BOOK III.-THE TENTS OF ISHMAEL.

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE GREAT AMULET

by

MAUD DIVER

"Love is the greatest Amulet that makes this world a garden: and 'Hope

comes to all' outwears the accidents of life; and reaches with

tremulous hands beyond the grave and Death."

--R. L. S.

"Four things come not back to man or woman: the sped arrow; the spoken

word; the past life; and the neglected opportunity."

--Omar El Khuttub.

THE GREAT AMULET

by

MAUD DIVER

Author of "Captain Desmond, V.C."

Shilling Edition

William Blackwood and Sons

Edinburgh and London

MCMXV

All rights reserved

_THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO_

_TRIX FLEMING_

_IN MEMORY OF DALHOUSIE DAYS._

Let thy heart see that still the same

Burns early friendship's sacred flame,

The affinities have strongest part

In youth, to draw men heart to heart:

As life draws on, and finds no rest,

The individual in each breast

Is tyrannous to sunder them.

--Rossetti.

CONTENTS.

PROLOGUE

BOOK I.

AFTER FIVE YEARS

BOOK II.

JUST IMPEDIMENT

BOOK III.

THE TENTS OF ISHMAEL

BOOK IV.

THE VALLEY OF DECISION

THE GREAT AMULET.

PROLOGUE.

I.

"The little more, and how much it is!

The little less, and what worlds away."

--Browning.

No one in Zermatt dreamed that a wedding had been solemnised in the

English church on that September afternoon of the early eighties.

Tourists and townsfolk alike had been cheated of a legitimate thrill of

interest and speculation. Nor would even the most percipient have

recognised as bride and bridegroom the tall dark Englishman, in a rough

shooting suit, and the girl, in simple white travelling gear, who stood

together, an hour later, on the outskirts of the little town, and took

leave of their solitary wedding guest:--an artist _cap-a-pie_;

velveteen coat, loosely knotted tie, and soft felt hat complete.

In this Bohemian garb Michael Maurice,--as the bride's brother,--had

led his sister up the aisle, and duly surrendered her to Captain Lenox,

R.A., serenely unaware, the while, of censorious side-glances bestowed

upon him by the ascetic-featured chaplain, who had an air of

officiating under protest, of silently asserting his own aloofness from

this hole-and-corner method of procedure. But his attitude was

powerless to affect the exalted emotion of that strange half-hour,

wherein, by the repetition of a few simple, forcible words, a man and

woman take upon themselves the hardest task on earth with a valiant

assurance which is at once pathetic and sublime.

To Quita Maurice, impressionable at all times, the absence of ceremony,

of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact,

gave an added solemnity to the unadorned service: forced upon her a

half-disturbing realisation that she was passing from an independence,

dearer to her than life, into the keeping of a man:--a man of whom she

knew little beyond the fact that he loved her with a strength and

singleness of heart which is the heritage of those who reach life's

summit without indulging in emotional excursions by the way.

And now all needful preliminaries were over; even to the wedding

breakfast, a cheerful, casual meal of cold chicken, iced cake, and a

bottle of champagne, served in Maurice's unpretentious rooms, on the

pastry-cook's second floor.

The scene of their brief courtship lay behind them, dozing in the

golden stillness of late September: before them a footpath climbed

through a forest of pine and fir to the Eiffel Alp Hotel; and on all

sides multitudinous mountains flung heroic contours outward and upward,

to a galaxy of peaks, that glittered diamond-bright upon a turquoise

sky. A mule, ready-saddled, champed his bit at a respectful distance

from the trio: for Lenox, an indefatigable mountaineer, had insisted on

taking the footpath up to the Eiffel; where they would spend ten days,

before crossing into Italy, and so on to Brindisi, _en route_ for his

station in India.

The expiration of his leave, and his determination to take Quita

Maurice back with him, were responsible for the brevity of their

engagement, and for the absence, in both, of that brand-new aspect

which proclaims a bride and bridegroom to an eternally interested world.

For this last Eldred Lenox was abundantly grateful. All the Scot in

him asserted itself in a fierce reticence, an inbred sense of privacy

where a man's deepest feelings were concerned: and now, as he stood

battling with his impatience to be gone, he was suffering acute

discomfiture from the demonstrative leave-taking in progress between

Maurice and his sister. For their sakes, at least, he would fain have

effaced himself: while they, as a matter of fact, were momentarily

oblivious of his existence.

Artists both, of no mean quality, they had lived and worked together

for five years, since the day when Michael had rented his first modest

studio in the King's Road, Chelsea: and, setting aside Art, his feeling

for Quita was the one serious element in a nature light and variable as

a summer cloud. From his French mother he derived an elastic spirit

that yielded itself to the emotion of the passing moment; and Lenox,

watching him, marvelled at the sharp dividing-lines drawn between the

different races of earth.

He half resented such facility of self-expression. Possibly he envied

it: though no doubt he would have denied the impeachment with an oath.

Eventually it occurred to Maurice that he could not well stand in the

roadway till sunset, taking leave of the sister he was so loth to lose,

and, with a sigh of exasperation, he pushed her gently towards her

husband.

"_Voila, cherie_, . . . enough of my endless adieux, or _ce bon_ Lenox

may be tempted to break the sixth commandment on my account, in

addition to the eighth."

Lenox smiled tolerantly down from six feet of height upon his slim,

fair brother-in-law.

"That temptation should be your own prerogative, my dear fellow, since

I am taking her from you for good."

Maurice laughed.

"_Mon Dieu_, yes. You have certainly given me a fair excuse to hate

you. And I have wondered more than once, in the last three months, why

one could not manage it."

"Too fatiguing for a man of your calibre!" the other answered with

good-humoured bluntness. "You could never be bothered to keep it up."

"Ah, _mon ami_, you men who speak little speak to the point! You are

altogether too discerning. But for Quita's sake, at least, we could

never be otherwise than firm friends. With all my heart I wish good

fortune to you both, and count the days to your return."

The two men shook hands cordially: and Lenox, beckoning the muleteer,

lifted his wife into the saddle; thus averting a final demonstration.

She waved her hand to a blurred vision of her brother, smiling

resolutely, till his back was turned: and he departed townward;--a

lonely brown figure, to which a slight stoop of the shoulders lent an

added air of pathos.

Quita sat looking after him, her stillness belying the clash of

emotions at her heart.

That vanishing figure on the sunlit road stood for all that she knew

and loved best in the world: for Art, independence, good comradeship:

for the happy, irresponsible, hand-to-mouth life of Bohemia: for the

Past, dear and familiar, as a well-loved voice: while the quiet man at

her side,--whose mere presence suggested latent force, and gave her a

sense of protection wholly new to her,--stood for the Future; the

undiscovered country, peopled with possibilities, dark and bright. And

Quita Lenox, being blest, or curst, with the insight and detached

spirit of the artist, saw clearly that the Great Experiment held, for

her, a large element of hazard; that she had staked her all upon a turn

of the wheel, with what resulting Time alone could show.

Her husband's hand on her arm brought reflection abruptly to an end.

"He is almost out of sight now," Lenox said quietly. "And I think it's

time we made a start. Will you come?"

