ILL NEWS FLY APACE.
Never any more, while I live,
Need I hope to see his face as before.
Maud reached her house over-tired, over-wrought, and somewhat sad at
heart. She had gone much further than she meant, much further than her
real feelings prompted. Even as she yielded to the sudden impulse she
had repented, and while still doing it begun to wish the deed undone.
She had been vexed and teased and excited till she scarce knew what her
actions meant. The man to whom she had committed herself by so
compromising an indiscretion had no sooner reached the dangerous
eminence in her regard than he began to fall away and make her doubly
remorseful for the act. She resented his ascendency over her, the force
of the liking with which he inspired her and the degree to which he led
her where he would. His language, when he was not there to carry it off
with fun and daring, seemed unreal, exaggerated, absurd. Even before
they got home her taste had begun to turn against him. Boldero's almost
reverential care of her set her upon disparaging the other's lawless,
inconsiderate homage. The very way in which he stayed behind was, she
knew, intended as a sulky protest against Boldero's intrusion. A man who
really cared about her would, Maud felt, have acquiesced in what she
chose, what it was obviously right for her to choose, without any such
display of temper. Then there had been something in Desvoeux's manner,
when he wished her good-night, which implied a private understanding and
set her heart beating with indignation. A really fine nature would have
been doubly deferential, doubly courteous, doubly watchful against
seeming to take a liberty. Desvoeux's tone had something in it to Maud's
ear, which was familiar, easy, only just not disrespectful. She had been
defying public opinion for him all day; she had at last, in a sudden
impulse of pity, put herself at his mercy: already she began to doubt
whether he was a man who would use his advantage generously. Perhaps
after all Felicia had been right about him.
Then, when she got home, everything conspired to try her nerves. In the
first place, no letter had come from her husband; there had been no
letter for two days before, and this was a longer interval than had
ever yet occurred. She tried in vain not to be frightened at the
unaccustomed silence. Mrs. Vereker laughed her anxieties to scorn, but
Maud knew better what such a long cessation implied. Her conscience was
too ill at ease not to be apprehensive at the first occasion, however
trivial, for alarm. Either something had happened or, dreadful
possibility, her husband was displeased, and too displeased to write.
While she was taking off her things and harassing herself with all sorts
of fancied troubles, Mrs. Vereker came in and completed her
discomfiture.
'Maud,' she said, and Maud thought her tones sounded harsh and
unsympathetic (how different from Felicia's gentle lectures! which
always thawed her heart at once), 'I have been commissioned to give you
a scolding and by whom, do you suppose?'
'I really don't know, and don't care,' said Maud, in a pet, 'I have had
enough the last few days to last me for some time. Will it not keep till
to-morrow or the day after?'
'No, it will not,' said Mrs. Vereker, who was herself sincerely provoked
at the notoriety which Maud's indiscretion had attained; 'it is from the
Viceroy. I have something to say to you from him. Now do you wish to
hear?'
'No,' said Maud, 'unless it is an appointment for my husband.'
'No, but it is about your husband, or about things your husband would
not like. He told me to scold you thoroughly.'
'Then,' said Maud, her heart beating so that she could scarcely speak,
'he took a great liberty. I know, however, that he did not.'
'Guilty conscience!' cried the other; 'how white you look! Well, it is
not exactly the truth, but it is not far off it. He gave me a hint.'
'He gave you a fiddlestick!' cried Maud in a passion; 'he meant to tell
you not to flirt yourself.'
'Oh no! Lord Clare and I understand each other far too well for that. He
said quite seriously, "When is Colonel Sutton coming up? Why don't he
come? He ought to come; write to him and say so; say so from me." Now,
what do you think that meant?'
Maud felt her colour gone and her heart beating violently, and could
venture on no reply.
'You see,' said her monitress pitilessly, 'you will be injudicious. I am
always telling you. You can't be content with fluttering round the
candle, but must needs go into the flame and singe your wings, and then
of course it hurts you. People should know when to stop.'
'And,' cried Maud, in a thorough passion, 'people should not throw
stones who live in glass houses. Why, Mrs. Vereker, if I am a flirt, I
should like to know who taught me?'
'Now you are rude and cross. You should never throw stones, whether you
live in a glass house or not. The best thing I can do is to leave you to
recover your temper.'
Mrs. Vereker was gone and Maud's last friend seemed lost to her. She had
offended every one; or rather every one had done something to offend
her. She disliked them all. She flung herself upon her bed and wept in
very bitterness of heart. She longed for a really friendly, loving hand
to take her and get her right; she longed for her old mistress to
confess to; she thought of Felicia, considerate, tender, sympathetic,
and she seemed like an angel compared with those amongst whom she was
living. If she could but have crept to her embrace and breathed her
troubles in her ear! She thought of her husband--the pure and faithful
heart beating with no thought but for her, where nothing coarse or
unchivalrous could ever find a place; where she knew that she alone was
enshrined; of his perfect trust in her, his spotless faith, his
transparent honour. She looked at his photograph standing on the table:
how grave and sad it looked! She flung herself on the bed; the bitter
tears of remorse and repentance began to flow, and while they
flowed--for Maud was far more exhausted than she knew--she slept; and in
her sleep of a few minutes passed into dreamland; not the happy, silly,
aimless dreamland of easy minds and tired frames, where Maud's nights
were chiefly spent; but into a sad weird region, where everything seemed
horribly real and connected and designed and to bear some frightful
relation to actual life that makes it part of our being and haunts one's
after-thoughts. She was with her husband once again, and yet it was not
quite himself; an undefined something separated him from her and all the
past. She was riding by him. How grieved and reproachful a mien he wore,
as of a man with a hidden sorrow cankering his heart! And then he fell,
and Maud saw him crushed and wounded and helpless as once before, and
agonised in some frightful entanglement with his horse. She meanwhile
was trying in vain to help or to approach him, for a hidden hand
restrained her, and Sutton himself, sad and stern, was waving her away.
