STAR OF INDIA
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
Into Temptation
Late in Life
The Spell of the Jungle
East of Suez
Red Records
The Stronger Claim
The Waters of Destruction
Idolatry
The Charm
The Anglo-Indians
The Happy Hunting Ground
The Woman in the Bazaar
Separation
Tales that are Told
STAR OF INDIA
BY
ALICE PERRIN
[Illustration: Decoration]
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published 1919
DEDICATED TO MY COUSIN,
BEATRICE MARY BYNG HOLDEN
STAR OF INDIA
PART I
CHAPTER I
I dare not choose my lot;
I would not if I might.
Choose thou for me, my God,
So shall I walk aright.
The rustic portion of the congregation shouted the familiar hymn with
laborious goodwill, overpowering the more cultivated voices that rose
from the chancel and the front pews--almost defeating the harsh notes
wrung from the harmonium by the village schoolmistress, who also led the
singing in a piercing key, supported raucously by her pupils gathered
about the unmusical instrument. Even in the early 'nineties nothing so
ambitious as an organ or a surpliced choir had as yet been attempted in
this remote west-country parish, though with the advent of the new vicar
innovations had begun; actually, of late, the high oak pews had been
removed to make way for shining pitch-pine seats that in the little
Norman church produced much the same effect as a garish oleograph set in
an antique frame. Most of the parishioners approved the change;
certainly it had the advantage of permitting everyone to observe at
leisure who came to church, what they wore, and how they behaved during
the sermon, even if those who were somnolently inclined found the
publicity disconcerting.
Stella Carrington, for one, infinitely preferred the new seats. Though
no longer a child--seventeen last birthday--she could never quite forget
the hours of misery she had endured in the old pew; the smell of dust
and hassocks, the feeling of captivity, the desperate impulse that would
assail her to kick open the door, to fling a prayer-book over the
barrier, to jump up on the seat; only the fear of grandmamma's wrath had
restrained her from such antics. This Sunday, as she stood between Aunt
Augusta and Aunt Ellen, singing the hymn that preceded the sermon,
recollections returned to her of her childhood's trials in the high pew,
and with these, unaccountably, came the old sense of imprisonment. The
feeling disturbed her; she searched her mind for the cause, and became
conscious that it was somehow connected with the presence of Maud
Verrall, seated with her parents in the religious preserve of the Squire
and his family in the chancel. The Verralls had been absent from The
Court for a considerable period, and now here was Maud, who when Stella
last saw her had been in short petticoats with her hair down her back,
transformed into a young lady; she had a curled fringe, bangles and
puffed sleeves; her dress touched the ground, she had a waist, and her
hat, of a fashionable sailor shape, was set well to the back of her
head. And all this though she was no older than her former playmate,
Stella Carrington, whose skirts even now barely reached her ankles,
whose hair still hung in a plait, whose hat, in her own opinion, was
more suited to a child in a perambulator than to a girl of seventeen. No
wonder she felt stifled, cramped! She realised why the memory of her
tortures in the old box-like pew had recurred to her mind; and then
suddenly the hymn that she knew so well and had sung on such countless
Sundays, paying no special heed to the words, struck her as the acme of
hypocrisy. She ceased singing, amazed that the recognition had not come
to her sooner. Surely whoever was responsible for the wording of this
hymn could never have known the tedium for a young person of living with
a stony-hearted grandmother and two maiden aunts in a small village
where nothing ever happened; the author must have belonged to people
like the Verralls, who were, of course, satisfied with their "lot," and
did not want to change it; people who could "dare" do anything they
pleased. If she, Stella Carrington, could choose her lot at this moment,
she would change places with Maud Verrall; and she wondered how Maud
would feel if she found herself forced to accept the lot of Stella
Carrington! Would Maud still humbly proclaim that she would not change
it even if she might?...
Only when Aunt Augusta, regarding her severely, touched her arm did
Stella discover that the hymn was ended; that the congregation was
settling down for the sermon. She sank to her seat, blushing, abashed.
