst show to the doctor Sahib, that the pestilential _guala_ may
receive just punishment for his wrong-doing.' But I have a tender heart
for the repentant and may consent to destroy the evidence, even refrain
from showing it to the Sahib, if it is made worth my while. Allot for my
own portion one seer of milk, and two for the servants, free of charge,
and, peradventure, my memory concerning the chalk will fail when the
moment of inquiry arrives."

"Why didst not thou tell that it was perquisite thou wast wanting, for I
would have given to thee without argument," sighed the _guala_, in
visible relief. "I am a poor man, and honest, though the ways of my
country-men are crooked, and I give in to thy demand that I might be
spared false accusation and much humiliation. Take, brother, thy illegal
_dusturi_;[7] how can such as I hope to escape _loot_, when from the
_chaukidar_ to the sweeper all are robbing those who provide the
_hakim's_ needs? Only from the _hakim_ himself is there straight
dealing!--_ai Khodar_!"

[Footnote 7: Commission.]

Within the large tent the silence that reigned boded well for the child
who was sleeping peacefully.

Its improved condition was the latest bulletin issued by the ayah who
had snatched a moment to enjoy a cheap cigarette in the open.

"What a night!" she said in Hindustani, which she spoke almost as
fluently as Tamil. "With both Sahib and Memsahib awake and watching, who
could sleep? I had not the conscience to close my eyes. Nor has a morsel
passed these lips, for, with the precious one at death's door, food
turns to ashes in the mouth."

"Thou art indeed a faithful one, Ayah-jee," said the _peon_.

"It is my religion, for I am a Christian and have no caste to hold me
back from any service that is required of me, _Baba-jee_. The child is
my first thought, and to guard its life, my first care."

"For which thou art paid handsomely, is it not so?"

"That, of course! and money is a great convenience, _Baba-jee_."

Joyce was still sleeping from the effects of the draught, when Meredith
and the doctor breakfasted together. On no account was she to be
disturbed. It seemed the doctor took a malicious delight in depriving
the husband of the pleasure of carrying his wife the good news
concerning the child; and he saw him depart to preside at his court
under the trees, without a shade of sympathy for his visible distress.

"Your wife will be all right," he said confidently, "so don't worry, but
go ahead with your work. I am capable of looking after both mother and
child."

"I have no doubt of it," Meredith grumbled, "but you'll send for me,
won't you, if anything's wrong?"

"Most assuredly," was the reply. And the Magistrate took his seat at the
camp table under a leafy mango tree, and was soon immersed in his duties
to the State. Natives of all castes and creeds thronged the grass beyond
the precincts of the court, and a hoarse murmur of voices soon filled
the air, above which was constantly heard that of the crier naming a
witness, or calling up a case.

When the ayah brought Captain Dalton the news that her mistress was
showing signs of waking, he poured out and took her a cup of tea,
himself, and asked how she felt. "Not very bright, I can see," he
remarked, placing his fingers on her pulse.

"Have I slept long?" she asked drowsily.

"Five hours."

"But Baby?" she cried out in alarm, sitting up in bed, giddy and
confused.

"Baby's all right. Temperature normal, and sleeping like a cherub," he
returned pressing her back on her pillows.

"Oh, Doctor, is that true?"

"You may think me a liar, if you like, but it isn't polite to call me
one to my face," he said with a crooked, grudging smile.

"Oh, how am I to thank you!" tears suffused her eyes as she seized his
hand and carried it impulsively to her lips. "You have no idea of the
relief you have brought me!"

Dalton had; and by the answering gleam in his eye, showed he was
rewarded for the whim which had prompted him to be the bearer of the
good tidings. It amused him to play with this pretty child-wife, and
sound the depths of her nature--if there were any!

"What is your age?" he asked abruptly, with a doctor's licence to
question a patient as he chose.

"I was nineteen in summer."

"You have no business with a baby when you are one yourself! Now for
your tea," and he held the cup while she leant on her elbow to drink its
contents, a shower of honey-gold hair falling about her face.

"Is your head very bad?" he asked when she had finished.

"How did you know that it ached?" she questioned.

"I have ways of finding out. Your pulse and your flush, for example."

"Then I am ill?" she asked in alarm. If she were to be ill, who would
take care of the child?

"A little ill."

"Fever?"

"Feverish."

"But I may get up, in spite of it?"

"Certainly not. Nor would you be of any use if you did."

"But I must take care of Baby!"

"I am doing that, already."

"You are going to take care of me, too?"

"Yes, if you are good and do all I tell you."

"I'll be so good, for I want to get well. How long will it last?"

"The fever? Who can say? However, I dare say it will be only a trifling
thing."

"Where is my husband?" she asked, wondering if Ray knew, and why he had
not rushed to see her. She was so accustomed to being fussed over, that
she missed the excitement. No doubt he was nursing injured feelings
since her ill-treatment of him last night....

"Listen, and you will hear the voices of the multitude before the Court.
Mr. Meredith is trying cases and sentencing malefactors to various
degrees of punishment," said the doctor.

"Won't you call him?"

"Are you sure he won't charge me with Contempt of Court?" he teased.

"If I am going to be ill, I must have him come at once. But first
promise me something," she cried, clinging to his hand with feverish
excitement; "I cannot bear to stay in camp after yesterday's experience.
Tell him that I must go back to Muktiarbad so as to have Baby near you.
He might be ill again, and what should I do then!"

"He might, certainly. Yes, I'll tell your husband, but not today. Today
you will want to be taken care of, and we mustn't pile on the agony."

"On whom? It would be such a relief to me!"

"Not to your husband. I wouldn't mind betting he'd have a fit of the
blues and be ill himself as a result."

"Oh, no! Ray never gets ill. He is so strong. That is why he can't
understand us. Oh, Doctor, I cannot live in India!" she wailed.

"Are you very homesick?" he asked with the same grudging smile.

"I hate India! It will kill Baby--won't you explain that to my husband?"

"There is no reason why it should kill Baby."

"How can you tell?--everything is against him here!"

Dalton decided to humour her because of the deepening flush and starry
eyes. The nervous fingers twined about his were hot with fever. "That's
all right. Be happy, you'll go home in the spring if it depends on me."

"Oh, thank you, you are such a dear!"

Captain Dalton smiled less grudgingly. She was so perfectly ingenuous.
In his critical eyes was a look of dalliance with a new problem. They
were eyes that must often have studied human problems and not always to
good purpose.

"I suppose the kid is your first consideration?" he asked, amused.

"He's so helpless!"

"I see," he remarked oracularly. Before he left the tent he gave her a
tablet from a phial which he carried in his vest-pocket.

"Do you know," she ventured in the hurried accents of feverishness, "I
did not like you a bit when I first met you."

"And now?"

"You are so different from what I had imagined."

"What was that?"

"You seemed an animated iceberg--forbidding and--yes, almost
disagreeable. You make most people afraid of you."

"It matters very little to me what people think of me," he returned
indifferently.

"Don't you ever care for friends?"

"I have no use for friends--besides, who are one's friends? I have
ceased to believe in friendship," he sneered.

She studied his face gravely. "I don't like to hear you speak like that.
We would be your friends if you would let us."

Dalton checked a laugh of genuine amusement, the first sound of mirth
she had heard from his lips, and it was not pleasant hearing.

"You are very good," he said tolerantly, "but it wouldn't work. I
wouldn't suggest the experiment, if I may advise you."

"I certainly shall not, if you are nasty," she pouted.

Dalton laughed again disagreeably and went out.

He was truly a conundrum, she decided, and difficult to know. Yet how
kind he had been to her and careful of her child! for that she would
always be grateful. But for him, anything might have happened! Strange
fellow!--why was he so antagonistic to people when his profession made
him a ministering angel to humanity? Joyce felt her head aching so
violently at this stage that she abandoned the puzzle of Captain
Dalton's nature and indulged in ecstasies over the thought of her baby's
recovery. It made her so happy that, when her husband entered with the
doctor, she flung her arms about his neck and apologised for her
exhibition of bad temper. "I was horrible to you, Ray. Do forgive me,"
sounded very sweet in her husband's ears. What the doctor thought was of
no importance to her.

Meredith mumbled transports of joy on her lips and was beside himself
with anxiety that she should be feverish. He plied her with questions in
his solicitude, and stood by in sulky jealousy while the doctor made his
professional examination of her lungs and heart.

Joyce said "ninety-nine" many times obediently, and was like a child in
her unconsciousness of self. One all-absorbing thought occupied her
mind, and that was her baby's well-being.

"Isn't Captain Dalton an angel?" she cried when the examination was over
and her lungs pronounced in perfect order. "I shall love him for ever
after his kindness to us; only, he won't let me. He has no use, he says,
for friends!"

Dalton smiled grimly as he put away his stethoscope. "Have you ever
heard of the qualities that go to make a good doctor?" he asked coolly.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"An unerring judgment, nerves of steel, and a heart of stone."

"And have you managed to acquire all three?" she asked playfully.

"The petrifaction of the last-named is quite an old story," he remarked,
as he passed out of the tent.

"You must not talk so much, sweetheart, with a rising temperature,"
Meredith cautioned, fussing over her, while, outside, the trial of a
notorious criminal was suspended till the Magistrate should think fit to
return. "How did Dalton find out that you had fever?" he questioned
suspiciously. "Did you send for him?"

"Oh, no. He brought me news of Baby and gave me my tea. Isn't he queer?
Not half so bad as people make him out to be. Oh!--and I was so
overjoyed and excited that I kissed his hand. I wonder what he thought
of my foolishness?" and she laughed at the joke; but her husband seemed
to have lost his sense of humour, for he retired from the bedside to
pace the drugget in distinct annoyance.

"Damned officious of him," he grumbled. "You were not his patient."

"I am _now_, so it's all right."

"You shouldn't have forgotten your dignity."

"I know it, but that's the way with me. I never remember that I have
any!"

"You are a married woman and no longer a child," he continued
reproachfully.

"I shall always be a silly fool, I'm afraid," she sighed. "However, he's
only the doctor, and a doctor is something between an angel and an
automaton."

"The devil he is!" Meredith growled, kicking a hassock to the other end
of the tent.

"Come here, you big goose," she said wearily, stretching her limbs;
"kiss me this instant, and go back to the malefactors. I want to sleep
off this attack and get well quickly."

Meredith could not bear to see her looking ill and wanted no second
bidding to demonstrate his love for her. After kissing her most
tenderly, he tucked her in comfortably, and, much against his
inclination, left her to the doctor's ministrations.




CHAPTER IV

A POINT OF VIEW


Dalton filled the ice-bag he had brought with him and settled down to
nursing with the skill of a woman; and no hands could have been gentler.
Occasionally the worried husband would pay the tent a flying visit and
return to listen to a pleader's lengthy oration with all the attention
he could muster under the troublous circumstances. Visions of his wife's
flushed face lying still on the pillow with closed eyes would haunt him
with agonising fidelity to detail--especially in relation to the
attentive doctor hovering near, adjusting the bag or removing it to be
refilled, and administering the necessary doses of medicine. He took
special notice of Dalton in his new character of nurse, and had no fault
to find with his manner. He was as silent as the Sphinx and as
professional as a nursing sister, and though Meredith thought it
objectionable that his wife should always have to be treated in illness
by a male physician--there being no lady doctor within hundreds of
miles--he was obliged to take comfort in the fact that his beloved could
not be in better hands.

Elsewhere, the ayah crooned lullabies to the baby who no longer needed
strict watching. She fed it from the bottle and wondered,
philosophically, who would be the next to be taken ill; for experience
told her that it was a mild form of epidemic chill, familiar to all at
the changing of the seasons.

Meals went forward with clock-like regularity, whether the sahibs were
inclined for sustenance or not. The camp table in the dining-tent was
laid with silver and crockery; a tight bunch of green leaves adorned a
centre vase, and a gong rang at the appointed hour, while the dishes
remained warm in the portable "hot case" where an open charcoal fire
burned redly.

"Isn't the fever rather persistent?" Meredith asked at dinner while
toying with his food.

"It's early to judge," said the doctor.

"What do you think of it?"

"Unquestionably a touch of the 'flu.'"

"It isn't enteric?" the anxious husband asked fearfully. "I have a holy
horror of enteric."

"You make your mind easy, it is not going to be anything of the sort. I
am afraid, however, you will have to give up all idea of Mrs. Meredith's
camping for the present," he added definitely. "She and the child don't
take kindly to canvas, and at this time of year we must avoid exposure
to malarial conditions."

"The District is particularly free from malaria," said Meredith.

"Bengal is full of it; the many bogs and pools of stagnant water around
are responsible for the anopheles mosquito."

"It's dashed inconvenient when I must put in a deuced lot of camping in
the cold weather."

"Do most of it after Christmas," Dalton suggested.

"It will be just the same--they won't be able to stand it."

"Frankly, I don't think they will. Perhaps, both might be more
acclimatised later on," was the diplomatic reply.

Meredith passed another night on the cane chair which he placed
alongside of his wife's bed, and was conscious during periods of rest
that the doctor never slept at all. He was in and out of the tent at all
hours of the night looking after his patient with untiring zeal. An easy
chair in the dining-tent had served as his couch, and the English
newspapers entertained him during the long hours of the night.

Yet at the end of the vigil, Meredith knew Captain Dalton no better than
before. He was still the silent, repellent being, with eyes of a
thought-reader and a baffling smile which might have meant contempt or
tolerance; he was altogether incomprehensible.

By morning, Joyce was free of fever with a temporarily lowered vitality,
and showing no ill effects. All day she convalesced happily, enjoying
the petting she received from the men; Captain Dalton's methods being
unobtrusive, but effective; Meredith's, on the other hand, being
tactlessly affectionate and blundering.

"You are a darling, Ray," she laughed, after a specially clumsy service,
"but you were never born with a faculty for nursing, like Captain
Dalton's. He is so capable; he never spills my mixture down my neck
before I can drink it; nor does he pour out over-doses, and empty the
surplus on the drugget!"

"'Comparisons are odorous,'" he returned, looking hurt.

"The tent is, if you like. It smells like a chemist's shop! Your proper
place and function are in the court, and sentencing criminals to
punishment."

"You want to get rid of me so that you may have the doctor all to
yourself! I wonder what you find in him at all. He fairly chokes one
off."

"I told you he was either an automaton or an angel; I find he is both,
only he would like us to think him a bad angel."

"A man knows himself best. So you want to desert me tomorrow?" he cried
reproachfully.

"Dear old thing!--you wouldn't have me stay if you knew that I should be
miserable?" she coaxed, drawing down his face to be kissed.

"Miserable with the husband who adores you?"

"If you love me so much, you should be unselfish and think more of
Baby."

"Must Baby always count above his Daddy?"

"Naturally he must be considered more, while he is so young and
delicate."

"Where then do I come in?"

"You mustn't be jealous of your own child!" she cried reproachfully.
"Think of his helplessness, his need of me!--Of course you need me,
too," she said putting her palm over his mouth to stifle his eloquence
on the subject of a husband's rights, "but then, there's a difference.
You can manage without me, while he must not. A babe is a sacred trust
to its mother."

"And when he grows older and is impressionable, there will be a mother's
_moral duty towards his soul_ to separate us. You and he at home, and I
out here, alone! I know the jargon, having watched such comedies for
years. Now it has come home to me. One hears that a child is a blessing
from God.... I believe it is a blessing very much in disguise, for I see
only the disguise at present."

