Our Little Darling Dot.
1840.
"Dot! I stood up with heart and brain in a whirl. Dot! 1840.
Five-and-twenty years ago, and Dot had died but half-an-hour before.
What did it mean? _What did it mean?_
"A sudden fear of the solitude and silence of the place fell upon me.
But for shame I would have turned tail on it then and there. As it
was, scorn of my own suspicions made me return to the house. How still
it was! how desolate. I remember standing at the outer door listening
in vain for some sound within; I remember seeing my revolver and
writing-case on the table in the outer room; I remember nerving myself
to push open the inner door, but I remember no more.
* * * * *
"They told me in hospital that I must have tripped over the broken
flooring between the two rooms, and in falling have cut my head
against the lintel.
"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't. I only know that something--God
knows what--stood between me and my madness, so that when I came to
myself it was gone for ever. In its place had grown up a craving to
live--to hear, to see, to know, to understand.
"As I got better I used to lie and cry like a woman. Then the other
fellows would say it was all weakness, and that I must be a man and
bear up. And sometimes I would lie and smile. Then they said I was a
trump with more pluck than they had. And as often as not I wasn't
thinking of myself or my own troubles at all, but of brave little Dot
and her desire for a _puff-puff-boom_.
"They sent me down the Indus to Bombay, so as to avoid the rattle of
the train, for my head was still weak. We stuck on a sandbank at
Sukkhur, being made unmanageable by two flats we were towing. They
were laden mostly with cargo, but carried a good many third-class
passengers. I don't know why I had risen from my sick-bed full of a
great curiosity, but I had. Somehow I never seemed to have looked at
life before, whereas now everything interested me. So I went down to
the flats and talked to the people. There was a cabin on one, carrying
a few second-class passengers, and as I was walking along a gangway
between some bales I saw an Englishwoman, holding a child on her lap.
The crouching attitude struck me as familiar; I stopped and spoke
about the weather or something. She looked up, and then I knew where I
had seen that attitude, for it was Dot's mother. I don't think I
should have recognised her--for she was an old woman with grey
hair--but for the remembrance of the changed look which, as you may
recollect, she had when I roused her in the bungalow by touching her
arm.
"'Is that your child?' I asked courteously, for, poorly dressed as she
was, her face was unmistakably refined.
"'No!' she replied; and I recognised the somewhat querulous voice.
'It's my granddaughter, but I am as fond of her as if she were my
own--almost.'
"As she spoke she shifted the child's head higher up on her arm, and I
saw a mass of fluffy light gold curls.
"'Perhaps she reminds you of your own,' I continued at a venture,
anxious only to make her talk.
"A faint curiosity came to her worn face.
"'It's funny you should say so--just as if you had seen our Dot. So
like--so wonderfully like. Sometimes it seems as if she had come back
again, yet it is five-and-twenty years since I lost her.'
"'That is a long time.'
"'A long, long time to remember, isn't it? And I've had so many and
lost so many. But I never forgot Dot--she was so pretty! Ah, well! I
daresay it would have been against her, poor lamb. "Favour is
deceitful and beauty is vain."'
"She lulled the child on her lap to deeper slumber with a gentle
rocking. It seemed to me as if she were soothing regret to sleep also.
"'She had curls like this one?' I remarked, cruelly anxious to keep
her to the subject.
"Once more she looked at me with that oddly familiar bewilderment.
"'I can't think where I've seen you before,' she said after a pause.
'I never met you in those old days, did I? Ah, well! I've lived so
long and travelled so far that I can't remember it all. Sometimes I
seem to forget everything except what I see--and Dot. I never forget
her. Only last month I was coming down the river not far from the
place where the little dear shot herself--she was playing with her
father's revolver, you know--and I seemed to go through it all again.
Her father--he left the Salt soon after--was downright vexed with me
because I fretted so. He said no good could come of remembering grief
so long. But I don't know. I've heard it said that there is only so
much sorrow and happiness in the world; then if one person gets a lot
there must be less trouble left for others. I've held on to my share
anyhow, though maybe, as father says, it isn't any good.'
"Her tired eyes sought the distant sandhills wistfully and her mouth
trembled a little.
"Just then the whistle sounded, bidding all stragglers go on board the
steamer.
"'Good-by,' said I, holding out my hand. 'To-morrow, if I may, I will
come again and tell you what your unforgotten grief did for me.'
"But next morning I found that the flat had been left at its
destination during the night. That is all."
There was a long pause.
"And your explanation?" asked a somewhat tremulous voice from a dark
corner.
"Gentlemen," said the Major, "I have none to offer. What I know is
this. Somehow--God knows how--I saw that mother's unforgotten grief,
and it saved me from shirking my share."