Summer had set in early that year, and the sun poured through the
stained glass window subscribed for by the parish to a former Squire
Verrall, casting kaleidoscopic patterns of purple and crimson on to
grandmamma's brown silk bonnet; a premature bumble-bee droned and bumped
up and down the panes, the atmosphere felt airless, and Aunt Ellen
sniffed elegantly at her green salts-bottle. Stella grew drowsy; she
could not attend to the sermon, and her thoughts strayed on in
confusion.... Would Canon Grass, the vicar, dare to change his lot if he
might? Perhaps he would like to change Mrs. Grass, who was older than
himself, for the pretty visitor who was one of The Court party in the
chancel pew.... And how about Mrs. Daw, who was so artistic, and
considered her talents wasted in her position as wife to a country
doctor; who complained that no one in the village really understood or
appreciated "Art".... How much happier Mrs. Daw would be in London had
she the opportunity of changing her lot--of converting her husband into
a West End physician. And as to the villagers; everyone knew that they
were never contented, no matter what was done for them. At this point in
her reflections Stella fell asleep.
The service over, she followed grandmamma and the aunts slowly down the
aisle, while the school children clattered through the porch. The Court
party left the building by the chancel door, and Stella saw them pace
down the slope of the churchyard between the tombstones and the yew
trees to where a carriage and pair of horses awaited them at the gates.
Squire Verrall went first, in a black coat and a square hat like a box,
his whiskers were brushed smartly aside from his ruddy cheeks, his large
nose shone in the sun, he waved his malacca cane to the school children
marshalled on either side of the pathway; Mrs. Verrall followed,
delicate, smiling, sweet, in dark green satin, and a white ostrich
feather floating from a boat-shaped hat; with her came the pretty
visitor, who walked with a Grecian bend ... and Maud. Stella observed
that Maud was "showing off"; that she minced and looked down her nose as
she passed between the rows of bobbing, saluting children and villagers.
Stella was filled with an envious contempt for such conceit; such airs
and graces! Three maid-servants completed the procession; even they
would drive back to The Court, on the rumble of the big carriage, while
Stella Carrington would walk through the lanes to The Chestnuts pulling
her grandmother's chair, Aunt Augusta pushing behind, Aunt Ellen
shielding the old lady with a green-lined umbrella. They would wait on
themselves at luncheon; probably there would be boiled mutton and a milk
pudding....
There was: in her present rebellious mood, the sight of the plain,
wholesome food was to Stella as the proverbial last straw. Aunt Augusta
carved the mutton; a watery red stream issued from the joint, mingling
with the caper sauce that surrounded it.
"None for me, thank you," said Stella, with suppressed fury.
"My dear, why not?" It was grandmamma who made the inquiry, and Stella
thought the old lady looked like a sea-gull, seated at the end of the
table in her close white cap, her snowy hair looped on either side of
her curved nose.
"I hate boiled mutton!" Beneath her rising defiance the girl was
conscious of amazement at her own temerity. She pushed back her chair
and stood up, quivering--a slim young beauty, giving promise of fine
development, though neither beauty nor promise had as yet been
recognised by herself or by her guardians.
"Yes, I do hate it!" she cried, and her eyes, the colour of burnt
sienna, filled with rebellious tears, "and I hate milk puddings and
babyish clothes, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night
with nothing in between--the same every day. How you could all stand up
and sing that hymn, '_I dare not choose my lot_,'" she mocked, "'_I
would not if I might_,' as if you meant it! Why, for most of us, it was
simply a lie!"
For a space there was a shocked silence. Augusta, the carving knife
poised in her hand, looked at her mother; Ellen stared at her plate and
extracted her salts-bottle with stealth from her pocket; Stella found
her own gaze drawn helplessly to the expressionless old countenance at
the end of the table, and, despite her new-born courage, she quailed.
"My dear," said grandmamma smoothly, "you had better go and lie down.
The weather has upset you. I think you require a powder."
Stella burst into something between laughter and tears; she made a
childish dash for the door and ran noisily up the stairs.
The meal in the dining-room continued as though nothing had happened.
It was not a Carrington custom to discuss unpleasant occurrences at
meals, or, indeed, at any other time, if such discussions could possibly
be avoided; the Carrington elders possessed a fine faculty for ignoring
difficult subjects. It was a gift that had carried them apparently
unscathed through various trials. When it became imperative to speak of
anything painful it was done as briefly and reservedly as possible. It
was not until well on in the afternoon, when Mrs. Carrington had
awakened from her nap in the drawing-room, that Stella's outrageous
behaviour was mentioned.