"Why look so far ahead?" laughed Joyce, determined to mend his humour.
"By the time he is old enough to become a 'moral' responsibility, you
will probably be only too glad to get rid of me. I am such a worry as a
wife."

"I wonder!" he ejaculated ruefully.

Joyce reminded him of the many week-ends he could spend at the bungalow,
when they would contrive to have very happy times. "I shan't be so
anxious with a doctor on the spot, so to speak; and shall be ever so
much more of a wife," she promised, looking adorable in the ribbons and
laces of her snowy night-dress, backed with befrilled pillows.

The prospect had compensations, he felt, but he found it hard to explain
without incurring the imputation of selfishness, that, parted day after
day from the light of her presence, deprived of the sight of her
loveliness and the natural expression of his passion for her, he would
assuredly ache unceasingly and pine himself sick. She would not
understand, since she had little comprehension of the ways of mankind,
so he could only sigh and capitulate.

"At least there will be many honeymoons!" he allowed, trying to hide his
disappointment in satire.

"What a man you are!" she laughed. "Won't you ever get used to being
married?"

Meredith returned to his files and the clamouring multitude under the
trees, for the remainder of the afternoon, with the noxious odours of
bare-bodied humanity, besmeared with mustard oil, assaulting his
nostrils. Meanwhile Joyce cultivated the doctor with innocent feelers of
friendship while he administered afternoon tea.

"I do think you are such a clever nurse," she said flatteringly, while
he fed her on bread and butter. "You are like two persons in one--both
doctor and nurse!"

"Necessity is a good teacher," he returned shortly. "I have never nursed
any one myself; others have generally taken my orders."

"I should have imagined that you had done this all your life."

Viewed in broad daylight at close quarters, when her brain was cleared
of feverish delusions, he was not at all a handsome man. Too
blunt-featured and heavy in the jaws; too square in the frame and thick
of neck; but his eyes, with their power of reserve, were always a
splendid mystery; deep-set and provoking, yet suggestive of nothing so
much as banked fires, glowing and suppressed. Frequently they dwelt on
her with the same satirical amusement of the polo-field, and she would
waste much of her thoughts in wondering why. It was the look of a
sceptic who had no intention of expressing his unbelief, and Joyce was
irritated and annoyed. But she had no fault to find with his attentions,
and was invariably won to gratitude for services rendered.

She was very pretty--exceptionally so--and very simple; but, as pretty
women were never simple, Dalton found entertainment in the study of her
particular pose, as it seemed to him. If it were not a pose, then her
husband was a short-sighted fool and he had no patience with him. The
time was past for childish innocence and folly. Coquetry was very
captivating, but to play with fire was dangerous, and if he mistook not,
she would some day arrive at an understanding of human nature when it
was too late to save her self-respect. Her beauty appealed to his
artistic sense, but he had no admiration for shallow natures; hence his
amused contempt.

"You remind me of nothing so much as an oyster," she laughed, picking up
a dainty piece of bread and butter and putting it in her mouth.

"Why so?"

"You are living so much in your shell. Why do you do it?"

"Why not, if it pleases me?" he asked pouring out two cups of tea.

"Think of all you lose!"

"I generally manage to take what I want," he replied with an insolent
smile. "I rarely suffer from loss."

"You lose love," said she wisely.

"What do you know about it?" he questioned, fixing her with his
penetrating eyes.

"I love my husband----"

"--And your baby, even more. Of course your experience is immense!"

"You are sarcastic," she said reproachfully. "I love my husband and my
baby in quite different ways. You have no wife or baby, so you cannot
understand. Men like you go through life without knowing any of its real
joys."

"That is according to your point of view," he retorted. "In any case,
marriage is a great gamble and it's best to avoid risks."

"There's a girl you and I know..." Joyce put in reminiscently, seeing in
mind a pleasing vision, "and the man who gets her will be the luckiest
fellow in the world."

"He certainly will."

"How do you know whom I mean?"

"You mean Miss Bright of Muktiarbad."

Joyce opened wide her blue eyes which were the colour of forget-me-nots,
and stared. "Are you a thought-reader?"

"It was easy reading, for there is only one girl we mutually know who
fits your description entirely, and she is Miss Honor Bright. She has
been reared to live up to her name."

"And you found that out though you hardly ever speak to her?"

"It is rather wonderful, isn't it?" he asked with his crooked smile.

"Then--why--?" There were limits to curiosity, but her expressive eyes
spoke the rest of her question direct to his.

"Why don't I cultivate Miss Bright? The answer is simple. I am not
seeking a wife, and I have no interest in friendships."

"How rude!" she cried reproachfully.

Dalton laughed disagreeably and offered her more tea which she accepted,
not knowing whether he was not after all the most churlish being she had
ever met.

"I wish I could understand you, Doctor, but I never shall," she sighed
hopelessly, as she endeavoured to make herself comfortable among the
tumbled bed-clothes. "I give you up as a difficult riddle."

"You want your bed re-made," he returned changing the subject. "Shall I
do it for you?"

"You?--I can't fancy your bed-making!"

"I'll show you that I can do that as well as most other things. But
you'll have to move out."

The cane lounge had been put out of the way and was not within easy
walking distance for a shaky invalid; nevertheless Joyce was determined
to try. While he transferred the cushions, she rolled herself in a shawl
and made a brave effort to walk across, only to be overcome by
giddiness.

Dalton was in time to save her from falling and she was carried clinging
in her panic to the column of his neck. "You shouldn't have attempted
it," he scolded.

"But I liked the way you swung me off my feet!" she said contentedly.

"It is not one of my duties to wait hand and foot on my patients, I
would have you understand," he said grimly with a lurking twinkle in his
eye, wondering, the while, whether the giddiness was another pose. "It
seems you like being fussed over," he remarked before laying her down
among the cushions.

"I love it!" she cooed ingenuously. "It's the only reason I don't mind
being sick, to have Ray fuss and carry me about."

He put her down immediately with the familiar expression of indulgent
satire in his eyes. "You'll probably get plenty of fussing from
everyone; but, in the case of the boys, remember to be merciful."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"There are some young fools who might, if encouraged, lose their heads,
you know."

"But there'd be no excuse, for I never flirt."

"Pardon me, you flirt like an artist."

Joyce thought it was horrid of him to say so, and wondered if she should
snub him for his impertinence; only she did not quite know how. He had
been so kind--perhaps he was only teasing? However she was reduced to
offended silence while he made her bed with skill and expedition. He was
not anxious that her husband arrive and find him so employed, and was
glad to restore Mrs. Meredith to her nest of pillows without
interruptions from without. Her utter lack of concern, either way, was
illuminating, so that he had to revise his estimate of her once again,
while his smile lost its satire.

"Sure you are comfy?" he asked before leaving her.

"Yes, thank you," she answered stiffly.

"Haughtiness does not become you, dear lady. What have I done?" he asked
coolly.

"You said I was a flirt!" she pouted.

"I'll take it back," he returned smiling broadly, thinking that she
certainly flirted delightfully. But shallow natures always flirted just
so.

"I have never been accused of that--in my life."

"It would be such a libel!" he conceded.

"Thank you," she said graciously as she shot him a forgiving glance both
radiant and alluring. "Do you know, I like you tremendously, though I
began by thinking you hateful."

"First impressions are often correct," he returned grimly, and retired.

By and by, when she was alone with her husband and childishly about to
recount the events of the afternoon with fidelity as to detail, she was
diverted by his grave distress at the coming parting. It was cruel to
inflict grief, and she wished he would be more reasonable.

"Old thing!" she said affectionately, rubbing her soft cheek against his
rough one; "think how much I, too, shall miss you! It won't be only on
your side!"

"Will you really miss me?" he asked infatuatedly.

"All the time. I love having you about, and if I am lonely at nights, I
have only to creep into your bed in the next room to be comforted. What
ever shall I do when that bed lies empty?"

It was heavenly to Meredith to hear this intimate revelation from her
lips, always so shy of expressing her need of him. It was a great
advance in the right direction, and his skies cleared as by magic. If
absence truly made the heart grow fonder, he would have no cause of
complaint against this short parting. It was the greater one in the
spring, the shadow of which was already darkening his horizon, that he
dared not contemplate.

However, there was plenty of time yet, and no earthly good was to be
gained by crossing bridges in anticipation.

The following day saw an exodus from the camp. Meredith took his wife
and child to Muktiarbad station, and saw them comfortably established in
the Collector's bungalow, known as the Bara Koti,[8] then returned to
his duties in the rural parts of his District, resolved to support his
deprivations with cheerful resignation.

[Footnote 8: Big House.]




CHAPTER V

WHAT CAN'T BE CURED


Ray Meredith tried for the first few days to submit to his loss with
fortitude, but the loneliness of the camp, after the experience of a
sweet wife's companionship, was insupportable. There were no Europeans
for miles around and there remained only the diversions of an occasional
_shikar_. The tour of the previous autumn and winter months on which he
had been accompanied by his girlish bride, had spoilt him for bachelor
life; for though Joyce had disliked the inconveniences of camping, she
had suffered them meekly, seeing that to have objected would have been
both selfish and unkind. But the coming of the child had roused in her
active opposition to all that might be harmful to its most precious
health, and her husband was gradually discovering that he would
inevitably have to accept the back seat.

For the first time in his official career, the routine of his work
wearied him with its monotony and staleness. Having his meals in
solitary state affected his appetite and digestion, for he took to
bolting his food just to get rid of the automaton behind his chair who,
no doubt, mentally criticised his every act, and treasured up the memory
of his idiosyncrasies to comment upon them, later, in the kitchen.

During the day the business of hearing petitions, trying cases, and
delivering judgments, occupied his mind and brought distraction, but in
the evenings he could settle to nothing. Even his beloved pipe failed to
bring him consolation.

When darkness closed in with dense shadows where the moonlight failed to
penetrate, and the peace of a world at rest was upon the countryside,
when even the birds had ceased to chirp and flutter in their nests, the
air would feel charged with expectancy. A footfall without would cause
Meredith to lift his head from his papers or book, wondering if there
was a message for him--Joyce taken ill--or the baby? The silence bred
nerves, till a chorus of jackals howling in an adjacent paddy field
would break the spell and come as a welcome relief.

Often, the words of a book he tried to read conveyed no meaning to his
mind till he had re-read a paragraph several times. Or the official
report he had set himself to write was disturbed by mental visions of
Station doings in which his young wife was perhaps taking part without
his support and protection.

She was so young and unsophisticated! It was perhaps his own fault that
she was so, but he loved her all the more on account of it, and would
not have had her otherwise.

An instinctive distrust of Captain Dalton would not be stifled, and he
disliked the thought of his innocent young wife being exposed to the
subtle flattery of such unusual attentions as he had paid her in
camp,--strictly professional, no doubt, but disagreeably intimate from a
husband's point of view. Confound him!

A young man of arresting appearance and strange personality, whose
private life was unknown and whose conduct towards his neighbours was
aloof and repellent, was best kept at a distance and treated with the
formality which accorded with his profession, otherwise he would become
a disturbing element. Already Joyce seemed to consider herself under
obligations to him, and in her enthusiastic gratitude was prone to
overstep the limits of dignified propriety which he wished her to
observe. Would to heaven that the Government had sent them a married man
as Civil Surgeon of Muktiarbad! Bachelors of mysterious habits and
manners were totally out of place in a station so well supplied with
womenkind.

Meredith was thankful that there were so many women in the Station and
all likely to be lavish with their attentions to his wife. She would
seldom be left to her own devices or the society of the doctor, in whose
care she was unreservedly placed. And Joyce was popular with the ladies
despite the fact that she was too young to play her dignified rôle of
leading lady with success. She played it with a charm all her own, and
drew towards her the members of her own sex as well as those of the
masculine. She was unique, he assured himself. He could trust her
blindfold, even among wolves in sheep's clothing; for essentially she
was a mother, and had every incentive to keep pure. Love of children and
a respect for religion were sure safeguards against the wiles of the
tempter; he could therefore make his mind easy, feeling that his wife
possessed both.

But jealousy is a weed of hardy growth, and once having taken root is
difficult to destroy. There were memories to haunt him and give him many
a sleepless night: Joyce seizing and kissing Dalton's hand in her frenzy
of relief when he told her the good news concerning the child; her
milk-white shoulder and bosom exposed for the stethoscope.... She might
look upon Dalton as an "angel" or an "automaton," but no man, unless
superhuman, is a stoic where a lovely woman is concerned.

On the whole, it was a miserable week for Meredith in his solitude,
despite the distractions of his office and constant journeys over the
plain.

His next encampment was a large Mohammedan village on the outskirts of a
silk factory,--an important industry owned and worked by a prosperous
Anglo-Indian.

In duty bound, the Magistrate and Collector called on the ladies of the
house, sending in the usual piece of pasteboard with his name printed
thereon, and caught a fleeting glimpse of the wife in a dressing-gown
and slippers scuttling to cover from the out-offices in the rear.

After keeping him waiting for sometime in a musty drawing-room where
cobwebs lurked in corners and everything looked the worse for time, she
appeared in fearful and wonderful array,--layers of powder concealing
the dusky tint of her complexion, innumerable jewels tinkling on her
person, and hands badly manicured, but richly be-ringed.

During his brief visit she talked volubly in "chee-chee," vigorously
assisted by gesticulations, and her laughter was ear-splitting and
vulgar in its enforced hilarity; so that Meredith, whose nerves felt
badly jangled, rose to beat a hasty retreat, courteously resisting all
the hospitable efforts of the hostess to keep him as a guest.

At the Subdivision of Panchpokhur, he was introduced to the Deputy
Magistrate's wife and twin baby boys who were splendid specimens of
infantile vigour; and his praise and admiration were the passport to
their mother's instant regard. She was a devoted wife and mother, placid
and easy-going, and carried the air of one equal to any emergency.

"I am amazed that they should look so strong," Meredith said as he
watched the children racing over the grass in pursuit of straying
poultry.

"They seldom ail," said their mother, who, though country born, was
perfectly English in her speech and manners. "I nursed them both,
unaided," she said proudly, feeling disposed to venture this confidence
to a man who was married and a father.

"That, I suppose, makes a heap of difference," he remarked diffidently.
"My wife was too ill after the birth of the kid, so it was put on the
bottle from the start."

"What a pity!" and the lady forthwith entered upon an instructive
dissertation on the particular artificial foods that could be
recommended.

"Will this always make him delicate, do you think?" Meredith asked
anxiously, not so much for the sake of the babe, as from the fear of all
it would mean to himself in regard to his wife.

"Perhaps not, but it is a bad handicap."

Meredith sighed as he explained the reason of his touring alone.
"Captain Dalton thinks the child should be within reach of medical aid
after its go of fever. My wife, too, was a bit knocked over and cannot
rough it this winter, I'm afraid."

"The new Civil Surgeon?"

"Yes. Came direct from Calcutta after the rains set in."

"He is said to be very clever, but the natives don't seem to like him at
all, as he is supposed to be rather fond of the knife."

"A good surgeon, I am told. The natives are great cowards of surgery,
and risk gangrene before they will consent to an operation."

"That is so. He has his hands full, I should think," said the lady.
"Elsie Meek, the daughter of a dear friend of mine, is dangerously ill
at the Mission not far from Muktiarbad. I suppose you know that?"