She turned to him at once, with a smile whose April quality heightened

its charm.

"Of course I will; and gladly. Don't think me horrid, Eldred. I have

always been frank with you, haven't I? And . . . it _is_ a wrench

leaving Michael to live and work alone."

"I quite understand that: and I value your devotion to him for selfish

reasons. It proves what you may be capable of feeling . . . for me,

one of these days."

The mingled dignity and humility of his tone so moved her that her only

answer was an impulsive pressure of the hand resting on her arm: and

they went forward for a long while without further speech, the muleteer

having set off for the summit by a series of short cuts known to his

kind.

Before long massed pines were above and below them; their jagged stems

and branches sharply imprinted on stretches of sunlit glacier, and on

the pathway in mottled patches of shadow.

Eldred Lenox walked close to his wife, one hand resting on the crupper

behind her. The man's intensity of feeling did not rise readily to the

surface; and a certain proud sensitiveness, the cardinal weakness of

big natures, withheld him from the full expression of an emotion to

which she could not adequately respond. He was content to wait, and

hope; and in the meanwhile, he walked at her side wrapt in the mere joy

of possession; one of the strongest, yet least recognised passions of a

man's heart. From time to time he glanced at her attentively; and each

glance strengthened his faith in that which had come upon him, sudden

as an earthquake, and no less subversive of ancient landmarks, of

confirmed prejudices and convictions in regard to the woman element in

man's life.

For Quita Lenox, though far from beautiful, in the accepted sense, was

undeniably good to look at. Coils of soft hair, golden in the sun,

brown in the shade; eyes neither grey nor green, intensified by

unusually large pupils, and by brows and lashes almost black; a

straight nose, low at the root; a mouth too long, too mobile for

beauty, its emotional quality safeguarded by an uncompromising chin,

completed a face whose charm lay in no particular excellence of

details; but in the vivid spirit,--quick to see, to feel, to

understand,--that informed and harmonised a somewhat contradictory

whole. An abiding sense of humour, hovering about her lips and in her

eyes, kept the world sane and sweet for her, and leavened her whole

outlook on life. A minor quality completed her charm. By virtue of

the French blood in her veins, she imparted, even to the simplest

garments, an air of distinction, of exquisite finish, to which an

Englishwoman rarely attains.

At three-and-twenty Quita Lenox was very artist, though not, as yet,

very woman. The complex Ego, which is the keystone of Art, had not

been tested and dominated by the great simple forces, which are the

keystone of life.

But her husband was in no mood to analyse her appearance, or her charm.

He wanted beyond all things to know what was passing in her mind, and

because his own thoughts were too passionate for utterance, he waited

for her to speak. But for the first time in his knowledge of her, he

waited in vain. Protracted silence on her part was a phenomenon so

unusual, that at length he turned to her definitely, a shadow of

misgiving in his clear Northern eyes.

"Are you thinking over it all very seriously . . . now that it is done

past undoing?"

He smiled in speaking, and she met his look with her accustomed

frankness.

"And if I am . . . ? Surely that service gives one food for

reflection. I had not so much as looked at it since early days when

curiosity impelled me to read it through; and weddings have never been

in my line. As a matter of fact, I was thinking just then what

unaccountable creatures we men and women are! How we ponder, and

debate, and fuss over trifles, and then plunge headlong past the big

turning-points of life, without a thought of the consequences lurking

round the corner. Which doesn't mean that you and I need spell our

consequences with a capital C, or label them tragic in advance," she

added with a laugh. "For honestly, it seems to me that a rising

artist, and a rising explorer, both devout worshippers of the eternal

hills, may reasonably expect to possess many ideas and interests in

common: and those are the bricks out of which two people build their

House of Happiness, _n'est-ce pas, mon ami_?"

"Yes; if you choose to leave mutual trust, and mutual devotion, out on

the doorstep."

"I don't choose: only, they are not the bricks, Eldred. One is the

foundation-stone; and the other,--the other is a great mysterious

Something, that transforms the House into an enchanted palace. But we

must be content to begin with the House,--do you see?"

"Yes--I see. I am abundantly content to begin on any terms."

Something in the man's tone impelled her to lean outward a little, so

that her shoulder rested lightly against the arm passed behind her.

"You are much too good to me, dear," she said softly. "I don't think

one could possibly live with you and fail to love you. That is why I

have dared to take the risk."

He did not answer in words, nor did he give her the kiss she half

expected; but his hand deserted the crupper, and the mule pricked a

velvet ear at the check in his progress. Then Quita straightened

herself, as if reasserting her cherished independence.

"After all, it is more interesting, in some ways, not to have

everything cut and dried from the start," she went on, striking off at

a tangent, with an innate perversity incomprehensible to a mere man.

"It prevents a headlong fall into the commonplace: and there is a

certain excitement in looking on, so to speak, at one's own personal

drama, without feeling quite sure of its developments."

Lenox knitted his brows. He could not always keep pace with her more

fantastic moods.

"Quita, are you talking nonsense?" he asked with a touch of irritation.

"No."

"Well, I wish you were. I don't like that sort of attitude towards

serious things; and I don't understand what you mean about looking on

at one's own life. It sounds brutally detached, not to say

egotistical."

"That is because you only climb mountains and handle men, _mon cher_,

instead of trying to paint them, or translate them into verse. You are

spared the artist's complication of a dual personality; of two souls

imprisoned in one body; the one who enjoys, and loves, and suffers; and

the one who looks on, and picks every emotion to pieces. I am afraid

the one you disapprove of has had the upper hand in me so far. Perhaps

it is your mission to develop the other into a healthier state of

activity."

"I hope to Heaven it may be," her husband answered fervently. "The

present state of things strikes me as a trifle inhuman."

"But indeed I am not inhuman! Only . . . we have still a good deal to

learn about one another, Eldred, although we are man and wife. You

confess to an amazing ignorance of women; while my own varied

experience of men has lain chiefly among 'the sayers of words'; and one

can hardly class you under that heading!"

"Good Lord, no! I should hope not."

Quita threw up her head and laughed outright.

"Really, Eldred, you are delightful!"

"Glad to hear it," Lenox replied, a shade of sarcasm in his tone.

"It's the first time I have been accused of such a thing."

He quickened his pace; and she, divining a slight jar in the

atmosphere, said no more. The supreme art in human intercourse is the

art of punctuation, and in the long pause that ensued, silence

accomplished her perfect work.

Higher up they emerged on an open space of roadway, where the pines

came abruptly to an end; and the path shelved sheer from its broken

railing to the Visp Valley below. Instinctively Quita drew rein and

drank in every detail of the vision before her with the wordless

satisfaction that is the hall-mark of the true Nature-worshipper.

Lenox stood quietly at her side, his gaze riveted on her face. He had

seen many mountains, giants among their kind; but never till now had he

beheld the glory of them reflected in a woman's eyes. At that moment

they seemed the only sentient things in a world of rock, and snow, and

sunshine. It was as if the round earth, and the pillars thereof, had

been made for them, and them alone.

