TREVOR CHUTE'S REVERIE.
Protracted by various culinary devices, the late dinner had
encroached on the night, just as the final cigar in the smoking-room
had done on the early hours of morning; and after a long
conversation, full of many stirring and tender reminiscences and many
mutual confidences, Jerry Vane had driven away to his rooms, and
Trevor Chute was left alone to ponder over them all again, and
consider the task--if task it really was--that lay before him on the
following morn.
And now to tell the reader more precisely the relation in which some
of the _dramatis personæ_ stand to each other.
Four years before the time when our story opens, Trevor Chute, then
in the Foot Guards, had been engaged to Clare Collingwood. She was
in her second season, though not yet in the zenith of her beauty,
which was undeniably great, even in London; and his friend, Jervoise
Vane, was at the same time the accepted of her second sister Ida, who
had just 'come out' under the best auspices; yet the loves of all
were fated to end unhappily.
Monetary misfortune overtook the family of Trevor Chute; expected
settlements ended in smoke, and he had to begin what he called 'the
sliding scale,' by exchanging from the Guards into a Line regiment
then serving in India; and then the father of Clare--Sir Carnaby
Collingwood--issued the stern fiat which broke off their engagement
for ever.
'Of course,' thought he, as he looked dreamily upward to the
concentric rings and wreaths of smoke, the produce of his mild
havannah, 'we shall meet as mere friends, old acquaintances, and that
sort of thing. Doubtless she has forgotten me, and all that I was to
her once. Here, amid the gaieties of three successive seasons since
_those days_, she must have found many greater attractions than poor
Trevor Chute--this fellow Desmond among them--while the poor devil in
the Line was broiling up country, with no solace save the memory--if
solace it was--of the days that were no more!'
Sir Carnaby Collingwood was by nature proud, cold, and selfish. He
had married for money, as his father had done before him; and though
he seemed to have a pleasure in revenging himself, as some one has
phrased it, by quenching the love and sunshine in the life of others,
because of the lack of both in his own, Trevor Chute felt that he
could scarcely with justice be upbraided for breaking off the
marriage of a girl having such expectations as Clare with an almost
penniless subaltern officer.
Ida's engagement terminated as related in the preceding chapter.
With a cruelty that was somewhat deliberate, she fairly jilted Vane
and married Jack Beverley, undeniably a handsomer and more showy man,
whose settlements were unexceptionable, and came quite up to all that
Sir Carnaby could wish.
Yet Beverley did not gain much by the transaction. Ida fell into a
chronic state of health so delicate that decline was threatened; the
family physicians interposed, and nearly three years passed away
without her being able to join her husband in India, where he was
then serving with Trevor Chute's regiment, and where he met his death
by a terrible accident.
Jerry Vane felt deeply and bitterly the loss of the girl he had loved
so well; and he would rather that she had gone to India and passed
out of his circle, as he was constantly fated to hear of her, and not
unfrequently to meet her; for Jerry's heart did not break, and sooth
to say, between balls and dinners, croquet and Badminton parties,
cricket matches, whist and chess tournaments, rinking, and so forth,
his time was pretty well parcelled out, when in town or anywhere else.
Trevor Chute and Beverley had been warm friends when with the
regiment. Loving Clare still, and treasuring all the tender past, he
felt that her brother-in-law was a species of link between them,
through whom he could always hear of her welfare, while he half hoped
that she might wish to hear of his, and yet be led to take an
interest in him.
With all this mutual regard, Chute's dearest friend of the two was
not the dead man, but Jerry Vane; yet there had been a great
community of sentiment between them. This was born of the affection
they fostered for the two sisters, and sooth to say, Beverley, while
in India, loved his absent wife with a passion that bordered on
something beyond either enthusiasm or romance. It became eventually
spiritualised and refined, this love for the distant and the ailing,
beyond what he could describe or altogether conceive, though times
there were when in moments of confidence, over their cheroots and
brandy pawnee, he would gravely observe to Trevor Chute that so
strong, and yet so tender, was the tie between him and Ida, that,
though so many thousand miles apart, they were _en rapport_ with each
other, and thus that each thought, or talked, and dreamt of the
absent at the same moment.