Meredith had heard a rumour to that effect, and wondered how Captain
Dalton had managed to spare so much of his valuable time to the camp.

"Mr. Meek is a Methodist who came out some years ago and married a
school friend of my mother's. Their daughter was educated in England and
joined them a few months ago. I am told she is a talented girl and
totally unsuited to her life here," said his hostess. "Have you seen
much of her?"

"Very little, indeed, for her people don't belong to the Club and Miss
Elsie has only been to see the Brights who are rather friendly with her
parents. She came out in the summer."

"Poor thing! Enteric is such a terrible disease, and she is very bad I
hear."

"She could not be in more skilful hands," said Meredith.

Before he left the Subdivision, he had many illuminating talks with the
wife of the Deputy on the subject of infants and how to rear them in
Bengal.

"I suppose," said he, "when my kid begins to teeth, the doctors will
advise sending him and the mother home?" It was the probability he most
dreaded.

"I see no necessity for that," was the assured reply. "Doctors take too
much responsibility upon themselves, when they so readily part husbands
and wives. It has often been the cause of greater trouble than is to be
feared from the climate. It should be remembered that teething is not a
disease, but a natural process, which might be influenced by the
digestion in any part of the globe. Poor India gets all the blame!--even
when an ayah is careless with the feeding bottles. Why! those iniquitous
ones with a long rubber tube, used in my mother's day, were called
'Herods' for the number of children they killed. With proper attention,
and the hills for a change when necessary, there is no reason why babies
out here should not do perfectly well till they are seven. It is the
growing and impressionable stage, and I'll allow that the moral example
of human nature in the East is not of the best. I say it, who have been
brought up entirely out here."

"You are a tremendous credit to your upbringing," put in Meredith.

"My people were very particular and I was never allowed an ayah to teach
me self-indulgence, nor to associate with the servants' children on the
estate; for what native children do not know of evil isn't worth
knowing."

The Subdivisional Officer's bungalow was a type usually to be found in
rural Districts, built of bricks and mortar, whitewashed, and roofed
with the thatching grass that grows on low-lying lands by the Ganges.
Earlier in Raymond Meredith's career, Panchpokhur had been one of his
own appointments, and every corner of the dwelling and its grounds was
familiar to him: the tall goldmohur trees beside the gate, the range of
out-offices and stabling, the high, flowering hedge of hibiscus, the
primitive well by the palm tree, with its screeching pulley. Gazing from
the verandah he could almost imagine himself a bachelor again in the
first flush of an opening career, keen and interested. The low verandah
was the same on which he was wont to sleep on hot summer nights, and
breakfast upon, at sunrise, in his pyjamas. The deep, thatched roof was
as cool and as picturesque as of yore, having been renewed many times in
the seven or eight years that were gone. The difference in his
surroundings lay in the greater cleanliness--which usually distinguished
the abode of a married man from that of a careless bachelor--and also in
the supplementary furniture which threw his old camp articles into the
shade. He was able to recognise the more durable of his past possessions
in various parts of the house where they appealed to him as old friends.
In those days how little had sufficed him!

All was now changed, for his life was dominated with the one idea of
making his home attractive and suitable for the treasure it held.

       *       *       *       *       *

After Panchpokhur, he moved on with his tents and the paraphernalia of
camp life to parts thickly populated by Indians of all castes and
creeds, and was received with pomp and ceremony befitting the
representative of the Ruling Power. Addresses were read to him before a
vast concourse of humanity; and members of the Local Municipal Board
vied with one another in paying him the respect due to his official
position.

In the intervals of duty, he tramped jungle places for game, alone or in
company with gentlemen from the neighbourhood; and, at the week-end,
prepared to spend Sunday with his wife at Muktiarbad.




CHAPTER VI

THE LEADING LADY


Meanwhile, Joyce at the Bara Koti, partially regained her confidence in
life, and tried to make the best of her surroundings.

The house stood imposingly in extensive grounds which had been
artistically laid out by successive officials, in lawns, flower-bed,
ornamental shrubberies, and a kitchen garden, all of which were
maintained by four _malis_ and a regiment of coolies. A dense hedge of
cactus separated the grounds from the roadway, with graceful bamboo
clumps at intervals for shade; and a rustic gate led to the carriage
drive, an avenue bordered by goldmohur trees.

The building, which was one-storeyed, was of solid masonry, the floor
being well raised upon arches. Wide pillared verandahs ran on every
side, and the roof was of concrete supported by iron joists. The rooms
were lofty and spacious, with high doors and many windows, furnished
with glass shutters and Venetian blinds; and were designed to fulfil the
requirements of married officials of important position in the
Government, who were expected to maintain a dignified state and
entertain in a style to correspond. In a word, it was Government House
on a minor scale, with a lordly status to keep up in the Station and
District.

For his wife's sake, Meredith had endeavoured to make his home as
attractive as possible so as to save inevitable comparisons between her
present and past circumstances.

However, there were drawbacks which even he could not avoid: the lack of
the most ordinary conveniences of daily life, such as electric lights
and fans, water pipes, telephones, and English shops; and of them all,
it was to be feared that the last might yet prove the most to be
deplored.

The bathrooms, which were numerous, had no hot and cold water laid on;
nor were there any but kerosene lamps to give light; and in lieu of
electric fans, _punkhas_ with gathered frills were worked by means of a
rope through a hole in the wall. Kurta, Moja, Juti, and Paji, were the
four Hindu coolies employed in summer to keep the frill perpetually
waving in whichever room it pleased the sahibs to sit; and the patient
creatures sat cross-legged on the verandah floor, nodding over the rope
till galvanised into activity by a shout from within.

For baths, kettles of boiling water were fetched from the kitchen, fifty
yards or so distant, and cans of cold water from a tank beyond the
vegetable garden, by a semi-nude servant whose duty it was to do this
and nothing else. It took Joyce many months to realise which of the
numerous servants in her pay could be required to perform a particular
task, so complicated were the differentiations created by caste.

Muktiarbad was very much behind the times as to modern comforts and
conveniences, but was entirely up-to-date in the fashions which the
weekly journals depicted for the advantage of the gentler sex, and which
the latest arrivals from "home" expressed. Moreover, Calcutta was only a
few hundred miles away--a trifle in India--and contained first-rate
shops and dressmakers. A week-end visit to the Metropolis for a round of
shopping was a common habit of the ladies of Muktiarbad, with its handy
train service; and if it added considerably to the cost of living, what
would you, when the bazaar sold only Manchester goods in bales, and
_saris_ for feminine apparel?

Old Khodar Bux, who was available for eight annas per day, was a
treasure to bachelor servants, as the only tailor to be had in the
District.

In all other matters, the Station was content, for officials were birds
of passage, and what had sufficed the residents for years, was good
enough for today. Private enterprise was sluggish, and the cost of
transporting plant and material for the installation of electricity,
prohibitive; so the sahibs continued to use kerosene oil; were fanned by
coolies, and were dependent on wells and tanks for their water supply,
leaving it to the larger towns and great centres to revel in all the
luxuries of modern times.

The possession of a large Daimler by the Collector, and of a two-seater
Rolls-Royce by the doctor, filled the other English residents with envy;
but they were anathema to the natives of the bazaars and villages. Rich
Indians followed suit with cars of various sorts, but, generally, the
machines were looked upon by the ignorant as ruthless inventions of the
devil, and to be feared accordingly.

Joyce lived an idle life at Muktiarbad, served hand and foot by a host
of servants, and treated as a little queen by her neighbours. She did
not even try to "keep house" after the approved method in the East, a
bunch of keys jingling in her pocket, and everything that was of value
locked safely away; a cook to stand behind her chair, once a day, to
render the bazaar accounts; visits of inspection to the kitchen, an
eagle eye kept on the dusting and sweeping, and the laundry-man's weekly
wash duly checked; for Meredith's head _bearer_, who had assumed
responsibilities in his master's bachelor days and was too valuable to
be deprived of his office, continued to keep accounts and run the
establishment on oiled wheels. Joyce held him in secret awe and respect.

Her ayah instructed her in Indian ways and customs, and caste
susceptibilities; and it was no little tax to remember how not to
offend. The _bearer_ was not to be asked to carry trays of food, or the
_khansaman_ to trim the lamps; the _masalchi_ had no responsibility with
regard to the boots, or the sweeper with scullery concerns; and so on,
and so forth. It was all very bewildering and made her nervous. She
cared too little for India to take much trouble to improve her knowledge
of the country or of the people, and was content to remain as an
honoured guest in her own house, with her precious babe to worship and
cherish with jealous devotion.

On her return from camp, visitors dropped in to see her, foremost among
them, Mrs. Barrington Fox, the wife of a railway official of some
importance in the District; a lady young enough to have retained a
belief in her power to charm. She had been very handsome at her _début_,
ten years ago, but the ravages of the climate had not spared her
complexion which was delicately assisted by art to retain its bloom. She
had the air of being languidly bored with the monotony of her life, and
seemed disposed to patronise the "leading lady" who never led, save when
the laws of precedence obliged her to occupy the seat of honour at
dinner parties in the Station. It was a temptation to Mrs. Fox to advise
her in the way she should go, and she tactfully managed to hint at it.
"India is naturally strange to you, yet you do wonderfully!--I am sure
you are very clever," she would begin, and then make some suggestion
which Joyce was very glad to follow. For instance--"I hear the Padre
from headquarters wishes to hold service here next Sunday. He ought
really to put up with you, but the Brights have had him lately and
unless you write and invite him he is likely to go straight to them.
What do you think?" she asked lighting a cigarette.

Joyce had been in the hills on the few occasions when the Reverend John
Pugh had visited Muktiarbad from Hazrigunge and conducted Divine service
in the reading-room of the Club.

"Do you think I should?" she asked, anxious to do the correct thing.

"I was thinking that the Brights take too much upon themselves. Mrs.
Bright is only the wife of the Superintendent of Police after all, and
your husband is the Collector."

"But Mrs. Bright is a perfect dear."

"Still she should not encroach on your rights. The District Chaplain
usually stays with the Collector unless he has special friends in the
Station with whom he divides his time. But do just as you like. I
thought perhaps he would think you did not want him."

"I should like to have him very much," Joyce said eagerly. "My husband
will be here and it will be quite a pleasure to us both." So Joyce
promised to write her letter of invitation.

On the whole, she was never at her ease with Mrs. Fox, who had rarely a
good word for her neighbours and voiced strangely radical sentiments
concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling,
particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband
never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the
laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies
were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of
the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was on
his wife's account, lest she should be contaminated. "I have no use for
a woman of her type," he would say. "She has made a mess of her own life
and is a poisonous influence to young women."

"But it seems she has a perfect brute of a husband, who leaves her to
herself while he runs up and down the line amusing himself with other
women."

"It's a lie," said Meredith sternly. "Fox is not a bad sort. Men rather
like him, and he is a jolly good Traffic Superintendent. The Railway
staff think a lot of him. I should not be surprised if he is fed up with
her selfishness and the way she carries on with his assistants. No
decent man tolerates that sort of thing."

"If you talked to her for an hour, you'd think she was the injured
party," said Joyce.

"Then I'd rather you never talked to her."

But that was ridiculous in a small station where everyone met everyone
else every day, Joyce explained.

So when Mrs. Barrington Fox called, full of gossip and friendliness, she
was received politely. After the matter of the Padre was settled, she
demanded to see the child and a quarter of an hour was spent in
baby-worship.

"He's certainly not looking so well as when you brought him from
Darjeeling. Weaker, I should say, poor little chappie! I don't believe
the place agrees with him--or with you, for that matter. You look a good
deal paler. How do you feel?"

"I am quite all right now, only a bit shaken," Joyce said doubtfully.
Possibly she was not conscious how bad she actually was? Mrs. Fox was
not comforting.

"You mustn't run down, you know. The surest safeguard against epidemics
and illnesses peculiar to this miserable climate is never to allow
yourself to run below par."

"But what is one to do? One doesn't deliberately do it."

"No, but you should eat heaps of nourishing things. Drink plenty of
milk, for instance. But never fail to boil it, and never leave it
exposed to the air. Milk is the most dangerous thing you can take, on
account of its susceptibility to germs of every kind; especially enteric
and cholera. It simply asks for germs!"

"And if you keep it covered, it goes bad!" cried Joyce alarmed since it
formed the sole diet of her beloved infant.

"It wouldn't be a bad plan to keep it in the refrigerator in bottles. I
did that all the winter, last year, when I was on milk diet."

"It will turn me grey to keep in mind the many things I must not do out
here!" sighed Joyce.

Mrs. Fox condoled with her out of fellow-feeling and congratulated her
for having given up camping. "If it doesn't suit you or the kid, I don't
see why you should be obliged to do it. Men have to learn not to be
selfish."

Joyce fired up. "Ray is anything but selfish. Sometimes I think it is I
who am selfish; but if it were only myself, I would never say a word. We
have to do our duty by the child."

"Exactly so. I quite see the point of view. Here you have the doctor at
hand. I am told he nursed you like a mother."

Joyce wondered how Mrs. Fox had come to hear of it as, since her return
to the Station, she had seen no callers. "How _ever_ did you know?" she
asked ingenuously.

"Oh, one hears things!" Mrs. Fox blew smoke through her nostrils and
smiled knowingly. "And how do you like him on closer acquaintance?"

Joyce thought he improved on acquaintance. Mrs. Fox annoyed her by that
smile.

"He is an enigma to most, but if I know his type, he is not a little
dangerous. He can be exceedingly rude. I passed him on my way here and
common politeness should have made him pull up for a word or two. But he
rushed by in a cloud of dust with two fingers just touching the brim of
his hat!--considering I was on foot, you can imagine my feelings. I have
never been treated so by a man in my life--unless it is by my own
husband; but then, there's no love lost," Mrs. Fox remarked.

"Perhaps Captain Dalton was in a hurry," Joyce suggested.

"Don't excuse him. He can be very nice when he likes. Yesterday there
was Honor Bright hanging over her fence to talk to him, and though it
was his busiest time, he was there quite a long while,--you know their
gardens join. I saw them through Mrs. Bray's field-glasses. The Brays'
verandah, as you know, looks on the Brights' grounds from beyond a
paddock."

"He thinks a lot of Honor," said Joyce remembering their conversation in
camp.

"Any one can see she is making up to him. But Mrs. Bright had better
take care. No one knows anything of Captain Dalton's affairs. He might
be married for all one knows. Honor Bright may be very popular in the
District, but she'll get herself talked about and end all her chances of
marrying well. Naturally it is the ambition of her parents to see her
well settled, but she's far too unconventional. Did you hear of her
escapade while you were in camp?"

Joyce had not heard, but was eager to know all about it. She knew Honor
was careless of conventions out of a contempt for small minds and a love
of independence. All who knew her allowed that she was as "straight as
you make 'em," and admired her open nature and clear eye.

"Didn't she write and tell you?"

"We seldom write to each other."

"I thought you were bosom friends!--well, she was out alone looking for
early snipe--someone had seen one in the fields beyond the bazaar--and
while out, she was supposed to have been bitten by a snake----"

"--Why do you say 'supposed'?" Joyce interrupted ready to spring to arms
for her friend.