The drawing-room at The Chestnuts was a long narrow room with three
French windows opening on a little paved terrace. Formerly the house had
been a farm dwelling, the last remnant of a property acquired a century
ago by a Carrington ancestor with a fortune made in the East and
dissipated in the West. The Court, where the Verralls now reigned, had
once belonged to this magnificent Carrington, and the ladies of The
Chestnuts never forgot the fact. They regarded the Verralls as
interlopers, though by now the Verralls had been lords of the manor for
several generations.
But though The Court and all its acres were lost to the Carringtons,
they had clung as a family to Chestnut Farm, adding to it from time to
time as fluctuating fortunes permitted. It was a haven for Carrington
widows, unmarried daughters, retired old-soldier Carringtons; a
jumping-off place for sons as they started in life, a holiday home for
successions of young Carringtons while their parents were abroad; and
there was still the family vault in the parish church where they could
be buried if India spared them to die in England. Stella's grandfather,
whom she could not remember, lay there with others of his name, and it
had never entered grandmamma's mind to live or die anywhere but at The
Chestnuts.
But to return to the drawing-room--a room that breathed of a people long
connected with the East--here were sandal-wood boxes, caskets composed
of porcupine quills, coloured clay models of Indian servants, brasses
and embroideries. The warmth of the afternoon drew forth faint aromas
still stored in these relics, mementoes of travel and service and
adventure, the perfume that still hung in the folds of the handsome
cashmere shawl draped about old Mrs. Carrington's shoulders.
It was she who opened the debate; failing her lead, neither of her
daughters would have dreamed of alluding to their niece's outburst at
the luncheon table.
"What do you imagine is wrong with Stella?" The old lady's sunken dark
eyes, that yet were quick and bright, turned from one daughter to the
other. The rest of her muscles were perfectly still.
"She is growing up," said Augusta boldly. She was the elder of the two
and more nearly resembled her mother, physically and mentally, than did
faint-hearted Ellen.
"She is still a child!" pronounced Mrs. Carrington, oblivious of the
fact that she herself had been married at the age of seventeen, had
sailed to India and returned with three children before she was
twenty-one.
"Perhaps," ventured Ellen, "seeing Maud Verrall in church dressed as a
grown-up young lady made her feel a little--well, I hardly know how to
express myself--rather kept back?"
Ellen herself had been guiltily conscious of a vague feeling of envy
caused by the sight of The Court people in all their prosperity and
finery.
"Kept back from what?" demanded Mrs. Carrington. "Would you wish to see
Stella trigged out like that forward monkey Maud Verrall?"
"Maud was always a most underbred child," said Augusta.
Ellen hastily took up the cue. "Yes, don't you remember the day she came
to tea and broke the vase, and allowed Stella to be blamed? I saw her
break it myself, but of course we could say nothing as Maud was our
guest, and dear little Stella said nothing."
"But what has that to do with the way Stella behaved to-day?" inquired
her sister. Ellen thought this rather unkind of Augusta.
"Oh! nothing, of course," Ellen admitted. "Only it just shows----"
"We are all aware that Stella has spirit," said grandmamma, ignoring
this passage, "she is a true Carrington, but spirit in certain
circumstances is a danger and not to be encouraged, just as in others it
may be admirable. Now if the child had been a boy----"
The old lady's gaze turned to a portrait that hung over the
mantelpiece--that of a gentleman in a blue velvet coat with lace and
silver buttons, powdered hair and bold, bright eyes that seemed to smile
on the little feminine conclave in amused toleration. "Spirit" in a man
was to be accepted and, whatever its consequences, condoned; but in a
female, particularly in a young girl, it should be guarded against,
suppressed. Ellen Carrington's eyes turned also to the portrait. Long
years ago she had shown symptoms of "spirit" in connection with the
attentions of a dashing young cousin who had strongly resembled the
portrait. Mamma was antagonistic; he had sailed for India (just as had
all male Carringtons one after the other), and the ship had gone down;
so that his vow to return with a fortune and claim his sweet Ellen was
never fulfilled.
