PROPER PRIDE.
A Novel.
Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth,
Love repulsed--but it returneth.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1882.
[_All rights reserved._]
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
“THE NEILGHERRIES” 1
CHAPTER II.
AFGHANISTAN 20
CHAPTER III.
“MY CAPTAIN DOES NOT ANSWER; HIS LIPS ARE PALE AND STILL” 48
CHAPTER IV.
MONKSWOOD 80
CHAPTER V.
WAITING FOR AN ANSWER 87
CHAPTER VI.
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE 105
CHAPTER VII.
“MARY, IT IS MY HUSBAND!” 134
CHAPTER VIII.
ALICE’S OVERTURES ARE DECLINED 163
CHAPTER IX.
“SIR REGINALD’S EYES ARE OPENED” 200
CHAPTER X.
GEOFFREY MANŒUVRES 238
CHAPTER XI.
“MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE” 245
PROPER PRIDE.
CHAPTER I.
“THE NEILGHERRIES.”
Our hero went to the Neilgherry Hills for the remainder of his two
months’ leave. It is quite beyond my pen to describe that lovely
region, but in common with almost all who have ever been there I have
an admiration amounting to a passion for the Blue Hills. I declare
them to be the most salubrious, delightful, beautiful range in the
whole world. If I were to attempt a detailed description of these
most favoured hills, I should fall so far short of their perfections
that I would only incur the wrath and contempt of their many devoted
admirers, so I shall content myself by merely giving a description of
Sir Reginald’s journey up the Ghaut.
He arrived at the foot of the hills early one morning, having spent a
night of heat, mosquitoes, and consequent madness at Mettapollium. He
rode up by the old road, which is nine miles to Coonor, in preference
to driving up the new ghaut, a detour of sixteen miles. His thoughts
were exceedingly pleasant, and he whistled uninterruptedly for the
first two miles; but after a while the beautiful scenery he was passing
through engaged his attention entirely, and more than once he stopped
his horse and looked about in amazed admiration. “Oh, if Alice could
only see it! If she were here, what ecstasies she would be in!” was
his frequent thought. As he journeyed steadily up, the close tropical
vegetation was gradually left behind, the trees assumed a more European
aspect, the air lost its thick steamy feel, and became every instant
more rarefied and pure. The path appeared to wind in and out through
mountain-sides clothed with trees and foliage of every description; a
foaming river was tearing headlong down a wide rocky channel and taking
frantic leaps over all impediments. The scenery was splendid. In spite
of hunger and fatigue, Sir Reginald felt as if he could gaze and gaze
for hours, and yet that his eyes would scarcely be satisfied. Wild
roses and wild geraniums abounded on all sides; enormous bunches of
heliotrope were growing between the stones; lovely flowering creepers
connected the trees, and as to the ferns----!
The graves of several engineers who had died when this old ghaut was
being made were passed--poor lonely graves! and yet could those laid in
them, so many thousands of miles away from their native land, desire to
be buried in a more beautiful spot?
At one side towered the “Droog,” crowned by Tippoo’s old fortress.
The “Droog” itself, a bold beetling hill facing south, and most
precipitous, seemed to stand as sentry to this garden of India. From
the top of it you could look sheer down into the plains. It was on the
opposite side of the river to the old ghaut, and a long day’s outing
from Coonor. On its summit were the gray broken walls of the fort, very
old and much dismantled, and from which they say that Tippoo, when in
an angry mood, used to toss his unhappy prisoners down to the plains
below. There it was that the Mahrattas made their last stand against
the British; and as they brought an enormous amount of treasure up
from their strongholds in the plains, which treasure has never been
recovered, the “Droog” is considered a highly interesting place for
more reasons than one. It is said that all the gold and jewels were
thrown down a well somewhere just beyond the fort walls. One very old
man was supposed to know of its whereabouts, but he would never divulge
the secret, as he said the spot was guarded by the ghosts--devils, he
called them--of many Mahratta warriors, and he was afraid to incur
their displeasure.
Sir Reginald arrived in due time at Coonor, and put up at an hotel,
before the windows of which there was a hedge of heliotrope cut like
box at home, and so high and so dense, that you could ride at one side
of it, and someone else at the other, without either being aware of
their mutual proximity. It was one mass of flowers, and smelt like ten
thousand cherry-pies, and was one of the sights of the Neilgherries.
Sir Reginald relaxed somewhat as regarded society, made friends with
the other inmates of the hotel, and joined in picnics to all the most
celebrated views. He was well known on the Toda Mund as one of the best
and most inveterate of tennis-players, and carried off the first prize
in a tournament which took place during his stay.