Above the road a weather-beaten hut struck an isolated note of life,

and across the valley Matterhorn towered,--solitary, superb,--his

rugged head and shoulders thrust heavenward through a diaphanous scarf

of cloud. Suddenly Quita Lenox fronted her husband, and his face

softened to a smile that hovered in the eyes an appreciable time before

it reached his lips.

"_A la bonheur_!" she said, smiling back at him. "We will break our

journey here. You can tether 'Modestina' to that stump. I must do a

rough sketch of this, and put in notes for colouring, while you sit

beside me and smoke, and talk. When it's complete, I'll present it to

you as a memento of to-day. Will that suit you?"

"Rather!"

He lifted her from the saddle, in defiance of her laughing protest,

and, holding her at arm's length, looked long and steadily into her

eyes, as though he would reach and capture, by force of will, the

elusive spirit that lived in their depths.

It was in these rare moments of revelation that Quita was troubled by a

disconcerting sense of exchanging false coin for gold. She tried to

free herself from his grasp; and the colour deepened in her cheeks.

"Eldred,--let me go!" she said, with something less than her wonted

assurance. "It frightens me when you look right into me like that."

"Frightens you? Dearest, . . . what nonsense!" But for once he

disregarded her behest.

"It's not nonsense. It makes me see too clearly the chained-up forces

hidden under that surface quietness of yours. I think you might be

rather terrible if they ever broke loose."

He laughed abruptly, and let her go.

"I keep them chained up, I promise you: and they are never likely to do

you any harm. Now, begin upon your picture, and don't alarm yourself

about nothing."

She watched him thoughtfully as he led "Modestina" away, and tethered

her to a pine stump. It needed small discernment to perceive that the

equitable poise of his character rested upon the noiseless conviction

that he was a man, and a gentleman: and it seemed to her that she did

well to feel proud of her husband.

With which satisfying conviction she settled herself upon a slab of a

rock, whipped out the sketch-book, that hung permanently in a flat

leather bag at her waist, and plunged headlong into her picture. For

in her case, impression and expression were almost simultaneous: the

most distinctive quality of her work being the rapidity and certainty

with which she produced her effects.

Lenox, returning, extended his firmly-knit length of figure on the

sloping ground near by, and flung aside his cap; thus revealing more

clearly the rugged contour of his head, and the black hair whose

obstinate ripple no amount of brushing could subdue. With leisurely

deliberation he filled his pipe, and surrendered himself to the

enchantment of the hour, before it slipped from him into the region of

accomplished things. And it is this very evanescence, this rainbow

quality of our hill-top moments, that adds such poignant intensity to

their charm.

Much of their brief courtship had been spent in such wordless

companionship: the man smoking beside her, with, or without, a book,

while she worked; and he never wearied of watching that abiding

miracle, a picture springing to life under an artist's fingers.

"You're not likely to give up this sort of thing, I suppose?" he asked

suddenly; and she turned upon him with blank astonishment in her eyes.

"Give it up? . . . You might as well ask if I shall ever give up

seeing, or hearing, or feeling. It is a part of me. You don't want me

to give it up, do you?"

"Far from it. I was merely thinking that it seems suicidal for an

artist of your quality to bury herself alive in a little Frontier

station, on the edge of a desert, more than a hundred miles from

anywhere."

"Rubbish! It simply means a new range of subjects for my brush. Tell

me a little about it, please. I like to try and picture things in

advance; and I am lamentably ignorant about this remarkable Frontier

Force, to which I now have the honour to belong. Are we all on the

wrong side of the Indus, always?"

"Yes, for ever and ever; except when we get away on leave."

"And then we go camping and climbing in the far hills beyond Kashmir,

don't we?"

"Yes, invariably! For the rest of the time we keep 'cave' along six

hundred miles of heart-breaking Border country."

"In other words, you are watch-dogs guarding the gates of an Empire?"

"That sounds far more imposing; and it's no less true. We are also

actively engaged in helping the Indian Government to cultivate friendly

relations with the tribes at the point of the bayonet!"

"And don't the tribes respond?"

"Yes, vigorously, to the tune of bullets and cold steel; so that we

manage to keep things pretty lively between us! Since we annexed the

Frontier, nearly forty years ago, the Piffers have taken part in more

than thirty Border expeditions, all told, to say nothing of the Afghan

War."

Quita's attention had been diverted from her picture to her husband's

face.

"You get your fill of fighting at that rate," she said, "And I think

you must be rather magnificent when you are fighting, Eldred."

Lenox shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.

"I'm a keen soldier, if that's what you're driving at: and I believe

the world holds no finer school for character than constant active

service."

"I confess I never thought of looking at war in that light! But I can

well believe it, if its horrors and hardships turn out many men . . .

like you."

Words and tone set the man's pulses in commotion. But he clenched his

teeth upon his pipe-stem, and ignored the personal allusion.

"Well, you can see for yourself, when you get there. Taking 'em all

round, I think you'll find the Piffers as fine a set of fellows as you

could wish to meet anywhere; and it's hard work, and hard conditions of

life, that thrash them into shape."

"And the stations, where I am to be 'buried alive' in such good

company?"

"I'm afraid the stations are the least satisfactory part of the

programme. There are five of them along our north-west strip of

desert; all more or less hopeless to get at. We play general post

among them every two or three years, to avoid stagnation and keep the

men fit. Just now my battery's quartered at Dera Ghazee Khan, a

God-forsaken place, right down by Scindh. I don't know how I have the

cheek to think of taking you there."

"But if I refuse to be left behind . . . ?"

"Well, of course . . . in that case . . ." His eyes, looking up into

hers, completed the sentence.

"I'm not a 'society woman,' remember; and setting aside your

companionship, I should prefer a 'God-forsaken place' on the Indian

Frontier to St. John's Wood or Upper Tooting, any day! I am prepared

to find it all very interesting."

"So you may, at the start. But the interest is likely to wear thin

after the first few years of it."

"Well, perhaps by that time we shall have arrived at the enchanted

palace, and then nothing else will matter at all!--There now; I've done

all I can to my sketch for the present. Shall we go on?"

Lenox roused himself, not without reluctance, and they went on

accordingly.

Towards the summit, trees grew rare: and they found the solitary hotel

perched aloft, upon an open space; a hive of restless shifting human

life, set in the midst of the changeless hills.

After a short interview with the manager's wife, they found themselves

alone again, in the private sitting-room engaged by Lenox. A wood fire

burned merrily in the open hearth, for September evenings are chilly at

that altitude; and the windows, looking westward, gave generous

admittance to a flood of afternoon sunlight.

Eldred, standing on the hearth-rug, surveyed all things in an access of

silent satisfaction; while Quita moved lightly to and fro, frankly

interested in details.

"Oh, how I love the cleanness and emptiness of these Swiss rooms!" she

exclaimed at last. "They make one feel so unspeakably wholesome and

good. And we are actually going to have dinner here, you and I? Just

our two selves! How strange!"

On a sudden impulse she came close to him, and standing before him,

took the lapels of his coat, one in each hand.

"Eldred, . . . I don't seem able to take it in at all! Other brides

have so much of external paraphernalia to emphasise the fact they have

closed one chapter of life, and begun another. But except for that

dreamlike half-hour in church, you and I seem merely to have come away

together for an everyday outing; and there is nothing anywhere, . . .

except this,"--she lifted the third finger of her left hand,--"to make

me realise that we are actually . . . married."