"We'll say she was bitten, if you like; only, people bitten by snakes
generally die, and she didn't. She tied a ligature and was limping home
when she met Captain Dalton in his car on his way to a dispensary
somewhere in the District. He took her up and home to his house where
she stayed half the day alone with him. Her mother was week-ending in
Calcutta, and Honor was in charge of her father's comforts and the home;
but her father happened to have run out to Panipara for a rioting case
which he and the police were bothered with; so Miss Honor stayed with
the doctor till she thought fit to come home."

"Bitten by a snake!" gasped Joyce in consternation. "Poor Honor!--how
terrified she must have been!"

"That's best known to herself and him. Since then, you'll observe that
there is a sort of understanding between them."

"How do you mean?"

"They seem to be on far better terms than he is with any one else in the
Station, and Honor is falling in love with him. I am anything but blind
to the symptoms!" and Mrs. Fox struck a match and lighted another
cigarette.

"I suppose they grew friendly over the treatment of her wound," said
Joyce beginning to understand how it was that the doctor had learned to
appreciate Honor Bright. Yet he was "not seeking to marry her."

"I must get Honor to tell me all about it when I see her. Perhaps she
does not know I am back?"

"She knows right enough, for, as I have said, the doctor was with her
yesterday, talking across the garden fence."

Mrs. Fox smoked her second and third cigarette, drank tea with Joyce,
and, when every topic of interest was exhausted, wended her way
homeward, deploring the fact that her husband was too selfish to give
her a motor-car. "He doesn't care for one, so I have to do without; and
with only one riding-horse and that one lame, I am obliged to tramp the
dusty lanes on foot."

"I am also without a conveyance while my husband is in camp," said
Joyce, "but it does not matter as I like walking."

"I don't. My frocks are not suited to pedestrian exercise and cost too
much--" which suggested the idea to Joyce that Mrs. Fox's expensive
clothes accounted for her husband's economy in other directions. She
watched her swaying languidly down the drive, a tall and graceful
figure, stylishly dressed and pretty in a faded way, in spite of the
delicate pink of her oval cheek and the brightness of her thin lips.
What a pity it was that she had never a good word for any one, and made
herself so ridiculous with the men, thought Joyce; it lowered her in
their estimation and laid her open to impudence. Though she was
attractive to many, she never succeeded in holding the attention of her
admirers very long; which was humiliating to say the least of it. Joyce
looked upon her as an example of a true flirt, and feared her
accordingly--not on her husband's account, for Ray gave her a wide
berth--but as a criminal at large. Women had whispered tales which she
found impossible to credit; the world was so censorious! But on the
theory that there was never any smoke without fire, she decided that
Mrs. Fox was unscrupulous, and deplored the fact that the Station was
obliged to put up with her. Apparently, so long as a husband
countenanced his wife, no one else had any right to object to whatever
she might do! It was a strange world!

The trend of her thoughts reminded her of the doctor's estimate of
herself, which he had subsequently withdrawn. But then, he could only
have been teasing, for Joyce knew herself, and flirting was very far
from her intentions at any time, or under any circumstance. For
instance, she was very sure she would never allow any man but her
husband to kiss her!--the bare idea was appalling!

After the tennis hour at the Club, Honor Bright cycled up to the steps
of the Bara Koti, and ran in to embrace Mrs. Meredith and welcome her
home. "I am sorry not to have been able to come earlier, there was so
much to do, and a tennis match in the afternoons," she said in her full,
deep voice which Joyce thought so musical. Yet she never sang. God had
given her a larynx, but the wicked fairies had robbed her of ear, so,
though she loved music passionately, she could never produce a tune. "I
must be fit only for 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils,'" she was once
heard to say, "for it seems I was not born musical."

However, it was pointed out to her that she was not just to herself; she
had plenty of "music in her soul" to satisfy even Shakespeare; it was
only her inability to use the divine instrument in her throat. "You put
me in mind of 'Trilby.' Perhaps you will sing if you are hypnotised!"
Joyce had told her.

"Captain Dalton mentioned that you and Baby had both been ill. However I
am glad to see _you_ so well. How is Squawk?"

"How can you call him such a horrid name!" said Joyce reproachfully.

Honor laughed heartily. "Tommy is responsible; you must scold him."

"I shall, indeed. He's a bad boy!"

"Not at all!--he's a Deare!" at which they both laughed, for Mr.
Bright's assistant, like the Assistant Magistrate, had a name of
infinite possibilities. A comic fate had thrown him and Jack Darling
together in the same Station, and they were provocative of fun in more
senses than the coincidence of their names afforded.

The guest was carried off to see the son-and-heir in his crib and admire
his indefinite features that were prophetic of beauty, and his limbs
that were a miracle of elasticity.

By and by, they settled down to talk and Honor was told of the Padre's
approaching visit. "Mrs. Fox thinks we should ask him to put up with us
this time, or he might be offended," she explained. "Will your mother
mind?"

"Mind? she'll be only too glad, for in private life the old man is a
terrible bore! he tells the same joke over and over again, and Mother
says she is determined not to laugh the next time. There ought to be
some way of choking off stale jokes, don't you think, without offending
the poor dear?"

"Tell him one of his own. I am sure it will make such an impression that
he'll never forget it."

"He's so polite, that he'll laugh heartily as though he'd never heard it
in his life!"

"What a hopeless person! However, I shall be glad to save your mother
from nervous prostration," said Joyce.

"Mrs. Fox always gets news in advance of everyone else," said Honor. "I
wonder how she does it?"

"She says she hears a lot--Ray says, servants carry news about the
District as fast as telegrams."

"I hate to think that she takes the liberty of dropping in upon you
whenever she likes. She's not a safe person, so I hope you are careful
of what you tell her."

"Generally, it is she who does the telling, and I the listening."

"It won't do you any good, what she has to say!"

"It won't do me harm. I heard from her today, that you had been bitten
by a snake while I was in camp. How too terrible!--oh, Honey, how
frightened you must have been!" In emotional moments, Joyce called her
friend by her family pet-name.

"I was dreadfully frightened--afterwards," said Honor, shuddering
violently.

"And you never told me!"

"I could not write about it," said the girl with a sudden gravity that
ennobled her face. "I don't like talking about it; it was a bad shock."

"Tell me this once, and we shan't speak of it again," Joyce pleaded.

She thought Honor's a beautiful face, though it had no actual claim to
beauty apart from the brown eyes that were so frank and steadfast, and
her regular teeth. The eyes were arresting in their depth of shade and
power of expression, with dark lashes of unusual thickness; but for the
rest, her complexion was tanned by reckless exposure to the sun, her
nose had a saucy tendency, and her mouth, though shapely, was not by any
means a rosebud; indeed, she had a wide smile which was readily excused
for the charm of it, and because of her splendid teeth. Soulless men
admired Honor for her eyes, her teeth, and her figure which was truly
classical; others, for her honesty and directness, and the womanly
sympathy which never failed. Tommy Deare was among the latter, and he
had known her for the greater part of his life.

Asked to talk of the episode of the snake, Honor's expression changed
and she was strongly moved.




CHAPTER VII

AN ANXIOUS EXPERIENCE


"Have you ever wondered what it must feel like to have sentence of death
passed on you?" said Honor Bright thoughtfully leaning her chin on her
hand, her elbow on a low table before her.

"It must be too awful for description," murmured Joyce, large-eyed and
sympathetic.

"I shall always understand and feel for any one under sentence of death
either by the Courts of Justice or from disease. When I felt the sharp
prick on my ankle and looking down saw the snake glide into the
undergrowth I believed it was all up with me. I had seen two or three
natives who came up to the house for treatment die before my eyes. A
_saice_ bitten in the stables by a cobra died in twenty minutes. A
_mali_ cutting grass was struck on the hand and died in three quarters
of an hour. A _punkha_ coolie on the verandah lost his life within an
hour after being bitten by a karait.

"I could not tell the character of the snake that had bitten me, but it
was large and long, and many cobras are dark and lengthy creatures. My
father shot one with No. 8, in the roots of a banyan tree this very
year, and it measured over four feet."

"But, Honey, dear, why ever were you walking in jungly places?" Joyce
cried, wrought up to the verge of hysteria.

"I was out after snipe. You know how I enjoy shooting, and I generally
go alone, for I am not clever enough yet with my gun to be trusted to
shoot in company with others. One is so afraid of accidents!

"I had been walking along the 'aisles' of the paddy fields till I came
to a swampy bit and found I'd have to walk through it if I had any hope
of starting a bird. Just as I was stepping off the 'aisle,' a snake
passed over my foot, and biting me on the ankle vanished in the swamp.
It must have been some sort of a water-snake, but I did not know. All I
knew was that I had been bitten by a snake that might be poisonous. It
could easily have been an adder, or a karait--even a cobra--though I had
not a minute in which to observe a hood or any distinctive marks. I
immediately collected my faculties to think what was the best thing to
do. I knew I had no time to lose. Mother was away in town shopping for
the cold-weather needs, Dad was out for the day on a riot case. I did
not even know if I should find Captain Dalton at home.

"On the instant, I tied a ligature as tight as I could under the knee,
and then started to run back to the Station as fast as my breath would
allow. As I reached the main road I heard the sound of a motor, and, to
my intense relief and thankfulness, it was the doctor on his way
somewhere--I never asked where--my case was as desperate as any, and I
put up my hand. He saw the 'S.O.S.' message in my face, which he
afterwards said was the hue of chalk, and when he found out what was
wrong, he just bundled me in and drove home like a streak of lightning.
I wonder we did not kill someone or something in the bazaar. I shall
remember to my dying day the way the people fell to right and left
thinking, no doubt, the doctor was mad.

"When we arrived at his bungalow he sprang out, ordering me to find my
way to his consulting room while he went straight to his medicine chest
for the remedies he keeps for cases of snake-bite. By that time my leg
was feeling as heavy as lead--whether from the ligature or the poison, I
do not know--but I could hardly put my foot to the ground. Still, I
hobbled in and sat down to wait. It seemed ages, but was in reality only
a minute or two, when he came and knelt down before me to deal with the
wound. There was very little to be seen, just the punctures and a livid
disk round them. Up till then we had scarcely spoken a word, or I have
no memory of words having passed between us, but I can see his face, all
set and stern, his mouth compressed, his eyes like living coals in his
head intent on his work of rescue.

"I hardly felt all he did; I was so deeply excited inwardly. Outwardly I
was as calm as a stoic. I felt whatever happened I would have to keep my
head to the last. I fully expected to feel desperately ill, and almost
imagined the sensation beginning to creep over me, of numbness and
chill. I had watched the symptoms in others, and could almost trace them
arriving in me. Oh, Joyce, I wouldn't go through that time again if you
gave me a fortune!--yet, I don't know--for one thing, I shall always be
glad."

"And that?" asked Joyce.

"Oh, nothing--just an idea," she said hastily. "Captain Dalton cut deep
into the flesh of my ankle and cauterised the wound; after that he
injected something above my heart. I believe he was not satisfied with
my pulse, for he brought me a stiff brandy-peg to drink. My hands were
stone cold; he chafed them in his. In the meantime my leg swelled and
looked all colours. It was most alarming yet he would not let me think
of it. He, who is usually so silent, talked all the time of a thousand
things that had nothing to do with snakes and their deadliness. He even
made a joke or two. Once he wanted to know if I wanted any one--a lady
to sit by me and cheer me up. But when I couldn't have Mother, and you
were away, I wanted no one else, and told him so. I think he was rather
surprised that I wasn't hysterical or troublesome; that I bore all that
cutting about without uttering a sound. Every now and then he felt my
pulse, and as time passed his face took on a wonderful look. You would
hardly have believed he was the same man. The hardness was all melted
and broken up, his eyes were so kind--he talked so pleasantly.

"After some time I asked if he thought I was well enough to go home, but
he preferred to keep me longer. He thought I would have to be watched
for a bit and looked after. Later he explained that he was afraid of
shock. I had been through such an anxious time. He carried me to his
drawing-room, and while I rested on the sofa he diverted me with music.
He played the most exquisite music, and sang me ever so many songs.
Really, Joyce, nobody knows Captain Dalton. He has most extraordinary
depths in his nature of which I have had only a fleeting glimpse."

"Why is he so antagonistic to people as a rule?" Joyce wondered aloud.

"He has had some great disappointment in his life. Someone has smashed
up all his ideals and beliefs, or he would never be so suspicious and
unfriendly. He is that; for who knows him a bit better today than five
months ago when he first came among us?"

"_You_ do, certainly, Honey!"

"Not even I. I have been favoured with only a glimpse of his inner self.
There are stores of wonderful goodness all hidden away underneath the
nastiness and ill-humour he shows to the world!"

"Do go on and tell me the rest," urged Joyce, excitedly. "What a fearful
experience!"

"It was. I thought of Mother and her grief were I to die,--of my
father's desolation. They are both so wrapped up in me, having no other
child, you know. I pictured myself lying dead and covered with
flowers--you have no idea how involuntary was all this thinking!"

"And you never cried or lost your head?"

"I had not the slightest leaning that way. All I wanted was to die
'decently and in order,'" Honor returned, smiling reminiscently. "I did
not want to make a scene and upset Captain Dalton's nerves. Once, while
feeling faint and sick, I gave him messages. I wanted him to tell Mother
that I did not mind dying, a bit. That was not strictly true, for I love
life as much as any one else, but I thought it would comfort her. I sent
her my love and said that if I had to die, I was sure it was best for
me, because everything happens for the best. 'Do you really believe
that?' he asked. 'I am not quite sure I do,' said I, 'but I must think
of everything that will cheer Mother and help her to be reconciled if I
have to go.'"

"How long were you obliged to be in suspense?"

"Time passed so fast that I had been there four hours before he judged
it was safe to bring me home. He drove me in his car and carried me to
my bed where the ayah took over charge. He then went about his other
duties. He was so kind and wonderful to me...." The colour rushed into
Honor's face at a memory that would not be suppressed. "Just before he
left, he came and stood beside me, looking so queer...."

"How?" Joyce asked curiously. The only expression familiar to her on the
doctor's face was quizzical amusement.

"He has rather wonderful eyes," Honor said reminiscently, "and they
seemed suddenly soft and misty. 'You are quite a heroine, Miss Honor,'
he said. 'I shall think of you often when I am alone in my diggings, as
the bravest girl I know;' and without any warning he took my hand and
kissed it, ever so reverently, almost as though it were the hand of a
queen, and was gone."

"Didn't he come again?"

"Many times to see how the wound was doing. The swelling had to be
fomented--he had shown me how--the ayah was quite a brick about learning
the way. Father was there too, and Mother had returned. Poor Mother wept
enough for two, and Father drank a stiff whisky-and-soda to steady his
nerves. Altogether it was a ghastly experience. I wonder what particular
kind of snake it was!"

"It was evidently poisonous, and the bite would have killed you if the
doctor had not found you in time," said Joyce.

"I have no doubt of it." Honor became suddenly aware of the lateness of
the hour and rose to go. "I shall have to dress for dinner, and there's
only a quarter of an hour to do it in!--Dear me, how I have talked!"

"One minute--this happened only the other day, and yet you had
associated with the doctor for five months before you were properly on
speaking terms?" said Joyce, detaining her.

"We used to see each other in the distance occasionally. He never came
to the Club and showed no inclination for feminine society, so we never
spoke more than to say 'Good-evening' once in the way!"

"Yet he said quite a nice thing about you to me in camp."