Touching the Toda Mund, there were no Todas there then; they had long
removed themselves, with their black ringlets and sheet clothing, to a
more remote region; but years previously the present lawn-tennis-court
ground had been the home of generations of these extraordinary people.
Sir Reginald returned to his regiment much the better for his trip,
and received the congratulations of his friends on his improved
appearance, and also on the discovery he had made at Cheetapore; as
what had been the talk of all that station naturally came to the ears
of his brother-officers, and they boldly conversed of himself and his
_wife_ as if they had known all along that he had been a married man.
The individual who had been so contemptuously scouted when he had
declared that Fairfax was a Benedict now found himself looked upon as a
man of unusual penetration--in short, a second Daniel; and for a time
his opinions were quoted at at least ten per cent. above their usual
regimental value.
As for Fairfax himself, a change had certainly come over the spirit
of his dream. He was an altered man; no more headlong solitary rides,
no more moping in his own quarters. Attired in faultless garb of
undoubted “Europe” origin, he was led, like a lamb, to make a series
of calls among the chief notabilities of the place. “Better late than
never!” they mentally exclaimed when his card was handed in, and being
assured that “Missus could see,” the hero of the hour followed. His
history was now as well known as if it had been published in _The
Pioneer_, and the ladies of Camelabad overwhelmed him with sympathy
and condolence, which he accepted with the best grace he could muster;
but he shrank from speaking of his wife, save in the most distant and
general terms; and it was easy to see that the mock certificate was a
very sore, distasteful subject.
As each succeeding mail came in he said to himself, “Surely this will
bring a letter from Alice?” How he looked forward to mail-days no one
knew but himself; how buoyant were his spirits every Saturday morning,
how depressed that same evening, when, tossing over the newly-arrived
letters on the anteroom table, he would find one from Mark Mayhew,
one from his agent, and perhaps one from his tailor, but not a line
from his wife. He heard from the Mayhews that Alice had received and
acknowledged the confessions; and Mark, Helen, and Geoffrey each sent
him a long letter full of indignation and congratulation. The burden of
each of these epistles was the same, although couched in very different
style and language: it said, “Come home.” “Whenever his wife endorsed
their wishes, he would leave Bombay by the following mail.” This was
what he said to himself over and over again. Two months elapsed and no
letter came--not a line, not even a message. After making allowance
for every conceivable delay, he gradually and reluctantly relinquished
all hopes of the ardently-desired missive, and came to the conclusion
that nothing now remained for him to think but that she wished their
separation to be life-long.
One evening he mounted his horse and galloped out alone to one of his
former favourite haunts, an old half-ruined temple, about six miles
from the cantonment. Here he dismounted and tied his Arab to a tree,
saying to himself as he ascended the steps: “There is no fear of any
interruption here, and I will make up my mind to some definite plan
before I return to Camelabad this evening.” As he paced up and down
the empty echoing ruin, he tried to judge between Alice and himself
as calmly and dispassionately as if he were a third person. His own
motives and actions were easily explained, but Alice’s were not so
readily understood. What could be the meaning of her extraordinary
conduct? His name had been cleared, and she, who should never have
doubted him, and who, at any rate now, ought to be the first to come
forward, had been dumb. There was but one reasonable solution. “She did
not know her own mind when she was married; she never cared two straws
about me, and she seizes the first pretext to free herself from a
distasteful union. So be it; she _shall_ be free,” he muttered. “I will
hold myself utterly aloof from her for the future. I shall go home and
live at Looton, and surround myself with friends--shoot, hunt, and lead
as gay a bachelor life as if I had no wife in existence. Why should I
expatriate myself for her sake?” he asked himself aloud.
But on second thoughts this scheme did not prove so alluring. At
Looton, every room, every walk, every face would only remind him of
Alice.
“I could not stand it just yet,” he muttered; “it is all too fresh,
too recent; one does not get over a thing like that so soon. In a year
or two, when I am thoroughly hardened and indifferent, I will go;
meanwhile I shall remain in the service.”
The duties of his profession had their charms for him; and the society
of his brother-officers was, he reflected, more welcome and more
necessary to him now than ever. Weak he had always been where Alice was
concerned, but for once he would be firm and be a man, and no longer an
infatuated fool, following the _ignis fatuus_ of a woman’s caprice.