She spoke the last word under her breath; and almost before it was out,

he had caught her to himself, and kissed her fervently, again and again.

"Does that help you to realise it a little better, . . . my wife?" he

whispered; and for answer she drew in a long breath that was almost a

sob. He released her at once; and as she faced him, flushed and

breathless, he saw that tears stood in her eyes.

"Why, . . . why did you never . . . kiss me . . . like that before?"

she asked very low.

"God knows I have wanted to, a hundred times," he answered. "But I

think I was afraid you might . . . hate it. Why do you ask, though?

Would it have made any difference between us if I had?"

"I can't tell; . . . oh, I can't tell! Only . . . you have been so

restrained, so unlike an . . . ordinary lover, that I never dreamed it

could mean as much to you . . . as all that . . ." She pulled herself

together with an effort. "Now I am going to take off my things," she

said. "Don't come, please. I want to get away by myself."

A moment later he stood alone, between the sunlight and the firelight,

gazing blankly at the door that hid her from view; and wondering

whether he had advanced or retarded matters by his unpremeditated flash

of self-revelation.

II.

"A turn, and we stand in the heart of things."

--Browning.

When Eldred Lenox sailed from India six months earlier, he would have

scouted as impossible the suggestion that he might bring a wife back

with him on his return: and his uncompromising avoidance of women, from

boyhood upward, had seemed to justify him in his assurance. But Nature

is inexorable. She has her own methods of accomplishing those things

that are necessary to a man's salvation; and behold in three months the

impossible had come to pass. The giant Mirabeau was right:--"_ce bete

de mot_" ought by now to be struck out of our dictionaries.

Lenox knew little of half measures: and, having succumbed,--in spite of

himself, in spite of inherent prejudices and convictions,--he succumbed

heart and soul. That which he had unduly scorned, he now unduly

exalted. Only Time and the woman could lead him into the Middle Way,

which is the way of truth. For beneath the surface hardness of the

Scot lurked the fire, the imaginative force, the proud sensitiveness of

the Celt: a heritage from his Cornish mother, whose untimely death had

left her two younger sons in the hands of a bachelor uncle, of red-hot

Calvinistic views. Their father--a man of an altogether different

stamp--had met his boys on rare occasions, and ardently desired to know

more of them: but an Afghan knife had ended his career before he could

find leisure to complete their acquaintance. The history of

Anglo-India is one long chronicle of such minor tragedies.

Thus fire-eating Jock Lenox had exercised iron rule over his charges,

unhampered by parental interference: had reared them in an

unquestioning fear of God, and an unquestioning distrust of more than

half His creatures; had impressed upon them, in season and out of

season, that woman was the one fatal element in a man's life, the

author of nine-tenths of its tragedy, complexity, and crime.

Yet "one touch of Nature" had annulled, in three months, the work of

twenty years. So much for education!

For a while Lenox stood motionless where his wife had left him, as

though life itself were suspended until her return: for despite the

glory of autumn sunshine, of leaping flames upon the hearth, the room,

robbed of her presence, seemed colourless, dead.

Then, as the minutes passed and she did not reappear, restlessness took

possession of him; sure sign that he was very deeply moved. He crossed

to the open window, but even the colossal calm of the mountains failed

to quell the tumult of passion in his veins. Her last words left him

anxious. There could be no peace till he had interpreted them to his

full satisfaction; and the power of interpreting a woman's words could

not be reckoned among his attributes.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he had pocketed two unopened envelopes

before starting for church. He drew them out; rather because he needed

some definite occupation, than because he felt curious as to their

contents. Men of his type are rarely overburdened with correspondents.

The first was a business letter. He read it with scant attention, and

returned it to his breast-pocket. The second envelope bore the

handwriting of his senior subaltern, now in England on short leave.

The two men were close friends; but Eldred's last letter had been

written four months ago; and the envelope in his hand contained

Richardson's tardy response. He broke the seal with a smile at thought

of his subaltern's astonishment when he should learn the truth. The

letter was longer than usual; and in glancing through it hurriedly, the

name Miss Maurice caught his eye. "Great Scott!" he muttered aloud;

then, with quickened interest, began upon the second page, ignoring the

opening.

"Wonder if you have run across the Maurices in Zermatt," wrote Max

Richardson, with no faintest prevision of the circumstances in which

the thoughtless lines would be read by his friend. "Artists both of

them, brother and sister; and a rather remarkable couple, I'm told.

She seems to have made a hit at the Academy; and the cousins I'm

staying with are very keen about her. I happened to mention that I was

writing to a chap in Zermatt, and they begged me to ask if you had

heard or seen anything of this Miss Maurice. There's a bit of a

romance about her; that's what has pricked their interest. Seems she

was engaged to Sir Roger Bennet this season. A swell in the Art patron

line. Lost his heart at first sight. But evidently on closer

acquaintance found her rather a handful, and too much of a Bohemian to

suit his British taste! At all events there was a flare-up over

something about three months ago, and Sir Roger backed out, politely

but definitely. It seems that Miss Maurice was a good deal cut up.

Went off to Zermatt with her brother. And now rumour has it that she

is engaged, if not married, to some other chap out there, I suppose by

way of a gentle intimation to Sir Roger that he hasn't broken her

heart. My cousins are eaten up with curiosity to know if it's true.

Women appear to be capable of that sort of thing. But it strikes a

mere man as playing rather low down on a luckless devil who has done

her no harm: and I don't envy him his hasty bargain, or the repenting

at leisure that's bound to follow. Lord, what fools we men are! And

how easily we lose our heads over a woman! All except you--the Great

Invulnerable, looking down upon our folly from the superior height of a

snow-peak. . . ."

Lenox read no further. The last words enraged him, like a blow between

the eyes, and set the blood hammering in his temples. It would seem,

at times, that Fate selects with fiendish nicety the psychological

moment when her arrows will strike deepest, and stick fastest. Thus,

when his thirst was at its height, Lenox found the cup dashed from his

lips; and that by the hand of his best friend:--a master-stroke of

Olympian comedy.

With a curse he flung the letter on to the table.

Wounded love, wounded pride, and baulked desire so clashed in him that

clear thought was impossible. He only knew that he had been

deliberately deceived, the most intolerable knowledge to a man

incapable of deceit: and with the knowledge all the natural savage in

him sprang to life. If Richardson had appeared before him in the

flesh, it is doubtful whether he could have stayed his hand: the more

so, since he believed that the man had written the truth: that this

girl--whom it seemed that he had wooed with quite unnecessary

reverence--had taken the best he could give, and utilised it as a mere

salve for her wounded vanity.

He understood now why her heart had proved more difficult of access

than her hand. He had believed it unawakened; had dreamed, as lovers

will, of warming it into life with the fire of his own great love: and

lo, he found himself forestalled by this execrable man in England.

Clearly he had been a fool;--an infatuated fool! He stabbed himself

with the epithet: and a vivid memory of his uncle's stock cynicisms

turned the knife in the wound. All the prejudices and tenets of his

youth rushed back upon him now: an avenging host, mocking at his

discomfiture; narrowing his judgment; blinding him to the woman's point

of view.