"Did he?--What did he say?" Honor asked, flushing.

Joyce related the conversation faithfully, even to the doctor's
concluding remark--"I am not seeking a wife, and have no interest in
friendships."

Honor winced as under a lash, and straightened herself.

"You should not have pressed the point, Joyce. However, what does it
matter? I am glad he thinks well of me, and that's all there is to it.
He and I are of the same mind. I, too, am not seeking a husband, for I
am very happy as I am. Good-bye, dear, I was commissioned with a message
for you, but I have talked so much that it has been nearly forgotten.
Mother wants you to dine tomorrow; just a few friends and Captain
Dalton; and he has actually accepted the invitation."

"It is never safe to ask me to dinner," said Joyce doubtfully. "I hate
leaving Baby all alone at night."

"He has a good ayah."

"Oh, yes. She is absolutely trustworthy; but should he ail ever so
slightly I shall stay at home. I could not go out and leave him the
least bit out of sorts."

"We shouldn't wish it. However, he might be quite all right, and then
you'll come--bye-bye!" she waved her hand from the steps, mounted her
bicycle, and was gone.

So the dinner-party at the Brights' was a settled engagement and Joyce
prepared to keep it. She had never been anywhere without her husband,
and felt nervous and shy for the lack of his support. Moreover, her mind
was haunted by nameless fears for the child who was to be left behind to
the tender mercies of native servants. A thousand possibilities of evil
presented themselves to her mind and robbed the outing of prospective
enjoyment; consequently the next night when it came to the point of
starting, she was full of regrets for her weakness in having consented
to go. "Ayah," she said in a fit of childish confidence, "I care for
nothing on earth so much as my darling baby, how can I leave him for an
hour or two not knowing what is happening to him in the meantime?"

"My Lort! what-for be frightened? Baba plenty well, sleeping sound. What
can be?" the woman cried irritably. Could she not be trusted?

Nothing could possibly happen in so short a time. How did other mothers
fulfil their social engagements? Surely they did not all worry
themselves and others to death over nothing? Joyce therefore resolved to
become more normal in her habits, and proceeded to dress.

Hardly, however, had she put foot in the hired victoria, when the ayah
appeared, suggesting another look at the child. He had been coughing in
his sleep, and considering the mother's anxieties she feared the
responsibility of keeping the fact to herself.

Joyce immediately sprang from the carriage and hurried to the bedroom
where the child lay sleeping in its cot. "You are sure he coughed?" she
asked listening in vain for a repetition of the sound.

"Would I say it for nothing?" the Madrasi asked testily.

"What would it mean?"

"A little cold he has caught, or indigestion."

"Then I cannot go out with any peace of mind," Joyce cried definitely.
"What if he should have croup?"

"Why say such words? Give little honey, and cough go."

But Joyce was not satisfied. What was a dinner-party to her if her
precious one was sickening for croup or any other fatal malady? Most
infant maladies were fatal unless taken in time, and if she were away
and he be taken ill, how would he fare? She decided that the Brights
would have to do without her, and forgive the disappointment.

Forthwith she unwrapped, and settled down to spend a quiet evening
alone, with an ear strained to hear any return of the cough, and quite
determined to send for the doctor should it recur.

However, having upset his mother's nerves and thrown a dinner-party out
of order, the infant slept soundly till morning.




CHAPTER VIII

THE DINNER-PARTY


At Muktiarbad, the usual form of evening entertainment was a
dinner-party with music and bridge to follow; and Mrs. Bright, wife of
the Superintendent of Police, was specially noted for her hospitality in
this respect. The brief intervals spent at home by her husband between
his rounds of inspection or inquiry in his District were always
celebrated by herself and her daughter as festal occasions; and their
friends were gathered together at short notice to eat, not the "fatted
calf," as that would have offended the religious susceptibilities of the
Hindus who held the animal sacred, but one of the fattened geese kept
available for such occasions.

The ladies did not always accompany Mr. Bright on his journeys about the
District, as they were usually hurried and undertaken with scant
preparation. Very little of the flesh-pots of Bengal sufficed to satisfy
Muktiarbad's Chief of Police, who had been thoroughly broken in to the
rough-and-tumble of official life in the _mafasil_. The presence of his
family in camp was a hindrance to Mr. Bright, and he was better pleased
to return, after his strenuous duties, to the peace of domesticity at
his bungalow in the Station. Moreover, there was little of interest in
the monotony of camping in lonely places for a young girl to whom her
mother wished to give every opportunity of settling in life, whatever
might be her own ideas respecting a vocation. Muktiarbad, though a rural
backwater of Bengal, and pronounced by the gay-minded, a penal
settlement, had matrimonial possibilities not to be despised by anxious
parents with daughters to be happily disposed of.

On the whole, it was a highly social if small community who made the
most of their opportunities for enjoyment, accepting the limitations of
the place to which it had pleased Providence and the Ruling Power to
appoint them, with the usual healthy philosophy which has made India so
rich in memories.

It mattered little if they had to endure the discomforts of the climate
and various inconveniences besides; others were in a worse case. Nor did
it matter if they never reached the goal for which they strove--it was
Kismet!

Fatalism is a habit of mind peculiar to the people of the East, where
the unexpected might happen at any time without warning; and it is not
unusual for Europeans to slip half-consciously into the same mental
attitude.

It is consequently not surprising that, in spite of many lurking
dangers, life in the rural districts is careless and free. Risks of
cholera, sunstroke, and snake-bite, are taken boldly without a thought
of possibilities. India has need of resourceful minds and nerves of
steel; and no use for the faltering and irresolute.

Even Mrs. Bright took chances for her family and friends when her cook
at the eleventh hour sent to Robinath Mukerjea's store in the bazaar for
tins of salmon (the fish procured from a local tank being deemed
inevitably earthy in flavour); for Mukerjea bought his provisions at
sales of old stock from the Army and Navy Stores, vowing they were fresh
consignments from _Belait_; but no one was deceived when patronising his
shop in spite of risks of ptomaine. However, a dinner cooked by Kareem
Majid was an achievement more worthy of a Goanese than a Mohammedan, and
none who dined at the Brights' was ever the worse.

"My dear," Mrs. Bright had been heard to observe in earlier days, "were
it not for Honor and the necessity to cultivate the acquaintance of
one's own child, I should never leave India. How I miss that treasure,
Kareem! He has been with us since we were married, and there never was a
more useful servant. Whether in camp or in my own bungalow, it is just
the same; he rises to every emergency and cooks like a French _chef_. At
a pinch he'll valet my husband. He has even in an emergency fastened the
hooks of my blouse at the back; and when Honor was a child, played with
her when she had the measles and kept her from crying herself into a
fit. When other servants ran away from the cholera, he stayed and did
everything but sweep the floors! And when any one is sick, I have never
known the equal of his 'chicken jugs'! He is so self-reliant, too. I
have only to say, 'Kareem, six guests for dinner tonight. Don't ask for
orders--do just as you please, only don't mention the subject of food as
you value your life!' And he will _salaam_ and say, '_Jo hukum_,' after
which I have no responsibility whatever; dinner up to time, everything
cooked to perfection, and when you think of what an Indian cook-house
is, really, you are overcome with admiration. Can you fancy an English
cook consenting to turn out dinners under like conditions? You get
notice in a day! And who thinks of sparing Indian servants? As many
courses as you like, with a wash-up like a small mountain, which the
_masalchi_ disposes of behind the pantry door on a yard or two of bamboo
matting, with an earthen _gumla_, a kettle of boiling water, and an
unthinkable swab! An English maid would have hysterics."

To make existence possible to the residents of Muktiarbad, there was the
great, straggling bazaar on the outskirts of the Station ready to supply
the necessaries of life. An enlightened confidence in the rule of the
sahibs and in their honour and justice was a tradition with the local
population whose trust in the _Sarcar_ was unbounded; for sedition had
not yet poisoned the minds of the peace-loving, contented agriculturists
and shopkeepers who were as conservative as they were simple. It was
only in outlying villages that occasional trouble brewed when ignorant
and superstitious minds were played upon by malcontents.

Ten minutes' grace was allowed to Mrs. Meredith--no more--and Mr. Bright
offered his arm to Mrs. Barrington Fox and led the way to the
dining-room. Mr. Barrington Fox was seldom to be persuaded into
accepting Station hospitalities; and usually made the time-worn excuse,
as on the present occasion, of inspection duty on the line. The Station,
however, understood it to mean that he had ceased to find pleasure in
his wife's company and was determined not to be victimised.

The dining-room at the Brights' was a large apartment, whitewashed like
a hospital ward, but redeemed by hunting pictures on the walls, graceful
drapery, and good furniture. A _punkha_ with a mat frill hung motionless
overhead, as weather conditions were sufficiently altered to dispense
with an artificial breeze; and the dining table beneath it presented an
inviting aspect with its glittering mass of silver, glass, and flowers.
A draught-screen concealed the door of ingress from the pantry where the
business of serving was carried on by the _khansaman_ assisted by a
group of white-robed domestics. Agitated whispers from behind the screen
were infallible indications of mistakes retrieved in the nick of time;
otherwise, the occasional blow of the ice hammer, or the rolling of the
ice machine on the outer door-mat were the only sounds audible from the
dining-room.

Mrs. Bright, full of confidence in her staff and indifferent to mistakes
which were not inexcusable, showed a complete detachment from the
details of serving while she entertained her guests.

A little reshuffling of the order of precedence, when Mrs. Meredith's
non-appearance was assured, had disposed of Tommy Deare to his entire
satisfaction. Left to shift for himself he moved to the other side of
Honor Bright whom Jack Darling had piloted in. He was a plain,
freckle-faced boy of twenty-two with plenty to say for himself, and a
most engaging smile. In height he was on a level with Honor who was
considered tall; yet, to his disgust, he was referred to as a "little
man." But since it was recognised that "valuable goods are packed in
small parcels," he assured his friends of his inestimable worth, and was
comforted.

"Mrs. Meredith is too absurd about that kid of hers," Mrs. Fox was heard
to remark in the first hush that fell with the arrival of the soup.
"Isn't it the baby who is ill tonight?" to Captain Dalton.

"If I had known, I should have mentioned it," said the doctor above his
soup plate. The rudeness of the reply was characteristic of him.

"I understood from Mrs. Meredith that she and her offspring are in your
charge. How neglectful of you to know nothing!"

"I am ready to attend to them when called in," he replied.

"Then you have not been wanted!" she laughed spitefully. "It must be
very mortifying never to be wanted except when you are of use!"

"A doctor is the one man whom you are only too glad to see the last of,"
said Dalton coldly.

"All the same, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if it's the baby who is
ill, and you are sent for before dinner is over. Mrs. Meredith said it
would be the only reason that would stop her coming," put in Mrs.
Bright, anxious to soothe.

"I hope not, indeed!" cried Mrs. Fox. "For now we've got you we mean to
make you sing. Don't imagine we'll let you off."

The doctor bowed a stiff acknowledgment, which meant nothing, and
entered into conversation with the Executive Engineer on the subject of
a morass which he had condemned in his Sanitary Report, and recommended
to be drained.

"The villagers won't stand it," said Mr. Ironsides. "They draw their
drinking water from that _jhil_, and providing them with wells instead
will not console them for its loss. Incidentally, they use it also for
laundry purposes and bathing," he laughed.

"Exactly. So the sooner it is done away with the better for their health
and the health of the District. Malaria and cholera have their source at
Panipara."

"I hope you are not trying to deprive us of our duck-shooting, Doctor,"
said Mr. Bright in alarm. "We depend upon Panipara Jhil for game in the
winters, and there is little sport besides, in this God-forsaken place."

"It will have to go if you want immunity from sickness," said Dalton.

"If _they_ don't mind it, I don't know why _we_ should. It rages chiefly
in Panipara village itself, and is nothing to us."

"It comes on here afterwards with the flies," said Tommy.

"A few natives, more or less, wiped off the face of the earth hereabouts
would be a benefit to Muktiarbad," drawled young Smart of the Railway
from his seat on Mrs. Fox's right, which, by an unwritten law was always
accorded to him at Station dinners.

"How very unfeeling!" cried two or three ladies in unison.

A vigorous argument arose to which Honor listened, deeply interested.
Panipara Jhil lay a few miles outside the Station, with the village of
the same name lying on its banks. It occupied an area of a square mile
or two of marsh land, was overrun with water-weeds and lotus plants, and
dotted about with islands full of jungle growth and date-palms--a
picturesque but unhealthy spot, dear to lovers of sport.

"The natives haven't the foggiest idea of hygiene," said the doctor
finally. "But they cannot be argued with. They will continue their
filthy habits though twenty to thirty per cent. of them get wiped out by
cholera annually. Drain the _jhil_ and give them wells, and there'll be
little or no sickness afterwards. Incidentally, several hundred _bighas_
of ground will be reclaimed for agricultural purposes, which will be a
benefit to the owner."

"The Government will take its own time to consider the proposition, and
a few years hence, when it has exhausted all the red tape available, it
will be put through," said Honor. "In the meantime, the cholera, like
the poor, will be 'with us always!'"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised," said the doctor meeting her eyes in
swift appreciation of her verdict.

He said no more to her, for others intervened and the conversation
changed.

Captain Dalton looked a trifle more cynical and dissatisfied than usual,
Honor thought. His strong jaw and irregular features hid his thoughts,
but not their reflection which showed a mental unrest. He was clearly
not a happy man, and was plainly a discordant element in light-hearted
company. "A real wet blanket," Tommy whispered in her ear. "If one makes
a joke he either doesn't hear it, or thinks it not worth laughing at.
Something has turned him sour, so he hates to see people happy."

But Honor was not in agreement with him. "I grant he is an embittered
man--he looks it; but he is quite willing that you should enjoy yourself
so long as you don't force your high spirits on him. If one's mind is
not in accord with blithesomeness, one surely might be excused from
taking part in it."

"I do believe you like the blighter?" Tommy cried reproachfully.

"I have every reason to," she answered stoutly.

"Because he cured you of snake-bite? Doctors get a pull over us poor
laymen when it comes to matters of life and death. They do their duty,
and you are grateful for all time," at which Honor laughed heartily, for
Tommy was looking personally injured.

"There's Mrs. Meredith!" he continued. "She talks of him with tears in
her eyes as though he were a saint--Old Nick, more likely!--He has been
endowed with every virtue when he has none, simply because he put the
Squawk to rights." Tommy had seen Joyce that afternoon and went on to
describe his visit. "She was looking topping, so was the kid; which
makes it all the more mysterious, her not turning up. But, my word, she
is pretty! One might be excused for any indiscretion when she makes eyes
at one!"

However, to his disappointment, Honor showed no symptoms of jealousy.
"I'll wager she neglected you for her baby!" She said. "Mrs. Meredith
has no interest in young men."

"She had plenty in me. We grew quite intimate--talked of the weather and
_anopheles_ mosquitoes, and improved the occasion by rubbing _eau de
Cologne_ on the bites."

"How very thrilling! and she forgot all about you the moment you had
left!"

"Everyone forgets all about Tommy the moment he has left," put in Jack,
thinking it about time to remind them of his presence.

He was a handsome young athlete of twenty-five, with the reputation of
having played in the Rugby International. He owned a complexion
inconveniently given to blushing. He and Tommy chummed together in a
three-roomed bungalow near the Police Court and were generally known as
inseparables. Both played polo and tennis with skill and kept the
Station entertained by their high spirits and resourcefulness.