And then came a fierce struggle and blows and cries, and Maud found
herself waking with a scream and her servant standing by her bed and
saying that a 'Sahib' had come and wanted to see her directly.
She knew what it meant and went with a beating heart into the
drawing-room, as fresh from the land of sorrow and ready for news of
disaster.
She found Boldero in the drawing-room, looking ominously grave.
'Well, Mr. Boldero,' Maud said, with an unsuccessful attempt at gaiety
and a dread of the answer which she would receive, 'why have you come
back? Do you want me to give you some tea or to receive some advice?'
'Have you heard from Sutton to-day?' said the other, not heeding her
inquiry.
'No,' said Maud, turning sick at heart and deadly white; 'why do you
ask? Quick, quick!'
'Because I have bad accounts of him from Dustypore. You must not be
alarmed.'
'But I _am_ alarmed,' cried Maud, by this time in thorough terror;
'don't you see that standing there and giving hints is just the way to
frighten one? I know quite well you have brought me some bad news.'
'Yes,' said Boldero, 'I am sorry to say I have. Your husband is ill.'
Maud started up and looked him straight in the face, with a serious,
eager look, that made Boldero, even at that moment, think how lovely she
was.
'Now,' she cried, 'tell me the truth. Have you told me all?'
'No, I have not. I can hardly bear to tell you; but you have sense and
courage, and would rather hear the truth. _He is down with cholera._'
The words went like a sword through Maud's heart. A blank horror seized
her. This, then, had been the meaning of her dream. The blow came
crashing down upon her, and body and soul seemed to reel before it. She
sank like a crushed, terrified child on the sofa, and, covering her face
in her hands, hid herself, speechless, motionless, as from an ill that
was too great to bear.
'Let me send for Mrs. Vereker,' said Boldero.
'No!' cried Maud, starting up, 'pray do not. Leave me for a minute or
two. I shall be better directly. Will you come back in a quarter of an
hour?'
'I will do anything you bid me,' said Boldero frightened at the task he
had in hand and its probable results, and thinking that perhaps the best
thing he could do was to leave Maud to deal with her sorrow alone.
So Boldero went out into the moonlight, and strolled about the pathway,
now so silent, where so many joyous footsteps used to press, and Maud
was left to herself with her first great trouble.
It was significant of the real nature of her relations to Mrs. Vereker
that she shrank especially from seeking her now, in her time of sorrow,
or following her counsel. Mrs. Vereker was essentially a fine-weather
friend. The task which Maud had now in hand was something deeper and
graver than anything that the other's feelings reached. What lay before
her now to do, or to endure, was something between her husband and
herself, and it would be profanity for a stranger to come into that
sacred region. Mrs. Vereker's advice would, Maud knew instinctively, be
all wrong. She herself felt already what she ought to do. She knelt
weeping on the sofa, and the thoughts of sorrow, humiliation, remorse,
came pouring thick upon her troubled mind. To what a precipice's edge
had not her folly and madness brought her! her fair fame darkened, her
husband's name dishonoured, her vows of love and honour how badly kept!
Oh, how unutterably weak, faithless, heartless she had been! How ghastly
all the afternoon's adventures, the evening's folly, seemed! how wicked,
how base, how altogether bad! She had felt the thought stinging all the
while, but other, stronger feelings had helped her to ignore it and
forget. Now there was no other feeling, and it was overwhelming.
There was only one thing left to do, one good, one hope left--to fly to
her husband's side, to pour out the pent-up stream of confession,
repentance, and love, and, if only God would spare him, never, never
leave him again!
When Boldero came in again Maud was herself again. 'I am better and
stronger now,' she said; 'the news came upon me too suddenly, but now I
am calm. I have settled what I ought to do, and you must help me. I
shall go down to him at once.'
'Indeed, you cannot do that,' Boldero said, decisively; 'it would be
excessively wrong.'
'Indeed, indeed I will!' cried Maud; 'I feel that I ought and must. What
is there to stop me?'
'It is out of the question,' said the other; 'you will be running into a
great deal of danger unnecessarily.'
'I have no strength to talk about it,' said Maud, 'but I must go or I
shall die, and you must help me. Do you mean me to stay quietly here,
and Jem dying by himself? My God, my God! why did I ever leave him?'
Here Maud threw herself on the sofa, and cried a longer, sadder, more
heartfelt cry than ever in her life before. Boldero went again into the
garden in despair, for it was in vain, he saw, to try to soothe her.
It ended, of course, in Boldero telegraphing for two relays of horses to
be sent out from the Camp, and sending out two more as fast as possible,
to get as far as might be on the way for the forced march of fifty miles
which Maud and he were, it was settled, at once to undertake. She was
to rest for a few hours, start at three o'clock, get on as far as they
could in the cool, rest through the day, and complete the remainder of
the journey the following night. They would be at the Camp, Boldero
reckoned, by the morning of the day after to-morrow.
It required all his official resources to organise such a journey, but a
Collector on his march can do anything; and Boldero, with whom Maud was
by a sudden reaction of sentiment rapidly being promoted from heroine to
saint, was determined that her journey, so far as in him lay, should be
as comfortable as money and care could make it.