And while he still stood battling with himself in a vain effort to

regain his shaken self-control, the bedroom door opened, and his wife

came quickly towards him.

His changed aspect arrested her: and the sight of her facing him thus,

with the sunlight in her eyes and on her hair, her young purity of

outline emphasised by the simplicity of her dress, so stirred his

senses, that, in defiance of pride, the whole heart of him went out to

her, claiming her for his own. But it is at just such crises that

habit reveals itself as the hand of steel in a silken glove; and before

she could open her lips, Jock Lenox had stretched out a ghostly arm

from his grave in Aberdeen, and shut to the door of his nephew's heart.

Quita glanced hurriedly from the discarded letter to her husband's face.

"My dear, . . . what has gone wrong? You look terrible. Have you had

bad news?"

The irony of the question brought a smile to his lips.

"Yes. I have had bad news. Read it for yourself." And he pushed the

letter towards her.

"Why? Who is it from?"

"A friend of mine, in England, who seems to know a good deal more about

you than I do."

"What on earth do you mean?" she asked sharply.

"You know well enough what I mean. Read that letter if your memory

needs refreshing."

Her first instinct was indignant refusal. Then curiosity conquered.

Besides, she wanted above all things to gain time: and while she read,

her husband watched her keenly, with God knows what of forlorn hope at

his heart.

But a twisted truth is more formidable than a lie; and intuition warned

Quita that Lenox was in no mood to appreciate the fine shades of

distinction between the literal facts and Max Richardson's free

translation of the same. His frankly masculine comments fired her

cheeks; and at the sight Lenox could restrain himself no longer.

"By Heaven! You care for that fellow still!" he broke out hotly. "And

you had the effrontery to take those solemn words on your lips this

morning, with the love of . . . another man in your heart!"

Quita Lenox, whatever her failings, lacked neither spirit nor courage.

She threw back her head, and faced his anger bravely.

"How dare you say such things to me? I . . . don't care for him. I--I

hate him!"

"Proof conclusive. Indifference kills hatred. No doubt you wanted to

convince yourself, and him, that you were indifferent; and to that end

you must needs crucify the first man who comes handy. An admirable

sample of feminine justice!"

"Eldred, . . . you have no right to speak like that. I won't hear you."

"I have every right; and you shall hear me. It was one thing to know

that you could not give me all I wanted at the start. One hoped to set

that right, in time. But to accept me because another man's defection

had piqued your vanity, . . . God knows how you could dare to do it!

I see now why you found me unlike an ordinary lover. No doubt that

other fellow--curse him--took full advantage of his privileged

position: while to me you seemed a thing so sacred that I hardly dared

lay a hand on you. I might have known that a man who is fool enough to

put a woman on a pedestal, is bound to pay a long price for his folly."

He was lashing himself more mercilessly than he lashed her: and in the

torment of his spirit he did not pause to consider the possible effect

of his words on a recklessly impulsive woman.

"Really . . . you are insufferable!" she retorted, her breath coming

short and quick. "I have a little pride also; and you had better stop

before you push me too far. For I tell you frankly, I don't care

enough for you to stand this sort of treatment at your hands."

The counter-stroke stung like a lash. The lines about his mouth

hardened, and he straightened himself sharply.

"Pity you were not more frank with me twenty-four hours ago. Then we

might both have been spared this morning's ironical service. However,

the thing is done now. . . ."

"Indeed, it's not done!" she flashed out defiantly. "I have no notion

of being your wife on sufferance, I assure you. We are only on the

threshold as yet. We need not go a step farther unless we choose. And

after what you have said to me, . . . I do not choose."

For an instant the man was stunned into silence; then, in a desperate

impulse, took a step towards her.

"Quita, . . . you don't realise what you are saying? Nothing can alter

the fact that we are man and wife, now and always."

She motioned him from her with an imperious gesture.

"Don't touch me, please. I do realise, perfectly, that we are not free

to make any more dangerous experiments. But we are at least free to

live and work independently of one another. Of course I know that you

can compel me to remain with you,"--her colour deepened on the

words.--"But I know also that you have too much chivalry, too much

pride, to force yourself upon me against my wish."

"By God, yes!" he answered from between his teeth. "And . . . what is

your wish, may I ask?"

For the first time she hesitated, and lowered her eyes.

"I believe our wishes are identical," she said.

"No need to trouble about mine. You can put them out of court

altogether."

His tone spurred her to instant decision.

"My wish is to go back to Zermatt at once, by the funicular; and . . .

that we should not see one another again. I will accept nothing from

you. I can earn my own living, as I have done till now. Thank God,

Michael is too blessedly Bohemian to make a fuss, or be horrified at

things. He will simply be overjoyed to get me back."

She turned from him hastily; and he stood, like a man paralysed,

watching her go. On the threshold of the bedroom door she looked back.

"Don't think of writing to me, or of trying to patch up a

reconciliation between us," she said on a softened note. "Mended

things are never reliable. I can neither forget nor forgive what you

have said to me to-day, and when you have had time to think things

over, you will probably feel thankful that I had the courage to leave

you."

The soft closing of the door roused him, and he sprang forward with her

name on his lips. Then Pride gripped him; Pride, and the habit of

self-mastery hammered into him by his redoubtable uncle. The fact that

our spirits thus live and work, deathlessly, in the lives and hearts of

those with whom we have come into contact, is a form of immortality too

seldom recognised by man.

In the silence that followed, Lenox looked blankly round the empty

room:--the room where they should have spent their first evening

together. Then the irony, the finality of it all, overwhelmed him, and

he sank upon the nearest chair. "What have I done? . . . My God, what

have I done?" he breathed aloud. And it is characteristic of the man

that, for all his grinding sense of injury, he blamed himself more

bitterly than he blamed his wife.

His eye fell on the letter, which, had it contained a bombshell, could

scarce have wrought more damage in so short a space of time. Tearing

it across and across, he flung it into the fire, and derived a gloomy

satisfaction from watching it burn. But though paper and ink were

reduced to ashes, neither fire nor steel could annihilate the winged

words, thoughtlessly penned, that had altered the course of two lives.

Footsteps in the bedroom brought Lenox again to his feet.

He flung the door open, expecting--he knew what.

An apathetic hotel porter was removing Quita's trunk: and nothing that

had been said or done in the last half-hour had hurt him so keenly as

this insignificant item:--the touch of commonplace that levels all

things.

With a gesture he indicated his own portmanteau. "Take that also," he

said, and strode out of the room.

At least he had the right to shield her from comment. To all

appearance they must leave the place together! and he settled his

account with the smiling manageress, adding simply: "Madame has had bad

news."

He took a later train down the hill; deposited his trunk in a hotel

bedroom; and spent his wedding-night under the stars; walking,

ceaselessly, aimlessly, to deaden the ache at his heart.

Next morning he despatched half a dozen lines to Richardson disowning

all knowledge of Miss Maurice's concerns: and three weeks later he

sailed from Brindisi without seeing his wife again.

BOOK I.--AFTER FIVE YEARS.

CHAPTER I.