Honor's attention was diverted by an animated discussion among her
elders respecting the duties of a wife and mother in the East.

"A mother is perfectly justified in taking her child home if it cannot
stand the climate," Mrs. Fox was saying.

"I suppose the question to be decided is, whom a woman cares most for,
child or husband--whether she will live away from her husband for the
sake of the child, or from the child for the sake of the husband,
presuming that the climate is not suitable to children," said a guest.

A strident voice was heard to remark that women had no business to marry
men whose careers were in the East, if they meant to live away from them
most of the time. "It's a tragedy for which doctors are mainly
responsible," with a sniff and a challenging glance at Captain Dalton.

"Oh, you doctors!" laughed Mrs. Bright, shaking her finger at him. "See
what mischief you are accountable for!--ruined lives, broken homes!"

"In many cases, it is a charity to part husbands and wives," said the
doctor grimly.

"Hear, hear!" from Mrs. Fox, at which Mrs. Ironsides was shocked.

"I hope Mrs. Meredith will not go home so soon," she said. "It will be a
pity, when she and her husband have been so lately married. Somebody
should influence her to remain and give the hills a trial. They seem to
suit children very well."

"If she goes home it will be nothing short of a calamity," said Honor
quietly, thinking of Ray Meredith's devotion and his wife's
unsophisticated and undeveloped mind. "It would never do unless she
means to return immediately."

"A child of tender years needs its mother," said a lady whose heart
yearned for her little one in England. "No stranger will give it the
same sympathy or care."

"It is a difficult problem to which there is no solution," said Mrs.
Bright.

"I always feel, when I see a wife living for years at home while her
husband remains out here, that there is no love lost between them. The
children serve as an excellent excuse for the separation," said Honor,
colouring at her own audacity in voicing an opinion so pronounced. "No
reason on earth should be strong enough to part those who care deeply
for each other."

"Hear, hear!" murmured Tommy under his breath, while Mrs. Fox laughed
disagreeably. "An excellent sentiment coming from you, Miss Bright, who
have no experience. Long may you subscribe to it."

Honor blushed still deeper. "I have my ideals," she returned.

"I trust they will never be shattered!" the lady sneered.

Again Dalton's eyes met Honor's with strange intentness. Feeling out of
her depth she had looked involuntarily to him for the subtle sympathy,
instinct told her was in his attitude to her, and she had received it
abundantly in the slow smile which softened his expression to one of
absolute kindness. It created a glow at her heart, to linger with her
for the rest of the evening.

"Whenever I used to run home on short 'leave of absence' to see if Honor
had not altogether forgotten me," said Mrs. Bright, smiling
reminiscently, "and dared to hint at an extension, my husband would
squander all his T.A. in cablegrams threatening to divorce me on the
spot in favour of some mythical person if I did not return by the next
mail. Wasn't that so, dear?"

"Gross exaggeration, my love. I could never get you to take a
respectable holiday, for just as I was beginning to enjoy my liberty as
a grass-widower, you would bob up serenely with 'No, you don't' on every
line of your rosy face. It was worth anything, however, to see those
English roses back again."

("The reason why Honor is such a nice girl," a lady once told Captain
Dalton, "is because she has such a charming example of love in her home.
Love is in her bones; her parents are so perfectly united that it is
impossible for Honor to be anything but a good wife. Parents are
immensely responsible for their children's psychology.")

"I have never ceased to thank Providence that I have no children!" said
the wife of a railway official, with a sigh of contentment, "so the
tragedy of separation has never affected me. I can honestly say that I
have never left my husband for more than a day since we married, fifteen
years ago!" and she reared her thin neck out of her evening gown and
looked about her for congratulations.

"Lord, how sick of her he must be!" whispered Tommy under his breath, to
the delight of Jack and Honor. "Life would be stale and unprofitable if
I could not repeat the honeymoon every autumn when my wife returned from
the hills. So thrilling to fall in love with one's own wife every year!"

"Which proves that you will make a very bad husband," said Honor
severely. "Out of sight out of mind."

"He won't talk so glibly of sending his wife to the hills when he has
discovered that she has been carrying on with Snooks of the Convalescent
Depôt while he has been stewing in the plains," said Jack with a _blasé_
air.

"Since when have you turned cynic, Mr. Darling?" Honor asked,
astonished. "It doesn't become you in the least!"

"Jack had an enlightening holiday in Darjeeling last month when he had
ten days during the _Pujas_," Tommy explained with reprisals in his eye.
"It accounts for his attitude of mind. Having strict principles and a
faint heart, no one had any use for him up there but Mrs. Meredith and
the Y. M. C. A.----"

"Don't listen to him, Miss Bright," Jack interrupted.

"--So in sheer desperation he turned nurse to Squawk and ran errands for
its mother, wondering the while how it was that some men had all the
luck!"

"Draw it mild, I say!"

"And now he sits up half the night composing odes to her eyebrows and
boring me stiff with his sighs."

"Liar!" laughed Jack. "I couldn't write poetry to save my life."

"It doesn't prevent him from trying. Then there's her photograph----"

"It isn't hers, I told you!" Jack protested. "Tommy, you're a villain."

"It's jolly like her, what I saw of it when it fell out from under your
pillow."

By this time Jack was crimson. He relapsed into sulky silence and
devoted himself to his plate with appetite. Honor Bright wanted no
better evidence of the fact that he was heart-whole, though she
continued to wonder whose was the photograph he was treasuring so
sentimentally.

Dinner progressed through its many courses towards dessert, when toasts
were drunk to "Absent Ones," and "Sweethearts and Wives,"--the usual
conclusion to dinners at the Brights'; then, with a loud scraping of
chairs, the ladies rose and filed out of the room.

Later, when the gentlemen appeared having finished their smokes, it was
discovered that Captain Dalton had retired. He had excused himself to
his host on the plea of a late visit to his patient at Sombari, three
miles out, and was gone.

"Dear, dear!" sighed Mrs. Bright. "How very disappointing! Evidently he
had no intention of singing tonight, and I hear he has such a divine
voice!"

"But we don't begrudge that poor girl his attention when she is so ill,"
put in Mrs. Ironsides.

"Indeed, no. I wonder how she is."

"Pretty bad, from all accounts," said Mr. Bright.

"Her poor mother must be distracted. The only real happiness she has in
life is the companionship of this only child. Mr. Meek is so
narrow-minded and autocratic in domestic life. He must be sorry now that
he deprived the child of so many opportunities of innocent amusement."

"Not at all," said a guest. "He will congratulate himself that he kept
her unspotted from the world. Muktiarbad is his idea of unadulterated
godlessness. We are such a bad example to his converts, you know, with
our tennis on Sundays!"

"Poor little Elsie! I hope she will recover," said Mrs. Bright.

Honor felt a distinct sense of depression when she heard that Captain
Dalton had gone quietly away without even a hint to herself that he had
had no intention of staying. It was clear that he had no interest in
remaining; his excuse she disregarded, for he could have visited Sombari
earlier in the evening when he knew that he was engaged to dine out. She
believed he liked her ... but he was "not seeking to marry her," as he
had said to Joyce in camp, so it was her duty to rise above the folly of
thinking too much of a man who would never be anything more to her than
a mere acquaintance. With a determined effort to stifle feelings of
wounded pride and disappointment, she ordered Tommy to the piano to
beguile the company with ragtime ditties at which he was past-master,
and while he played and others sang, notably Bobby Smart, who was not to
be chained to the side of Mrs. Fox, the latter was left to cultivate the
acquaintance of the shy Apollo, Jack Darling, whom the Brights and Tommy
had hitherto absorbed.

Jack met her ravishing smile with a blush of self-consciousness, fearing
all eyes upon himself as he accepted the seat beside her on a
chesterfield. He was so obviously new to the art of intrigue, so
conspicuously ingenuous, that he had the charm of novelty for her. She
believed that Mrs. Bright was manoeuvring to get him for a son-in-law
and was chafing at Honor's lack of worldly wisdom in dividing her
favours equally between him and Tommy whose prospects in life were less
brilliant. The situation was one entirely after her own heart, to make
or mar with impish deliberation. In spite of his comparatively inferior
social standing and unattractive appearance, Tommy was popular with the
girls for his ready wit. He dared to be unconscious of his disadvantages
and stormed his way into the front rank of drawing-room favourites; but
he was too unimpressionable and discerning to suit Mrs. Fox's taste, so
she left him alone to see what she could make of Jack whose
guilelessness was a strong appeal to women of her type. His development
under her guidance seemed the only excitement life had to offer her in
this rural backwater, and she was not one to miss her opportunities.

"I'd dearly love to act sponsor to a boy like you in the beginning of
his career, Jack," she cried with a tender inflection of the voice. "By
the way, I'm going to call you 'Jack'--may I?"

"Certainly, if you care to," he returned awkwardly.

"Oh, you are priceless! What an opportunity you missed for a pretty
speech!" and she laid her hand caressingly on his for a moment to
emphasise her delight in him.

"Why? what should I have said?" he asked, laughing boyishly, and wincing
under her touch. The suggestion of intimacy in her manner somewhat
embarrassed him.

"I should like to see you a few years hence when your education is
complete," she returned, evading his question teasingly. "But you
mustn't marry, or you will be utterly spoilt."

"There is no immediate prospect of that!" he said laughing and giving
away the fact that he was heart-whole. "But won't you take up the job
tonight and begin instructing me?"

"I am sorely tempted to," she replied, smiling affectionately on him.
"You must really learn your possibilities. They are limitless. After
that, everything will come naturally,--assurance, the wit to grasp
opportunities, and a bold initiative, without which a man is no good."

"No good?--for what?" he pressed ingenuously.

"To pass the time with, of course, O most adorable infant!" she laughed
silently, returning his look with an expression of half-veiled
admiration.

In stations where officials came and went with meteoric suddenness owing
to the reshuffling of the governmental pack of human cards, friendships
were as sudden as they were transient. Jack Darling having arrived at
Muktiarbad while Mrs. Fox was at a hill station, their acquaintance was
only in its initial stage.

"Look at Mrs. Fox," whispered Mrs. Ironsides to Mrs. Bright. "She is
doing her best to spoil that nice boy with her flattery! You can tell
that she is pouring conceit into him by the bucketful. Shameless
creature! I wonder her husband doesn't send her home."

"She prefers India," Mrs. Bright showed a restless eye.

"Mr. Smart will be only too glad if Mr. Darling relieves him of his
attendance on Mrs. Fox. Did you notice how he yawned at table while she
was talking to him?"

"He lives in her pocket, all the same, and is always at her beck and
call."

"Was my dear. I have noticed a great change latterly, and I hear he is
going to be transferred. Mr. Fox knows his people at home and is
arranging it."

"And he knows his wife better," said Mrs. Bright with satire. It seemed
at Muktiarbad everybody knew everybody else's affairs.

She allowed a brief interval to pass and then, using her privilege as
hostess, captured Jack on the pretext of sending him to the piano, with
Honor to select his song from a pile of music in a canterbury. By the
time the ballad was finished and a chorus was in full swing, Mrs. Fox
had been carried away by Mr. Bright to make a fourth at auction in
another room.

Jack watched her go somewhat regretfully, wondering the while,
shamefacedly, if he would be able to have another talk with her that
night, and consigning all scandalmongers to perdition, who had dared to
make free with her name. He refused to believe ill of so charming a
lady, and was not surprised that Bobby Smart had found her company
attractive--why not? When a brute of a husband spent all his time down
the line instead of trying to make life pleasant for his wife, it was no
wonder she was obliged to find entertainment for herself in the society
of other men! Hers was a poor sort of life, anyway.

When the party broke up, Mrs. Fox elected to walk home as a tribute to
the glorious moonlight, and Jack was commandeered to act as her escort.
It was a good opportunity for the lady to show that renegade, Master
Bobby Smart, that he was not indispensable. His yawn at dinner deserved
a reprisal.

Bobby Smart, however, was not slow to profit by his release from escort
duty, and wasted no time in pleasing himself. "I'll drop you home,
Deare," he said cheerfully, "and we'll have a whisky-and-soda at your
bungalow before you turn in."

"I should wait till I'm asked," said Tommy lighting a cigarette and
dropping the match in a flower-pot on the verandah.

"I knew you were pining to have me round for a _buk_."[9]

[Footnote 9: Chat.]

"You can come in if you promise to go home by midnight," Tommy
condescended. "I'll not be kept up later."

"On the stroke. That's a jolly good whisky you have. I was going to send
to Kellner's for the same brand today, but forgot."

Tommy climbed into Smart's trap and consented to be driven home. His
hospitality and Jack's was proverbial at Muktiarbad.




CHAPTER IX

A MOMENT OF RELAXATION


On leaving the Brights' dinner-party, Captain Dalton made his way to his
car and sped out upon the moonlit road. An appreciable hesitation at the
gate ended in his taking a course in an opposite direction to that in
which lay Sombari and his patient.

A misty peacefulness of smoke and quietude brooded over the Station.
Darkened bungalows looked like sightless monsters dead to the world, and
the silent lanes were alive alone with fireflies scintillating like
myriad stars in a firmament of leaves. At Muktiarbad, there was little
else for the English residents to do after the Club had closed its door
at nine, but eat, drink, and sleep. Theatres never patronised _mafasil_
stations, and cinemas had not yet found their way so far into rural
Bengal. In the bazaar also, which was strictly the native quarter of the
town, the night was silent save for intermittent tom-tomming on the
favourite _dholuk_,[10] or, here and there, the murmur of gossiping in
doorways. Behind mat walls men gambled or slept, and by the pale light
of the moon could be seen the smoke of burning cow-dung--kindled for the
destruction of mosquitoes--curling upward from the clusters of thatched
huts, and filling the air with opalescent mist.

[Footnote 10: Indian drum.]

But Captain Dalton had no business in the bazaar.

If Honor Bright could have seen him then, she would have been surprised
at the look of indecision on his usually determined face. Freed from the
restraint of curious eyes watching for revelations of himself, the man's
face wore a more human expression; his peculiar half-smile of
toleration, or contempt, relaxing the lines of his stern mouth.

For a couple of furlongs he drove fast, then slowed down to a noiseless
glide as he ran past the tall cactus fence bordering the Collector's
domain. At the end of the fence where it turned at right angles dividing
the "compound" from a paddock, the engines were reversed in the narrow
lane, till the car came back to the rustic gate beyond the culvert.

It lay hospitably open in the usual way of gates in the Station, and
gave access to the grounds. There was only a momentary pause while
Dalton seemed to make sure of his intention, and the next instant he was
moving slowly up the drive between the handsome goldmohur trees of the
avenue. In the dark shadow of one of these, he shut off his engines and
stepped to the ground.

All about him, the garden was bathed in silver light, each shrub and
arbour steeped in tranquil loveliness, while footpaths gleamed white
amidst stretches of dusky lawns; the whole presenting a scene of
veritable enchantment under the soft radiance of the moon; a gentle
breeze, the while, rustling among the leaves.

In front of him lay the wide, squat bungalow with its flat roof
ornamented by a castellated balustrade of masonry, and supported by tall
pillars. The verandah was in darkness but for a hurricane hand lantern
on the top step.