Be all this as it may, a time was to come when Trevor was to recall
these strange confidences and apparently wild assertions with
something more than terror and anxiety, though now he only thought of
the death-bed of his friend in India, the details of all that befell
him, and the messages and mementoes which Jack Beverley had charged
him to deliver to Ida on his return to England.
They had been stationed together, on detachment, at the cantonment of
Landour, which is situated on one of the outer ridges of the Himalaya
range, immediately above the Valley of the Deyrah Dhoon, where they
shared the same bungalow.
The dulness of the remote station at which the two friends found
themselves became varied by the sudden advent of a tiger in an
adjacent jungle: a regular man-eater, a brute of unexampled strength
and ferocity, which had carried off more than one unfortunate native
from the pettah or village adjoining the cantonment; thus, as a point
of honour, it behoved Trevor Chute and Beverley, as European officers
and English sportsmen, to undertake its destruction. Indeed, it was
to them, and to their skill, prowess, and hardihood, the poor natives
looked entirely for security and revenge.
'I have sworn to kill that tiger, and send its skin as a trophy to
Ida,' said Beverley, when the subject was first mooted at tiffin one
day. 'She shall have it for the carriage in the Park, and to show to
her friends!'
About two in the morning, the comrades, accompanied by four native
servants, took their guns, and set forth on this perilous errand, and
leaving the secluded cantonment, proceeded some three or four miles
in the direction of the jungle in which the tiger was generally seen.
As he sat in reverie now, how well Trevor Chute could remember every
petty detail of that eventful day; for an eventful one it proved, in
more ways than one.
The aspect of Jack Beverley, his dark and handsome face, set off by
his white linen puggaree, his lips clearly cut, firm and proud, his
eyes keen as those of a falcon, filled with the fire of youth and
courage, and his splendid figure, with every muscle developed by the
alternate use of the saddle, the oar, and the bat, his chest broad,
and his head nobly set on his shoulders, and looking what he was, the
model of an Englishman.
'Now, Chute, old fellow, you will let me have the first shot, for
Ida's sake, when this brute breaks cover,' said he, laughing, as he
handed him a case worked by her hands, adding, 'Have a cheroot--they
are only chinsurrahs, but I'll send a big box to your crib; they will
be too dry for me ere I get through them all, and we may find them
serviceable this evening.'
Poor Beverley could little foresee the evening that was before _him_!
Though late in the season, the day and the scenery were beautiful.
Leaving behind a noble thicket, where the fragrant and golden bells
of the baubul trees mingled with the branches of other enormous
shrubs, from the stems and branches of which the baboon ropes and
other verdant trailers hung in fantastic festoons, the friends began
to step short, look anxiously around them while advancing, a few
paces apart, with their rifles at half-cock; for now they were close
upon that spot called the jungle, and the morning sun shone brightly.
After six hours' examination of the jungle the friends saw nothing,
and the increasing heat of the morning made them descend thankfully
into a rugged nullah that intersected the thicket, to procure some of
the cool water that trickled and filtered under the broad leaves and
gnarled roots far down below.
Just as Chute was stooping to drink, Beverley said, in a low but
excited voice:
'Look out, Trevor; by Jingo, there's the tiger!'
Chute did so, and his heart gave a kind of leap within him when, sure
enough, he saw the dreaded tiger, one of vast strength and bulk,
passing quietly along the bottom of the nullah, but with something
stealthy in its action, with tail and head depressed.
In silence Beverley put his rifle to his shoulder, just as the
dreadful animal began to climb the bank towards him, and at that
moment a ray of sunlight glittering on the barrel caused the tiger to
pause and look up, when about twenty yards off.
It saw him: the fierce round face seemed to become convulsed with
rage; the little ears fell back close; the carbuncular eyes filled
with a dreadful glare; from its red mouth a kind of steam was
emitted, while its teeth and whiskers seemed to bristle as it drew
crouchingly back on its haunches prior to making a tremendous spring.
Ready to take it in flank, Chute here cocked his rifle, when
Beverley, not without some misgivings, sighted it near the shoulder,
and fired both barrels in quick succession.
Then a triumphant shout escaped him, for on the smoke clearing away
he saw the tiger lying motionless on its side, with its back towards
him.
'You should have reserved the fire of one barrel,' said Chute, 'for
the animal may not be dead, and it may charge us yet.'