"I, who am Love, burn with too fierce a fire,

Even if I only pass and touch the soul,

Life is not long enough to heal the wound.

I pass, but my touch for ever leaves its mark.

I, who am Love, burn with too fierce a fire."

--Turkish Song.

Max Richardson lifted the "chick," paused on the threshold, and

surveyed the empty room.

A bachelor's room, in a frontier bungalow, boasts little of beauty,

less of luxury. The legend of Anglo-India--"Here to-day, and gone

to-morrow"--is visible on its nail-disfigured walls, battered camp

chairs and tables, supplemented by chance purchases from the "effects"

of brother officers, retired, or untimely hurried out of "the day, and

the dust, and the ecstasy."

To the observer for whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in

value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type

holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less

infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the

same tale as a dozen others in the same station--the tale of a soldier

going to and fro in a land of unrest. But its minor details reveal the

man beneath the uniform.

There is as much individuality after all in a soldier as in any other

specimen of God's handiwork; even though tradition and the War Office

compel him to an external suggestion of having been turned out by the

dozen.

The ramshackle room whereon Eldred Lenox had set his seal differed in

one notable respect from others of its type. It contained no picture

either of a woman or a horse. The dingy white wall was relieved by

groups of barbarous weapons--Thibetan daggers, a pair of wicked-looking

kookries, the jezail and Brown Bess of Border tribesmen, and the

murderous Afghan knife, whose triangular two-foot blade has disfigured

too many British uniforms.

In peaceful contrast to these trophies were one or two rough sketches

of the mountain regions beyond Kashmir; desolate stretches of glacier

and moraine, or groups of stately peaks, the colouring washed in with a

singular sureness of touch. There were also maps, finely executed by

hand, of Thibet and Central Asia. To these fresh names and markings

were added, from time to time, with a thrill of satisfaction only to be

gauged by the man for whom the waste places of earth are a goodly

heritage, and who would sooner contribute a new name to the world's

atlas than rule a kingdom. Higher up the twenty-foot walls, heads of

sambhur, markor, and the lesser deer of the Himalayas showed dimly in

the light of one lowered lamp. Skins of bear and leopard, and one or

two costly Persian prayer-rugs, partially hid the groundwork of dusty

matting, taken over with the bungalow from its former occupant, and in

places revealing the stone floor beneath. The broad mantel-shelf was

given over to books, a motley crowd in divers stages of dilapidation.

'The Master of Ballantrae' shouldered 'The Queen's Regulations,' one

would fancy with a swaggering hint of scorn; a battered copy of the

'Pilgrim's Progress' stood resignedly between Bogle's 'Mission to

Thibet' and a technical handbook on Topography, the whole row being

propped into position at one end by a great brown tobacco-jar, and at

the other by a bronze image of the Buddha in cross-legged meditation--a

memento of Lenox's latest expedition to Thibet.

The solitary lamp, its green shade set at a rakish angle, stood upon a

spacious writing-table, strewn with closely written sheets of foolscap,

pens, pencils, pipes, and books of reference, half a dozen of these

last being piled on the floor, close to the writer's chair. It was the

table of a man who leaves his work reluctantly, leaves it in such a

fashion that he can take it up again exactly where he left off, without

wasting precious time upon preliminaries.

On Lenox's bare deck-lounge a bull terrier, of powerful build and

uncompromising ugliness, slept soundly, nose to tail, and on one of the

costly prayer-rugs his Pathan bearer slept also. The deep, even

breathing of dog and man formed a murmurous duet in the twilight

stillness.

All these things Max Richardson noted, with a twinkle of amusement in

his blue eyes. Every detail of the room spoke to him eloquently of the

man he had not seen for a year. Since his departure on furlough the

battery had changed stations, marching across sixty miles of sand

desert from Bunnoo to Dera Ishmael Khan, familiarly known as "Dera

Dismal," a straggling station a few miles beyond the Indus.

Richardson had arrived from Bombay late that evening, just in time to

change and hurry across to the station mess. To his surprise Lenox had

not put in an appearance at the mess table, and Richardson,

anticipating fever,--the curse of frontier life,--had left early,

inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the

threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses.

Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if

Lenox--the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse--were actually dining out.

He approached the snoring Pathan and roused him, not ungently, with the

toe of his boot. The native sprang up, fumbled at his disarranged

turban, salaamed deeply, and finally stood upright, a splendid figure

of a man, six feet of him, if his peaked turban were taken into

account--hard, wiry, with aquiline features, grey beard, and eyes keen

as a sword-thrust; a man without knowledge of fear, cunning and

implacable in hatred, but staunchly devoted to the Englishman he

served, who, in his eyes, was the first of living men.

"The Captain Sahib--where is he?" Richardson demanded in the vernacular.

"At Desmond Sahib's bungalow for dinner. By eleven o'clock he

returneth. Your Honour will await his coming?"

"Decidedly."

Zyarulla turned up the lamp, and proceeded to set whisky, soda-water,

and a tumbler among his master's scattered papers. Brutus, at the

sound of a remembered voice, tapped the cane chair vigorously with his

stump of a tail, without offering to relinquish the one comfortable

seat in the room. Richardson sat down beside him, caressed the strong

ugly head, and lit a cigar.

The Pathan withdrew, leaving him alone with the dog and the whisky

bottle, from which he helped himself liberally. Then, drawing one of

the closely written sheets of paper towards him, he fell to reading it

with interest and attention. It was a minute geographical record of a

recent journey through tracts of mountain country hitherto unexplored,

a journey which had gained Lenox the letters C.I.E. after his name.

Richardson, while failing to emulate the older man's zeal for

wanderings that cut him off for months together from intercourse with

his kind, was yet keenly interested in their practical outcome.

The stronger light in which he now sat revealed him as a big fair man,

by no means ill-featured, his soldierly figure emphasised by the gunner

mess-dress of those days, with its high scarlet waistcoat and profusion

of round gilt buttons, in each of which twin flames winked and

sparkled. A suggestion of kindly, uncritical contentment with things

in general pervaded his face and bearing. The blue eyes were rarely

serious for long together; the mouth, under a neatly trimmed moustache,

showed no harsh lines, no traces of past conflict. Had the great

Overseer of men's destinies not seen fit to guide him to the Frontier,

out of reach of demoralising influences, it is doubtful whether he

would have escaped the trail of the petticoat, the snare of the

grass-widow in determined search of amusement. As it was, he had

passed through the critical twenties with a clean defaulter sheet; had

established himself as a good soldier and a good comrade, a

"friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul," and the closest among

these was the Commandant of his battery--a wholesome and pleasant state

of things for both.

He was beginning to weary of geographical detail, when steps sounded in

the verandah, and he was on his feet as Lenox came in.

"Hullo, Dick! Good man to wait for me! Thought I should have seen you

before mess, though. What do you mean by not coming here straight?"

"None of my fault, old chap. We were delayed as usual crossing that

blamed old Indus. Stuck on a sandbank for over an hour. Gives a

fellow time to count up his sins and renounce the devil, eh? Expected

to find you at mess, of course. I wasn't prepared for this sort of

upheaval in the natural order of things!"