He was not sure that he had the right to intrude at that late hour even
with the pretext of a semi-official inquiry ... but lights in the
drawing-room and the tones of the piano, rich and sweet, ended his
indecision. The staff of servants being reduced by their master's
requirements in camp, there was no one at hand to announce his arrival.
Even the peon, supposed to keep watch against the intrusion of toads and
snakes, had betaken himself to the servants' quarters behind the
bungalow, for his last smoke before shutting up the house for the night.

Joyce was playing Liszt's _Liebestraum_ with diligence, but no feeling.
Her execution was good, but her soul being yet unawakened, she played
without understanding, and Dalton's musical sense suffered tortures as
he listened for a few moments; then, abruptly parting the curtains, he
ruthlessly interrupted the performance by his entrance, conscious on the
instant of the alluring picture she made,--or, rather, would make, to
senses that were impressionable. Having outlived that stage, he could
only survey at his leisure the curve of her youthful cheek and the small
bow of her mouth that seemed to demand kisses; watch the lights dance in
the gold of her hair, and amuse himself with the play of her eyelashes.
She was dressed in rich simplicity, the only colour about her, apart
from the shell-pink of her face and the natural crimson of her lips, was
a deep, red rose in her bosom. He inhaled its perfume as she ran to him
and seized his hand in impetuous welcome, while he could not but
appreciate the exceptional opportunity afforded him of improving their
acquaintance.

"How did you know that I was longing to send for you but lacking in
courage?" she asked, holding his hand in both hers with extreme
cordiality, born of her gratitude for his late services. Her manner was
that of a child towards a respected senior, and was not without a
certain charm.

"You did not come to dinner," he replied with his grudging smile, "so I
had to call and see why. You are such a grave responsibility to me in
your husband's absence."

"Does it weigh very heavily on you?" she asked coquettishly.

"As you see, it dragged me here at this late hour!"

"Poor you!" she sympathised; then instantly pulled a long face and
explained her alarms deprecatingly while she drew him--still holding his
hand--to her bedroom that he might see the child for himself and judge
of his condition.

It was her habit to have the baby's crib by her bed, and the ayah close
at hand in case of disturbed nights, while Meredith was compelled to
retire to a separate suite, adjoining hers. "Such a young infant needs
his mother, you selfish old Daddy, and must not be deprived." Arguments
respecting the advantages of employing an English nurse and establishing
a nursery had been swept aside as arbitrary and unfeeling. As if she
could ever consent to a hireling occupying her place with her beloved
child! Others might do as they pleased and lose their place in their
little ones' affections, but not she! Fathers should consider their
offspring before themselves. When Meredith had looked unconvinced and
injured, she had tried to soften the blow by cajoleries, in the use of
which she was past-mistress. Silly goose! as if the same roof did not
cover them both! and didn't she belong to him and no one else in the
world?--"Was he going to be a cross boy, then, and make his little
girl's life miserable with big, ugly frowns?..."

The doctor gave the child a brief examination as he and Joyce leant over
the crib, shoulder to shoulder. She seemed so unconscious of the close
contact and of its effect on the average masculine nature that he
mentally decided she was either a simpleton or a practised flirt, given
to playing with fire.

"I shall sleep so much better tonight now that I know there is nothing
seriously wrong with my precious darling!" she said, returning beside
him to the drawing-room and tantalising him with brief glances from her
shy, sweet eyes.

"You worry quite unnecessarily, take it from me," he returned. "Don't
put him in a glass case, and he will do all right. You should go out
more."

"I shall, when Ray comes back. He has the car."

"Play tennis every afternoon at the Club."

"I daren't! I play so badly," she pouted.

"Then come driving with me," he said on an impulse which he regretted
the moment after, for it would deprive him of the scant leisure he
usually devoted to a treatise he was writing. It was not his habit to
sacrifice himself to strangers and people in whom he was not greatly
interested. However, the study of the little spoiled beauty might prove
entertaining since she was not as transparent as he had imagined. The
mystery of her undeveloped nature, her childish outlook on life, her
ingenuousness and coquetry, were all somewhat unusual and appealing. He
could not quite gauge her feeling for her husband who worshipped the
ground she trod on. She probably took him for granted as she took the
solar system, and was not above practising her arts innocently on others
to relieve the monotony of her days. Like most pretty women, he judged
her fully aware of her prettiness, and not bound by too rigid a sense of
propriety. It might amuse him to test how far she would permit herself
to go--or the men who admired her physical beauty; and as he had no
friendship for her husband, he was not troubled by too many qualms on
Meredith's account. With a big score to settle against Life, he
considered himself at liberty to choose the nature of his compensation,
and so be even with Fate.

"I should dearly love to drive with you," Joyce said engagingly,
thinking of his perfect little car and the triumph it would be to tame
this unsociable and reserved person in the eyes of all the Station. What
a score for her little self!

Being essentially of a friendly disposition, she saw no reason why he
should not become her particular friend. Not as if she were a creature
like Mrs. Fox, or other women who flirted--perish the thought! There
could therefore be no possible wrong.

"Have you ever driven your car?" he asked indulgently.

"Never."

"Nervous?"

"I don't think so, only no one ever showed me how."

"Shall I teach you?"

"Will you? What a dear you are!" she cried with eyes sparkling and
dimples in full play as she seized the lapels of his coat and made him
swear not to back out. "It will be great! What a surprise for Ray--you
won't mention it? I can fancy myself hopping into the chauffeur's seat,
and whoof! gliding away before his eyes. I shall dream of it all night."

"And of me?" he asked looking at his watch and recalling his intention
to visit Sombari before midnight.

"Of course. That goes without saying if it is about your car!" twirling
lightly on her toe with the grace of a born dancer.

"I find it difficult to believe you are married," he said with a crooked
smile. "Your husband should call you 'Joy.'"

"He invents all sorts of pet names far sweeter."

"Anyhow, I shall think of you as 'Joy,'" he amended, taking up his cap
from the piano.

"I can't fancy you thinking of any one so frivolous as myself," she
laughed. "But you are not going, surely? We haven't even begun to talk!"

The open piano and her frank disappointment drew him to dally with
temptation, and he seated himself on the music stool, uninvited, to run
his fingers over the keys. "You were playing the _Liebestraum_. Will you
let me play it to you?" he coolly suggested, anxious to give her a
lesson as to how it should be interpreted; and without waiting for her
consent, began to play.

Joyce drew up full of interest and pleasure to listen and watch,
instantly aware that he was no self-advertised musician. As she had no
conceit in regard to her one and only accomplishment, she was ready and
willing to learn from him.

Dalton played with the technique and sympathy of a great artist. Though
the opening movement was soft and low, every note fell like drops of
liquid sweetness, clear and true--the melody thrilling her with its
tender appeal. Insensibly it grew stronger and louder, the pace
quickened, till the crash of chords and the rippling rush of sound
caused her to hold her breath in an ecstasy lest she should be robbed of
a single delight. Now and then, she glanced at his face and she knew
that, for the moment, she had ceased to exist for him. His strange,
jade-green eyes with their flecked irids had widened as though with
inspiration. He saw visions as he played, gazing intently into space;
Joyce wondered what he saw, sure that it was beautiful, and passionately
sad. Gradually, the passion and dignity of the music having reached its
climax, it grew weary and spent. The glorious melody sighed its own
requiem and softly died away on a single note.

For a moment neither spoke, till Joyce gave a hysterical sob that broke
the spell. "It is too wonderful--the way you play!" she cried
breathlessly. "It makes my flesh creep and my heart stand still. I know
now why you chose to play the _Liebestraum_!----"

He smiled back at her like the culprit he was.

"I had dared to attempt its murder!--believe me, I shall never play it
again!"

"I wanted to show you how it might be played, but I do not dare to
criticise."

"You have done so, scathingly!--Oh! I feel so small."

"Then I am sorry I played it."

"I am infinitely glad. You will have to teach me something more than
motoring," she said wistfully, her blue eyes pleading. "You will have to
tell me how I should play. I want to hear you all day long!"

He smiled at her enthusiasm. "I shall be delighted to give you all the
help I can."

"Honor Bright said yesterday that you once sang to her--I am jealous!
Won't you sing to me?"

"Did she tell you of the occasion?"

"Yes, and how good you were to her."

"She is a heroine--_Honor Bright_," he repeated her name with curious
tenderness.

"She thinks you are a wonderful person, altogether."

"Does she?" he asked quickly, a shadow falling suddenly over his face at
a thought which was evidently disturbing. "How am I wonderful?"

"I don't know. She said something about great depths in your nature. She
believes you are tremendously good, inside, but that you will not show
it because you have been hit very hard and feel like hitting back."

He was silenced for a moment.

"What made her say that?" he asked while continuing to draw subdued
harmonies from the instrument.

"It was to explain your attitude towards people. You are so hard and
cold. But what does all that matter? The main thing is, I want you to
sing, and you must!" She laid her hands over his on the keys with pretty
imperativeness, and put an end to the chords.

"Look at the time," said he, drawing attention to the gilt clock on an
occasional table. The phrase "hard and cold" echoed in his ears to mock
him.

"It is certainly late!" she gasped, as she realised that the hands
pointed to a quarter past eleven. "But I am so lonely and dull. Do sing
to me!"

A mischievous smile twisted his lips as he struck the opening bars of
_The Dear Homeland_. "It's an old ballad and will probably bore you to
tears," he said, before beginning to sing. Joyce had often heard it
sung, but never with the feeling Captain Dalton threw into it for her
benefit alone. It was a strong and direct appeal to nostalgia, and the
quality of his voice, together with the words, dissolved her into tears
of positive distress. When he had finished, she was weeping silently
into her little hands,--unaffectedly and sincerely.

"I cannot bear it!" she sobbed childishly. "Why did you choose that when
you knew how I am longing for home and the home faces!"

"I am a brute, am I not?" he said repentantly, taking down her hands and
drying her eyes with his handkerchief. "Was it a nasty fellow, then, to
tease?"

"It was," she laughed hysterically with downcast lids and sobbing
breath, looking adorable with her saddened wet eyes and crimson flush.

"Come, I'll make up for it and sing you something quite different." And
he was as good as his word, singing passionate love-songs that swore
eternal devotion to a mythical "Beloved," till a clock, striking twelve,
brought him abruptly to his feet.

"Do you always allow your visitors to stay so late?" he asked while
saying good-night.

"I never have visitors at night when I am alone," she returned,
surprised. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you are too pretty and will have to be careful. Pretty women
have enemies of both sexes."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that men will want to make love to you if you are too kind, and
women will tear your reputation to shreds."

He watched the flush deepen in her cheeks: she was uncertain how to take
his remark, but decided he had not meant a liberty.

"I think I shall always fear women more than men," she said finally,
thinking of the slanderous tongues of her sex.

"Am I forgiven for having made you cry?" he asked.

"Of course. Thank you so much for the songs. You sing like an angel."

"A very bad one I'm afraid," he returned. "With your leave I shall take
this rose as a pledge," he said drawing it from the brooch at her bosom
and laying it against his lips. "Look, it is fading fast. Will you fix
it in my coat?"

Joyce unaffectedly complied. He was welcome to the rose as a reward for
his beautiful music. "When you get home, put it in water, and it will
fill your room with fragrance," she said patting it into position.

"--And my mind of you?" he suggested tentatively, knowing full well that
he would forget all about her and her rose the moment he was out of
sight of her dwelling. Already he was wondering why he had allowed
himself to waste so much of his valuable time in trifling and whether he
would have dared the same liberty with the rose had it been resting on
Honor Bright's bosom. With Honor, somehow, a man would have to plead for
favours and value them for their rarity when obtained. No man in the
Station took liberties with Honor Bright, and every man thoroughly
respected her. Dalton shook his mind free of the thought of Honor
Bright.

"I shan't mind if the rose recalls me to you, so long as you promise to
forget my _Liebestraum_!" said Joyce.

"I shall remember only the tears I caused you to shed, and never be so
cruel again." Dalton passed out into the verandah accompanied by his
hostess who desired to speed the parting guest. "When does your husband
return?" he asked.

"Tomorrow night. I am counting the hours," she replied. "Haven't you
heard that 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'?"

"I don't subscribe to that sentiment," he retorted with a disagreeable
laugh as he walked towards the car.

She certainly had the makings of a dangerous flirt, he decided, though,
at present, she was only feeling her way. Time would develop her powers
and then, God help the young idiots who would lose their heads! Most of
all, God help her fool-husband--the besotted idealist! In a few years,
Joyce Meredith would be no better than most lovely women in the
East--notably such as flourished in the hill stations of India.

Dalton was amused, and laughed aloud at his own weakness and folly. He
had not wanted her rose--yet, at the moment, the propinquity of her
beauty had magnetised him and given him the desire for a closer
intimacy--possibly a kiss!--so he had put his lips to the rose! Feminine
witchery had made utter fools of men through the ages! Given further
chances of intimacy, a rose might not again suffice!

By the time Dalton had reached the crossroads, indecision had again
taken possession of him, and he hesitated at the wheel. He had left the
Brights' party fully intending to run out to Sombari, but had been
diverted; and now it was too late. They would not be expecting him after
midnight. He yawned, thoroughly tired, as he had had a strenuous day,
and decided to call at the Mission fairly early in the morning, instead.
There was nothing he could do for the sufferer more than was being done
by the trained nurse he had procured for the case.

Satisfied in mind that bed was the best place for tired people, Dalton
turned his car and drove it to his own bungalow next door to the
Brights'.




CHAPTER X

THE MISSION


Life at a small station like Muktiarbad would have been a dull affair
for any young girl not constituted like Honor Bright. Being endowed with
plenty of common sense and sincerity of purpose, she found a great deal
to occupy her in her restricted circle by throwing herself into the
business of the moment, heart and soul. If it were an early morning
ride, she enjoyed every yard of it, and all there was to see and do.
Even the flat countryside with its endless fields of paddy and mustard
were good to view because Muktiarbad was "home" to her.

"Define the word 'home,'" she was once asked when very young. "Where
Mother is," was her ready reply. "Where Love is," would be her later and
more comprehensive amendment.

When she played tennis she played to win, and her enthusiasm infected
others, till the game was worth the energy, however great the heat. If
house-duties were imposed on her, they were accomplished thoroughly and
cheerfully. Honor striding across the back-yard to examine the horses in
their stalls, the condition of their bedding, and to see them fed; or to
inspect the chicken run; or visiting the kitchen to view pots and pans
which were arranged at a particular hour, bottom up, in a row, to prove
how perfectly aluminium could be made to shine, was a refreshing sight;
and the grace of her gait, the freedom of her movements, and the
brightness of her looks, brought sunshine to hearts on the darkest days.

In spite of Mrs. Bright's confidence in her faithful Kareem Majid, she
never neglected to supervise those details of housekeeping in India that
make all the difference between sickness and health, economy and
extravagance. "For, however wonderful the dear servants are, they do
want watching," she would explain to inquiring friends. "You simply have
to see what they are up to, or run terrible risks of microbes in the
kitchen, horses falling ill, and eggs getting beautifully less. They are
without the remotest idea of sanitation for man or beast, and revel in
dirt if you let them, poor things! And honesty is not their strong
point; they have to be checked on all accounts, or they will sell
vegetables from your kitchen garden to your neighbours who have none; or
sell you your own hens' eggs, and do heaps of other iniquitous things
you could hardly dream of!" So Honor was carefully instructed in the
ways of housekeeping from the moment of her return to the East, and was
an able lieutenant to her mother.