Augusta, so far as anyone was aware, had known no romance. The family
spirit in Augusta found outlet in a fierce devotion to her mother, and
in the maintenance of a pathetically pretentious sort of state in the
household; the very manner in which she would ring the bell might have
argued the existence of a host of retainers. Not for worlds would she
have answered the front door herself, neither would she have permitted
Ellen or Stella to do so. Her attitude towards the domestic staff at The
Chestnuts--old Betty, with a daily slave from the village, and the aged,
bad-tempered factotum out of doors--was almost that of a Royal
personage, punctilious in the matter of good mornings and thank yous,
yet carefully distant as became the upholding of class distinction.
"It's a pity she was not a boy," said Augusta, "then she could have gone
to school--a little more discipline----"
"Yes, Stella's education----" interrupted Mrs. Carrington, and paused
thoughtfully. Her daughters listened. Augusta was responsible for
Stella's arithmetic, geography, history; Ellen for her progress in
music, needlework, drawing. Was fault to be found with these educational
efforts?--which in truth were not altogether congenial to the teachers,
conscientiously though they pursued them. Stella was frequently
tiresome, and she did such odd things--for example, she had "a trick,"
as they called it, of rising at dawn and rambling about the woods and
commons and returning late for breakfast, and then she would be listless
and inattentive for the rest of the day. At times she was "wild" and
disobedient, although at others disarmingly docile and quick and
affectionate. On the whole, the aunts were proud of their pupil; what
was mamma about to say concerning Stella's education?
Mamma said: "Though unfortunately Stella is not a boy, I have lately
been thinking that if a suitable school can be found---- What was the
name of that friend of yours, Augusta, who years ago started a school
for young ladies at Torquay?"
"Jane Ogle," said Augusta shortly. In the opinion of Augusta, Jane Ogle
had lost caste when she opened a school. As the daughter of an officer,
Jane should not have descended to such depths as the earning of her
living when she had plenty of relations with any of whom she could have
made her home in genteel idleness. Still, if mamma had any serious
notion of a school for Stella it was so far fortunate that Miss Ogle had
thus bemeaned herself, seeing that none of them knew anything about
boarding schools for girls, institutions which were to be regarded with
suspicion.
"Then you really think, mamma," said Augusta incredulously, "that Stella
needs different tuition, or at least different management?"
"Her behaviour to-day would point to it," mamma replied. "Perhaps you
would write to Miss Ogle, my dear, and make inquiries as to her methods
and terms. I am inclined to think Stella is getting a little beyond us
in every way."
Stella, after rushing from the dining-room and up the stairs in such
unladylike fashion, had thrown herself on her bed and wept until her
ill-humour evaporated and she began to think more kindly of milk pudding
and boiled mutton. Then, feeling hungry and rather ashamed, she had
bathed her eyes and "tidied" her hair, and for a while sat and gazed
from the low window of her bedroom--gazed on the familiar lawn sloping
to a narrow stream that had been the cause of many punishments in her
childhood, what with her attempts to jump it, the catching of imaginary
fish, the sailing of paper boats, all of which had involved "getting her
feet wet," a crime in the view of grandmamma and the aunts. The cedar
tree on the lawn had also been a source of trouble, for Stella had never
fought the temptation to climb it, and the climbing of trees was
forbidden as not only hoydenish but disastrous to clothes--the same with
the high wall of the kitchen garden. There seemed hardly a spot in the
limited domain that for Stella was not associated with punishment; yet
she adored "the grounds," as Aunt Augusta entitled the garden, at all
seasons of the year, and at this season she still found it heavenly to
dabble in the stream, to climb the branches of the cedar tree, even to
roll on the fragrant turf.... She loved the old house as well, though
two of the rooms she had always avoided instinctively--grandmamma's
bedroom was one; Stella felt it held secrets, there was something
mysterious and "dead" in its atmosphere. The painted toy horse and the
wooden soldier, the half-finished sampler, and the shabby doll enshrined
on the chest of drawers seemed to her ghostly objects, sad reminders as
they were of uncles and aunts who had never grown up. When, for any
reason, she was obliged to enter the room it was as if these little dead
uncles and aunts still hovered about the big bed with its faded chintz
curtains, as if they were listening, watching, hating her for her being
alive.