Lenox stooped to caress Brutus, who was urgently demanding attention.

"Upheavals belong to the natural order of things," he said quietly.

"The world would come to a standstill without them. Light a fresh

cheroot, and fill up."

He indicated the chair vacated by Brutus, sat down by the

writing-table, and picking up a pipe proceeded to clean it out with

scrupulous care. Richardson watched him the while, his face grown

suddenly thoughtful. Once he leaned forward, as though he had some

urgent matter to communicate, but apparently changed his mind, and

spoke conversationally between puffs at his cigar.

"Zyarulla said you were at the Desmonds. Is that the cavalry Desmond,

the V.C. chap, whose wife was shot by a brute of a Ghazi four years

ago?"

"Yes;--a hideous affair. Yet, in the face of his second marriage, one

can hardly call it a misfortune. It was one of those evils that had

far better happen to a man than not--that's a fact; and there are a

good many such on this amazing planet."

"Sounds a bit brutal, though, when the murder of a man's wife is in

question."

"Facts are apt to be brutal; even facts relating to the holy estate of

matrimony!" Lenox's tone had an edge to it, and Richardson somewhat

hastily shifted to another aspect of the subject.

"You are really intimate with these Desmonds,--both of them?"

"Yes. Both of them. I dine there about once a-week, just myself and

Desmond's inseparable pal, Wyndham, who is over there most days. You

must call at once. She is Colonel Meredith's sister, a magnificent

woman in every way."

"A miraculous one, I should say, to have dragged such an adjective out

of you!"

Lenox smiled. "No. Only one of the right sort. The sort that makes

fine sons. She has one already; splendid little chap. The three of

'em are off to Dalhousie early in May, and they have just persuaded me

to spend my two months there instead of beyond Kashmir. Mrs Desmond

has a misguided notion that I am knocking myself to bits over my work

in the interior."

"Deuced sensible woman!" laughed Richardson. "It'll give me the

greatest pleasure in life to shake hands with her."

"Come and do it to-morrow then. I'll go along with you."

While he talked Lenox had filled a long German pipe with a bowl of

generous dimensions. Now he set a match to it, and as the first blue

clouds curled upward a peculiarly aromatic fragrance filled the room.

"That stuff of yours is A1," Richardson remarked, with an appreciative

sniff. "Pretty costly, I suppose?"

"Yes. My one extravagance. A special brand that I get out from home,

a big batch at a time. Nothing like it for settling a man's nerves in

the small hours."

"Do you still sit up over that sort of thing till the small hours?"

"Yes, most nights. What moonshine are you bothering your head about

now?"

"Strikes me that sleeplessness of yours must be becoming serious. You

look several degrees less fit than you did a year ago, and that's

saying a good deal."

Lenox took his pipe from between his teeth, and regarded his subaltern

steadily for a few seconds.

"When I need medical advice I'll send for Courtenay," he said, a hint

of authority in his bantering tone. "We were discussing tobacco, and a

woman; and the conjunction reminds me of an inspired German proverb I

happened on the other day. 'God made man first; then He made woman;

then He felt so sorry for man that He made--tobacco.' Supreme, isn't

it?"

Lenox chuckled with keen appreciation over the characteristically

Teuton bit of cynicism, and Richardson laughed aloud.

"Rather rough on woman, that. You might almost have originated it

yourself."

"Wish I had. I'd be proud of it. Stick to tobacco, Dick, and you'll

never be tempted to blow your brains out. You may take my word for it,

that jar of Arcadian mixture," he specified it with his pipe-stem, "is

worth all the women in creation put together."

The bitterness that of late years had so puzzled and distressed his

friend sounded again in his tone, and the laughter went out of

Richardson's eyes.

But Lenox, absorbed in his own reflections, noticed nothing.

"Let's hear what you've been doing with yourself at home, Dick," he

said suddenly. "You're not coherent on paper. I want a few facts.

You went abroad latterly, didn't you? Toboganning, and that sort of

thing, I suppose?"

"Yes; went with those cousins I told you of--to Zermatt."

"Delectable spot," Lenox remarked drily, his eyes on the bowl of his

pipe. "Hope you enjoyed yourself there?"

"Yes, rather so. Had a rattling good time." Then he leaned forward

again, elbows on knees. "Look here, Lenox, old chap; I'm no hand at

skirting round a subject, and I feel bound to tell you that I know now

. . . what happened there five years ago."

Lenox started so violently that the pipe dropped from his hand. A

minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's

nerve.

"How the devil d'you come to do that?" he asked, picking up his fallen

treasure, and readjusting its contents.

"Well, you see, I happened to be with my cousins when they found out

about it. Queer what a deal of trouble some women will take just to

satisfy a bit of curiosity."

"Damn their curiosity!" Lenox muttered between his teeth, adding

something hastily, "You can spare me the details. Nothing stands a

chance against a woman's passion for other people's affairs. Very

straight of you to speak out at once. Don't allude to it again,

though;--that's all."

"But, Lenox," Richardson persisted, not without misgiving, for it is

ill work tampering with the reserve of a Scot, "there's just one

question I want to ask you, and I think I have a right to know the

truth. I remember writing a certain letter to you that autumn; a

rather disparaging letter about--Miss Maurice." The name tripped him

up, and he reddened. "I beg your pardon; I ought to say Mrs Lenox,

though she still paints under the other name."

"Say Miss Maurice, then, by all means," Lenox answered coldly. "She is

welcome to call herself what she pleases so far as I am concerned. Go

on."

"I want to know when that letter reached you."

"On the afternoon of the day--I was married."

"Good Lord!" the other ejaculated blankly. "And all that I wrote

of,--was it news to you?"

Lenox nodded without looking up.

"My dear fellow, for God's sake don't tell me that a thoughtless letter

of mine was responsible----"

Lenox rose and went over to the mantelpiece. The full light on his

face was more than he cared about just then.

"You asked for the truth," he said, in a hard, even voice, "and--you

have made a clean shot at it. We separated that day. I have neither

seen nor heard of her since."

A long silence followed this bald statement of the case. Max

Richardson had no words in which to express the pain he felt. Brutus

arose, and rubbed himself against his master's legs, as if dimly aware

that sympathy of some sort was required of him, and the regular beat of

the sentry's footsteps asserted itself in the stillness.

At last Richardson spoke. "Wonder you cared about shaking hands with

me again after that."

Lenox came nearer, and took him by the shoulder.

"My dear good Dick," he said quietly, "don't talk rubbish; and oblige

me by putting the whole affair out of your head. It's as dead as a

door-nail. Has been these five years. After all, you were simply an

instrument--a providential instrument," he added grimly--"in the

general scheme of things." He paused for a moment; then returned to

his station on the hearth-rug.

"You say she has been painting under her own name. Has she been doing

much in that line lately?"

"Yes. She has made great strides. Her Academy pictures fetched high

prices last year."

"I am glad of that."

The words were spoken with such grave politeness that Richardson looked

up as if suspecting sarcasm. But the other's face was inscrutable.

"Do you happen to know where she is at present?" he asked, after a

pause.

"No. I believe she and her brother travel about Europe. They never

came back to England. That's what made my cousins feel sure there was

something behind."