"Besides, it is only right and proper, since, one of these days you will
have a house of your own and ought to know how to run it, or I pity the
unfortunate man you marry!" Mrs. Bright remarked when introducing her
daughter to further mysteries in the art of housekeeping. "Which puts me
in mind of Tommy Deare," she continued, eyeing Honor gravely. "What do
you mean to do with him?"

"I don't mean to do anything with him," laughed the girl.

"You know he is in love with you--any one can see that."

"I know, because he won't let me forget it," Honor said ruefully.

"Yet you are often about with him, riding and playing tennis--is it fair
to fan his hopes?"

"He knows perfectly how I feel towards him. Short of putting him in
Coventry I can do nothing less than I am doing."

"But the worst of it is that he keeps others off!" Mrs. Bright
exclaimed. "There's Jack Darling who lives with him--such a nice boy and
a very excellent suitor from every point of view----"

"He is not a suitor, by any means," interrupted her daughter.

"He might have been if his friend were not over head and ears in love
with you!"

"I should not have encouraged him. Jack does not appeal to me. He is
very dear and charming, but not the sort of man I should lose my heart
to. He is weak--and I love strength."

"But, dear, surely you are not favouring Tommy?--he will never be
anything great in our Service. You have the example of your own father
who has come to the end of his prospects on an income that would have
been hopelessly inadequate had there been boys to educate and start in
life! That's what our Service is worth! While Jack--!" words failed her
to express her estimation of the Indian Civil Service of which Jack was
a promising member.

"But dear Mother, I am not going to marry a Service!" laughed Honor.
"When I fall in love with a Man it won't much matter what job he is in,
or what prospects he has. And if he is in love with me, and wants me,
why"--she left the obvious conclusion to her mother's imagination. "But
rest assured, whoever he may be, he will never be Tommy!" she added by
way of consolation.

The morning after the dinner-party was typical of late October in the
plains of Bengal, with its dewy freshness of atmosphere and a nip in the
north wind that was an earnest of approaching winter--if the season of
cold weather might be so termed, when fires were never a necessity, and
frost was rare. It was, however, a time of pleasant drought when the
state of the weather could be depended upon for weeks ahead, with blue
skies, a kinder sun, and dead leaves carpeting the earth without
denuding the trees of their wealth of foliage.

Outside the Bara Koti a light haze was visible through the branches of
the trees, lying like a thin veil on the distant horizon; and, overhead,
light fleecy clouds drifted imperceptibly across the blue sky. It was
the hour popularly believed to be the best in the twenty-four, which
accounted for Mrs. Meredith's ayah wheeling the baby through the dusty
lanes, in a magnificent perambulator, "to eat the air."

"_Hawa khané_," translated Honor Bright critically, as she drew rein and
moved her pony aside to make way. She was riding, in company with Tommy
Deare, to Sombari that she might learn the latest news of Elsie Meek, a
girl of her own age and one for whom she had much sympathy. Elsie had
been undergoing the training necessary to fit her for becoming a
missionary, irrespective of her talents in other directions; and Honor
had often thought of her with sympathy. But Mr. Meek had his own ideas
respecting his daughter's career, and Mrs. Meek had long since ceased to
voice her own. "_Hawa khané!_--how queerly the natives express
themselves!" Her remark had followed the ayah's explanation of her
appearance with the child. "Mother says it is a mistake for delicate
children to be out before sunrise to 'eat the air.'"

"Eat microbes, I should suggest," corrected Tommy. "A case of 'The Early
Babe catches the Germ.'"

"How smart of you!--how do you do it so early in the morning?"

"Inherent wit," said Tommy complacently. "You press a button and out
comes an epigram, or something brilliant."

"You've missed your vocation, it seems. I am sure you might have made a
fortune as another George Robey!"

While Tommy affected to collapse under the lash of her satire, she leapt
from the saddle to imprint a kiss on the rose-leaf skin of the infant's
cheek. "What a perfect doll it is--did any one see any thing half so
adorable!"

"It seems to me like all other babies," Tommy remarked indifferently.
"When it isn't asleep it is bawling; when it isn't bawling it's asleep.
I have yet to understand why a girl can never pass a pram without
stopping to kiss the baby in it!" Nevertheless, he thought it a pleasing
habit with which he was not inclined to quarrel, but for the delay it
occasioned in the ride.

"I would like you to tell Mrs. Meredith that the Squawk is like all
other babies in the world and hear what she has to say!" Honor said
indignantly. "This one is angelic!"

Tommy dismounted with the air of a martyr and peered at the bundle
containing a human atom almost smothered in silk and laces. "Hallo! its
eyes are actually open! It is the first time I have seen the miracle.
Peep-bo!" he squeaked, bobbing his head at the apparition and crooking a
finger up and down a few inches from the infant's nose.

"Tommy, you are a silly!" Honor exploded with laughter. "As if it can
understand. You might be a tree for all it knows!"

"Then all I can say is, I have no use for kids until they develop some
intellect." He assisted her to remount and they continued their way to
Sombari. Soon, the last of the bungalows was left behind and they were
cantering side by side along the main road which divided paddy fields
still containing stagnant rain water and the decaying stalks of the
harvested corn. At intervals on the road pipal trees afforded shelter to
travellers by the wayside. In the distance, across rough country
overgrown with scrub and coarse, thatching grass, could be seen the
minarets of an ancient ruin--Muktiarbad's one and only show-place for
sightseers--too familiar to the inhabitants to excite even passing
notice.

In the meantime Honor soliloquised aloud--"I do so wish we could get
Mrs. Meredith more reconciled to India," she sighed. "She has only one
point of view at present, and that is a mother's. If she could only be
made to see her husband's point of view and realise also her duties as a
wife, she would be perfect, for Joyce Meredith is very lovable and good.
I never knew any one so pretty and so free from personal vanity. But she
is too sure of her husband. Too certain that he will go on worshipping
her no matter what she does or how she treats him; and, after all, I
suppose even love can die for want of sustenance. It seems to me she
gives all she has to give to the baby, and her husband is left to pick
up the crumbs that fall from her table!"

"It will end as all such marriages end," said Tommy. "She is only half
awake to life, and too pretty for every-day use. Meredith should awaken
her by flirting with Mrs. Fox; otherwise someone else will do it by
flirting with his wife. I wouldn't put it beyond the doctor."

Honor stiffened visibly. "Why do you say that?" she asked coldly.

"Well, he is given every opportunity. Last night, for instance, on our
way home from your place, Smart and I saw his motor in the avenue of the
Bara Koti. It was under the trees with a shaft of moonlight full on the
steering wheel. If he had wanted to make it invisible, he ought to have
reckoned on the hour and the moon. We thought he had gone to Sombari,
but he was singing to Mrs. Meredith."

"Is that true?" Honor asked in low tones of pained surprise.

"We both pulled up outside the cactus hedge till the song was finished.
He was singing _Temple Bells_!"

So he had not gone to Sombari after all! It had only been an excuse for
him to get away from the party. He was evidently not above lying,
and--Joyce Meredith was so beautiful!

And Joyce had been alone!

Honor flushed hot and cold with sudden emotion which she could hardly
understand because it was so new to her: passionate resentment towards
Joyce Meredith for the impropriety of receiving a visit from Captain
Dalton at that late hour. Her position as a married woman did not cover
such indiscretion. How would Ray Meredith feel if he heard that his
adored wife was entertaining the doctor at midnight, and alone? It
sounded abominable, even if innocent in intention.

It was not right! it was _not_ right!...

At the same moment, pride rose in arms to crush her resentment. What
business was it of hers what Joyce Meredith did, or Captain Dalton,
either? They were not answerable to her for their conduct--or
misconduct....

Captain Dalton might please himself as far as she was concerned. He was
hardly a friend. Why should she be so deeply affected by his acts? Yet
her heart was wrung with pain at the mere thought that he had spent the
rest of the evening entertaining Joyce Meredith who was as beautiful and
as foolish as a little child. Any man might be excused for losing his
head when treated to her innocent familiarities.

They were innocent. Of that she was sure, for Joyce coquetted with
either sex impartially and unconsciously.

All through her silent brooding Tommy talked incessantly. He had passed
from the subject of the doctor and Joyce Meredith to Bobby Smart who had
obtained a transfer to a distant station on the railway, and was
rejoiced that he would soon see the last of Mrs. Fox with whom he was
"fed up."

"I don't admire him for talking about her, or you for listening," said
Honor, paying scant attention to the subject of Bobby Smart.

"I didn't. I had to shut him up rather rudely; but Bobby is
thick-skinned and, like some fellows one meets, a dangerous gossip, and
the last man a woman should trust."

"I wonder much why women are so blind. They are fools to care for, or
trust men," Honor said gloomily, and looking depressed.

"You must never say things like that to me," Tommy blurted out,
offended. "You must discriminate between those who are honest and those
who are the other thing. You might trust me with your life--and
more----"

"I dare say all you men say that!"

"And all don't mean it as I do. _I_ am discriminating; consequently,
there is only one girl in the world for me...." He choked unable to
proceed, and looked the rest into her clear eyes.

"Don't, Tommy!--this is why I hesitate to come out with you," she said,
looking annoyed.

"I can't help caring for you," he answered defiantly. "It's an
unalterable fact, and you may as well face it. I have cared ever since
school-days. It has been my one hope that you too would care--in the
same way."

"And I have tried to show you in a hundred ways that it is of no use,"
she said kindly. "Can't you be content to be--just pals?"

"No. So long as you remain unmarried I shall keep on hoping."

"And I cannot do more than tell you it is of no earthly use." She
avoided looking at him again for the knowledge that his face betrayed
the depth of his disappointment. "Perhaps it would be better if we gave
up riding and tennis together, and you tried to take up some other
interest?" she suggested.

But Tommy laughed unboyishly with a cracked sound in his throat. "I
won't say anything more about it, if it annoys you, Honey, but don't for
God's sake give me the push. I'm coming to the Club just the same for
tennis with you, and shall call to take you out riding when I may--like
this. You need not worry about what I have said. I dare say I'll get
along--somehow ... so long as you are not keen on someone else," he
added. It seemed he would never be able to stand that!

"I am not keen on--any one else," she said, lifting her head with a
resolute air. "But I do want you to know that I am not the marrying
sort. I love the idea of being an old maid and having crowds of
friends--and perhaps a special pal--that's you, if you like, old boy,"
she added graciously holding out her hand which he gripped with energy.
"So that's all right, eh?"

While he made the expected reply, which was naturally insincere,
considering the state of his sore heart, both observed a cloud of dust
moving rapidly towards them which quickly resolved itself into a rider
galloping at full speed.

When he was nearer his pace slackened from exhaustion, and Honor
recognized one of the pastors of the Mission, an Eurasian, his face pale
and stricken and dripping with sweat.

A chill of foreboding struck at her heart as she asked for news of the
sick girl, Elsie Meek.

"She is dead," came the blunt reply. "I am now on my way to the doctor
who should have seen her last night, but he never came." He rode on
without waiting to hear Tommy exclaim, "Good God!" and Honor give an
inarticulate cry of surprise and sorrow.

"I thought she was going on all right," said Tommy gravely.

"I had no idea she was so bad!" said Honor. Both had pulled up uncertain
what to do. "Poor, poor Mrs. Meek!" said Honor, thinking of the lonely
woman who struggled to live her life happily in surroundings which had
failed to prove congenial, and whose one compensation was the
companionship of her daughter,--the one being in the world she loved and
lived for. She thought of the unsympathetic husband whose Christianity
savoured of narrow prejudices and exacting codes, and she pitied the
bereaved mother from the bottom of her heart. "I feel so guilty to think
that we had the doctor to dinner last night when he might have spent
that time at Sombari!" Honor cried regretfully.

"That was for him to judge. At any rate, he need not have finished the
evening at the Bara Koti singing love-songs to Mrs. Meredith."

"Poor little Elsie!" Honor sighed, ignoring the allusion to Joyce. She
was guiltless of blame as she did not know. "Tommy, you had better
return and tell Mother. I am going straight on. There is now more reason
for my calling on Mrs. Meek."

"It will be a painful visit--can't you postpone it?"

"I would rather not. I feel someone should be with her. Mother will go
later, I know; but I must go at once."

Very reluctantly, Tommy turned his horse's head homeward, and lifting
his _topi_ in acknowledgment of her parting gesture, rode swiftly away
leaving her to continue her road to the Mission.

The settlement came into view beyond a straggling village which had
given the Mission its name, and was composed of bungalows grouped about
a wide "compound": chiefly schoolhouses of lath and plaster, with
innumerable sheds and outhouses for dormitories and technical
instruction. As Honor approached, she was conscious of a great stillness
broken only by the sound of intermittent blows of a hammer. When she
passed into the grounds through a gate in a neatly kept fence of split
bamboos, she saw through the open window of a shed, a carpenter busily
engaged on the grim task of preparing a coffin out of a deal
packing-case. In India burial follows on the heels of death with almost
indecent haste, and the sight of a rude coffin in the making, sent no
thrill of horror through the young girl. It was something to be expected
in a place where no professional assistance of that sort could be
reckoned upon in circumstances as sudden as these. Instead, a great
sadness came over her, and tears filled her eyes to overflowing, for it
was not so very long ago that Elsie Meek, a young girl like herself had
come out to India full of life and laughter, yearning to give her
energies scope, and trying for the sake of her gentle mother, to appear
contented with the meagre life afforded by her surroundings. Honor
suffered a pang of regret that she had not spared more time from her own
pleasures to help Elsie to a little happiness. She had so appreciated
visits from the Brights, and had been so keenly interested in the doings
of the Station people, with whom she was rarely allowed to associate.

What a futile life! Poor little Elsie Meek!

At the Mission bungalow where Honor dismounted, a group of missionaries
were sombrely discussing in whispers the necessary details connected
with the funeral. Mr. Meek sat apart, bowed with depression, his face
lined and haggard with grief. This was the man's world--Sombari
Settlement--the child of his creation; yet how hollow were his interests
and ambitions today!

Many years ago he had been financed by zealous Methodists and sent out
to India to establish a mission in rural Bengal. After careful search he
had chosen Sombari on the outskirts of Muktiarbad for the field of his
labours. By degrees, his untiring efforts had prospered and Sombari was
now a large community of pastors and converts, and he, himself, an
Honorary Magistrate of second-class powers, in recognition of his
influence among the people. Mr. Meek had a reputation for converting the
heathen with a Bible in one hand and a cane in the other, and his
methods were justified by the results seen in the confidence he inspired
in his followers. He was a strong man, popularly credited with being
just, if unmerciful, and was respected by the natives for miles around
as hard men are, in the East; and they rarely appealed against his
judgments.

The same spirit had ruled Mr. Meek's domestic life and had reduced his
wife and daughter to the position of appendages of the Mission. It was
nothing to him that they professed no vocation for the life; the
discipline was wholesome for unregenerate human nature which is prone to
crave for what is worldly and unprofitable. He was responsible for the
souls in his care; and he conceived it his duty to protect them
according to _his_ lights--not _theirs_. Having safeguarded them from
the snares and temptations of Station life which represented the World,
the Flesh, and the Devil, he was filled with righteous satisfaction
concerning their safety hereafter, and ceased to trouble himself with
their yearnings in the p

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/31399