As he stood on the steps of the temple, watching the crimson sun that
was slowly sinking beyond the horizon and tinting the arid plains,
the distant hills, the old temple, and Reginald himself, with the
gorgeous hues of its departing splendour, “That sun,” he exclaimed,
as he watched the last little red streak utterly disappear, “has set
on my folly and weakness; to-morrow will find me, in one respect at
least, a different man. For the future I will endeavour to forget that
I ever had a wife. I know it will be no easy matter to banish her from
my thoughts, but I shall do my best. As a wife she is dead to me in all
but name; her indifference shall be only rivalled by mine.” Query: Was
he not still thinking of her as he sat for fully an hour, with his head
resting in his hands? He was endeavouring to dig the grave of his love,
and to bury decently all the unfulfilled hopes he had cherished for so
long. The moon arose, owls and bats made their appearance and flitted
to and fro, apparently unconscious of the silent figure on the temple
steps. At length the pawing and neighing of his horse aroused him. He
started up hastily, pulled himself morally together, and hurried down
to the impatient steed, whom he unfastened and mounted, and in another
moment was galloping away over the moonlit midan, leaving the old
temple to the undisturbed possession of a veteran hyena and a family of
jackals.
The Seventeenth Hussars had expected, as a sequel to his discovery at
Cheetapore, that Sir Reginald would have returned to his ancestral
halls as fast as steam could take him.
But month after month went by, and he still remained a fixture at
Camelabad. He carried out his mental resolution to the letter, and
left himself no leisure to think of Alice or anyone else. He returned
with the greatest energy to all his bachelor amusements, kept a string
of racers, hunted the regimental pack, and made constant shooting
expeditions. He played whist till the small hours, and entered into
everything with the greatest zeal; took a prominent if somewhat
mechanical part in all the entertainments in the station, and was voted
“charming” by the ladies, both young and old. Notwithstanding his
bachelor pursuits, he developed a curious and Benedict-like interest in
babies--a species of humanity that he had hitherto held in abhorrence.
He cast more than one inquisitive glance on the smaller fry in arms
as he went round the married quarters. And Mrs. Gifford, the wife of
the only married captain in the Seventeenth, was amazed when her ayah
informed her that “Sir Fairfax” had more than once taken notice of her
baby, “asking age, asking boy or girl, how soon walking?” It was most
flattering, if a little mysterious, and he became a greater favourite
than ever with Mrs. Gifford. She was not aware that her boy shone with
a borrowed lustre in Sir Reginald’s eyes for being almost the same age
as his son, and that the toys and presents which were showered on him
as he grew older were not bestowed altogether for his own sake.
A year after his visit to Cheetapore, Sir Reginald received a letter in
Alice’s well-known writing. “It has come at last,” he said to himself,
as with trembling hands he tore it open in his own bungalow. He drew
out the photo of a sturdy dark-eyed cherub, enclosed in a sheet of
blank letter-paper. At first he could hardly credit his senses; his
indignation and his bitter disappointment were too great for words. His
first impulse was to tear the photo into four pieces, but, mastering
this rather insane idea, he took it up and looked at it closely
instead. He was glad he had not obeyed his first rash notion. The boy
was certainly a splendid little fellow. Written in the corner of the
carte was, “Maurice E. Fairfax, aged thirteen months.” He was something
more tangible now, his father thought, as he minutely studied every
feature. He felt a thrill of novel and very pleasant pride as he looked
at the bright eager little face, and said to himself: “This is my son.
He has the Fairfax eyes and brows, I believe,” he continued, as he
still studied the photo critically, “but no one will deny that he has
his mother’s mouth.”
With a sigh he pieced together the torn envelope, and looked in vain
for a word; the blank sheet of paper he scrupulously turned over; it
was really blank indeed. He gazed at it for some time, as if there
were actually something written on it; then, suddenly gathering
himself together, he carefully folded it up and put it along with the
photograph into the envelope, and locked them away in his desk.
* * * * *
Sir Reginald had been nearly two years at Camelabad when the outbreak
which had been simmering for some time in Afghanistan came to
boiling-point, and the gauntlet of defiance was thrown down by the
Ameer.
Captains Campbell and Vaughan were reposing in long chairs in front of
their mess, much exhausted with lawn-tennis, refreshing themselves with
copious iced pegs, and enjoying a delightful experience of the _dolce
far niente_ as embodied in Bombay--chairs and brandies-and-sodas.
Suddenly a solitary horseman was seen madly careering across the
midan, in the direction of their lines.
“I say, just look at this fellow; his horse has bolted!” said Captain
Campbell.
“Not a bit of it,” replied his companion serenely; “don’t you see that
it’s Fairfax on his chestnut, riding _ventre à terre_, as usual?”
“Hallo, Fairfax, what’s up?” they shouted as he approached. “Are the
barracks ablaze, and are you going for the fire-engine?”
“Better than that,” he cried, clattering into the compound. “I have
just come up from the general’s with glorious news--we start for the
front this day week.”