Aunt Augusta's room she also disliked; it might have been a spare room,
so cold, so polished, so neat, and the enlarged photographs of bygone
Carringtons, framed and hung on the walls, were hideous--all crinolines
and strings of black beads and stove-pipe hats and long whiskers....
Aunt Ellen's room was different; it harboured an apologetic air of
frivolity, imparted by gay little ornaments and a screen covered with
Christmas cards and pictures cut from illustrated papers. Whenever
Stella studied this screen she found something she had never noticed
before. Above all, in one corner stood a cabinet containing drawers full
of birds' eggs and butterflies collected by her father as a boy. Aunt
Ellen was the only person who would answer Stella's eager questions
about her father, and even those answers told her too little--only that
he had gone to India as a very young man, like all the Carringtons; that
he was brave and handsome, that he had died in battle when his little
daughter was about two years old.
And concerning her mother Stella had never succeeded in extracting
definite information.
"She is dead, my dear," was all Aunt Ellen would say with grave reserve,
"she died when you were born--in India." Was there a picture of her? No,
there was no picture. What was she like? We never saw her. What was her
Christian name? It was Stella--and clearly the name itself was not
approved--considered foolish, fantastic.
Indeed the child's periodical questions on the subject of her mother
were torture to the three secretive, old-fashioned women, who shrank
from all remembrance of the shameless being who had bewitched their
"poor Charles" and led him astray, dragging the name of Carrington
through the divorce court. At the time of the scandal they had blamed
Charles for marrying the abandoned creature, and when she died, a year
later, they were glad, though she left an unwelcome infant who was
promptly sent home by the widower to The Chestnuts. The child was, of
course, received, but under protest, a protest that vanished when "poor
Charles" was killed in a frontier skirmish, a death (for his country)
that in the eyes of his mother and sisters fully atoned for his
backslidings and the disgrace he had brought on a name that had ever
been associated with brave deeds in the East.
India!--the very word held a magic fascination for the child of "poor
Charles." Stella loved the smell of the curios in the drawing-room, and
her "great treat" on wet days was permission to open the camphor-wood
chest on the landing; fingering the contents, she would feel almost
intoxicated with the sight and scent of fine muslin veils heavily
embroidered, funny little caps, tinsel-encrusted; a packet of pictures
painted on talc of Indian ladies, black-haired, almond-eyed, smiling,
wonderfully robed. At the bottom of the chest were pistols and daggers,
and swords, all chased and inlaid with ivory and gold; and there was a
carved box full of tiger claws, and silver ornaments, bracelets,
anklets, and necklaces that jingled.... In addition to the camphor-wood
chest there was the lumber room, a low attic that ran the length of the
roof; here were stacks of other interesting relics, horns and moth-eaten
skins of wild animals, hog-spears and clumsy old guns shaped like
trumpets. Also piles of old books and pamphlets, packets of letters and
papers, yellow, crumbling, tied up with string and thrown into cardboard
boxes.
On this luckless Sunday afternoon Stella's mind turned to the lumber
room. As yet she had not the courage to descend and face grandmamma and
the aunts after the scene she had made at the dining-table; and
presently she stole into the passage, that was lined with a wall-paper
depicting Chinese scenes, square bordered, then ran up the ladder-like
stairs leading to the long attic in the roof.
There, poring over old papers and pamphlets and books, she forgot Maud
Verrall and all that young person's advantages, forgot grandmamma and
the aunts, and boiled mutton and her rebellious outburst against her own
"lot"--forgot everything but India, the land of elephants and tigers,
tents and palanquins, rajahs and battles, and marvels without end. She
thrilled again as she read of Carringtons who had fought at Plassey and
Paniput, in the Mahratta wars, and before the walls of Seringapatam. A
Carrington had perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a Carrington had
been the friend of Warren Hastings, in the Mutiny a Carrington had
performed noble deeds; Carrington women and children had been sacrificed
for the honour of their country....
To-day Stella realised for the first time that her father must have been
the last male Carrington of the line. No more Carrington exploits would
be recorded in the history of British India. The name of Carrington in
the East belonged solely to the past. Why, oh! why--had not she been
born a boy?