'I have knocked the brute fairly over,' replied Beverley; 'don't
fire, Chute, please, as, for Ida's sake, I wish to have all the glory
of the day.'
And without even reloading his rifle the heedless fellow rushed
towards the fallen animal, which was certainly lying quietly enough
among the jungle-grass that clothed the rough sides of the
water-course.
The tiger suddenly rose with a frightful roar, that made the jungle
re-echo; and springing upon Beverley with teeth and claws, they
rolled together to the bottom of the nullah!
Two of the native attendants fled, and two clambered up a tree. Left
thus alone, with a heart full of horror, anxiety, and trepidation,
Trevor Chute went plunging down the hollow into which his friend had
vanished, and from whence some indescribable, but yet terrible
sounds, seemed to ascend.
He could see nothing of Beverley; but suddenly the crashing of
branches, and the swaying of the tall feathery grass, announced the
whereabouts of the tiger, which became visible a few yards off,
apparently furious with rage and pain, and tearing everything within
its reach to pieces.
On Trevor firing, his ball had the effect of making it spring into
the air with a tremendous bound; but the contents of his second
barrel took the savage right in the heart, after which it rolled dead
to the bottom of the nullah.
On being assured that the tiger was surely killed, the cowardly
natives came slowly to the aid of Chute, who found his friend
Beverley in a shocking condition, with his face fearfully lacerated,
and his breast so torn and mutilated by the dreadful claws, that the
very action of the heart was visible.
He was breathing heavily, but quite speechless and insensible.
Though many minutiæ of that day's dreadful occurrence came vividly
back to Chute's memory, he could scarcely remember how he got his
friend conveyed back to the cantonment of Landour, and laid on a
native charpoy in their great and comfortless-looking bungalow, where
the doctor, after a brief examination, could afford not the slightest
hope of his recovery.
'It's only an affair of time now,' said he; 'muscles, nerves, and
vessels are all so torn and injured that no human system could
survive the shock.'
So, with kind-hearted Trevor Chute, the subsequent time was passed in
a species of nightmare, amid which some catastrophe seemed to have
happened, but the truth of which his mind failed to grasp or realize;
and mourning for his friend as he would for a brother, they got
through the hot and dreary hours of the Indian night, he scarcely
knew how.
About gunfire, and just when dawn was empurpling the snowy summits of
the vast hills that overshadow the Deyrah Dhoon, the doctor came and
said to him, with professional coolness:
'Poor Jack Beverley is going fast; I wish you would do your best to
amuse him.'
'Amuse him?' repeated Chute, indignantly.
'Yes; but no doubt you will find it difficult to do so, when you know
the poor fellow is dying.'
In the grey dawn his appearance was dreadful, yet he was quite cool
and collected, though weaker than a little child--he who but
yesterday had been in all the strength and glory of manhood when in
its prime!
'The regiment is under orders for home,' said he, speaking painfully,
feebly, and at long intervals. 'Dear old friend, you will see
her--Ida--and give my darling all the mementoes of me that you deem
proper to take: my V.C. and all that sort of thing; among others,
_this gipsy ring_; it was her first gift to me; and see, the tiger's
cruel teeth have broken it quite in two! I have had a little sleep,
and I dreamt of _her_ (God bless her for ever!)--dreamt of her
plainly and distinctly as I see you now, old fellow, for I know that
we are _en rapport_--and we shall soon meet, moreover.'
'_En rapport_ again!' thought Chute; 'what can he--what does he mean?'
'Promise me that you will do what I ask of you, and break to my
darling, as gently as possible, the mode in which I died.'
Trevor Chute promised all that his friend required of him, especially
that he should see Ida personally.
This was insisted on, and after that the victim sank rapidly.
As he lay dying, he seemed in fancy, as his feeble mutterings
indicated, to float through the air as his thoughts and aspirations
fled homeward--homeward by Aden, the Red Sea, and Cairo--homeward by
Malta and the white cliffs to the home of the Collingwoods; and he
saw Ida standing on the threshold to welcome him; and then, when her
fancied kiss fell on his lips, the soul of the poor fellow passed
away.
The name of Ida was the last sound he uttered.
All was silent then, till as Trevor Chute closed his eyes he heard
the merry drums beating the reveille through the echoing cantonments.