"Yes, naturally." Then, with an abrupt return to his usual manner, he

added, "Now, old chap, I'm going to send you packing, and get to work.

Deuced glad to have you back again. Hodson's a slacker of the

slackest. We shan't keep _him_ up here much longer, I fancy. Border

notions of work don't agree with his delicate digestion! See you again

at early parade:--sharp up to time."

And as Richardson's footsteps died into silence, Eldred Lenox went

slowly back to the writing-table.

The past five years had not dealt tenderly with this man of surface

hardness and repressed sensibilities. The black hair at his temples

was too freely powdered with silver, the lines between his brows, and

about his well-formed mouth and jaw, were too deeply indented for a man

of five-and-thirty. The whole rugged face of him was only saved from

harshness by a humorous kindliness in the keen blue eyes, that had

measured distance and faced death with an equal deliberation; and by a

forehead whose breadth made the whole face vivid with intellect and

power. He looked ten years older than the inwardly exultant bridegroom

who had stood upon that sunlit road outside Zermatt, waiting to take

possession of the woman he had won.

The attempt to relieve bitterness of spirit with the stimulant of

incessant work, and the questionable sedative of tobacco strongly

tinctured with opium, was already producing its insidious, inevitable

result--was, in truth, threatening to undermine an iron constitution

while failing conspicuously to achieve the end in view.

After sitting for twenty minutes before a blank sheet of foolscap,

Lenox gave up all further effort at mental concentration. A nostalgia

of vast untenanted spaces was upon him,--of those great glacier regions

where a man could stand alone with God and the universe, could shake

himself free from the fret of personal desire. And he had agreed to

forgo this--the one real rest and refreshment life afforded him,--to

"suffer gladly" the insistent trivialities of hill-station life,

merely, forsooth, because a woman had asked it of him. He

anathematised himself for an inconsistent weak-minded fool. But he had

no intention of breaking his promise to Mrs Desmond.

Since work was out of the question, he pushed his chair back

impatiently, left the table, and flung out both arms with a gesture of

desperate weariness. Yet sleep was far from him, and he knew it;

unless he chose to induce it by the only means ready to his hand.

And to-night he did so choose. In general he had steeled himself to

resist the temptation to smoke no more than was needed to quicken and

clarify thought. But the short talk with Richardson had set all his

over-strained nerves on edge. His sum of sleep in the past week did

not amount to twenty-four hours, and for once in a way oblivion must be

purchased at any cost.

Going over to the tall tobacco-jar that supported his library, he

refilled his pouch with cool deliberation, stretched himself out upon

the deck-lounge, and smoked pipe after pipe, till the portion of the

drug contained in each accumulated to a perceptible dose. Then the

great Dream Compeller took pity upon him, deadening thought, feeling,

consciousness itself, till the pipe fell from between his fingers,--and

he slept.

CHAPTER II.

"And, at each turn, it seemed as though

Fate some huge net round both did throw

To stay their feet, and dim their sight."

--W. Morris.

Three weeks later, on a diamond-bright morning of early May, Eldred

Lenox was in the saddle, riding at a foot's pace along a strip of a

path that links the Strawberry Bank Hotel with Dalhousie's central

hill. Brutus trotted soberly to heel, while Shaitan--a black Galloway,

half Biluch, half Arab--tossed an impatient head, sneezed several times

in succession, and generally declared his intention of taking matters

into his own hands, so soon as he should reach the broader expanse of

Terah Mall. But Lenox, impelled by an inbred desire to climb, was

minded to push on to the higher, emptier levels of Bakrota--the great

hill that towered, formidable, directly ahead of him. For the

chalet-like dwellings of Dalhousie are scattered sparsely over three

hills, Bakrota, Terah, Potrain; and the summit of the last and lowest

is crowned by Strawberry Bank Hotel, mainly the resort of captains and

subalterns from the four plains stations of the district, doing their

two months of signalling, Garrison Class, or of unadulterated loafing,

as the case may be.

Lenox himself came under none of these headings. The man had a trick

of refusing to be classed collectively, soldier though he was; a trick

of isolation, inbred, unconscious, the outcome, perhaps, of much

solitary wandering, of intimate association with the uttermost hills.

It was as if they had imparted to him something of their own

ruggedness, their aloofness, their stoical power of endurance.

A cheery little breeze stirred the branches of horse-chestnuts and

rhododendrons, tossed the silver-backed foliage of the ilex, and set

the cedar boughs swaying with slow, dignified indolence. Hidden within

their depths of shadow, birds and monkeys twittered and chattered; and

at intervals there came to Lenox the peculiar long-drawn note with

which the hill villagers call to one another across the valleys. An

infectious spirit of jubilation pervaded the air. The sun himself, in

these cheerful latitudes, is transformed from an instrument of torture

to the golden-locked hero of Norse and Greek legend; and with every

step of the ascent Lenox felt the blood course more swiftly through his

veins.

Ilex and rhododendrons, clustering close to the road's edge, shut off

the vast prospect on his left; till, at an abrupt turn of the road,

they gave place to a watercourse, descending in a cataract of boulders

to the valley below. Then the glorious company of the mountains sprang

suddenly into view, lifting scarred heads to heaven, and greeting the

new day with a Te Deum audible to the spirit, if not to the ear itself.

To the spirit of Eldred Lenox these outward symbols of the eternal

verities, fit emblems of the stern faith in which he had been reared,

spoke with no uncertain voice; and their message was a message of

aspiration, of conquest, of the iron self-mastery and self-restraint

indispensable to both. They reminded him, also, that life held many

good gifts in atonement for the one gift denied; that a man might do

worse than live and work unhindered by the volcanic forces of passion.

The past five years had, after all, been years of fruitful service to

the great country he loved; the three letters after his name assured

him of that. And there remained much more to be done in the same

direction; work that would make unstinted demands upon his energy and

fortitude; work that must, in due time, force him to forget.

Arrived on the Mall, with its far-reaching view of valley and hill, and

its outcrop of glittering granite, a word of encouragement set Shaitan

into a smart canter that brought them speedily to the half-way corner,

whence a densely shadowed road climbs upward to the great forest of

Kalatope. The glimpse of sun-splashed path and red pine-stems drew

Lenox aside from the open Mall; and horse and rider passed into the

stretch of scented coolness at a brisk trot. The path, little more

than six feet wide, was innocent of railing. But much riding in the

Himalayas hardens the nerves to these tight-rope performances, which

are part and parcel of life in the hills.

For a while they went steadily forward, well content; till, on rounding

a sharp corner, Shaitan stopped dead, his forefeet firmly planted on

the roadway, his sensitive ears thrust forward; and Lenox, who had

fallen into an absorbing train of thought, found himself confronted by

a sufficiently startling reality.

The path ahead of him was blocked by the unwieldy forms of five

buffaloes, in charge of a naked brown wisp of humanity four feet high,

armed with a no more formidable weapon than a pine branch stripped of

its needles. But the crux of the situation lay in the fact that,

between the fourth and fifth buffaloes an Englishwoman, in a brown

habit, mounted on a restive chestnut pony, was in imminent danger of

slipping off the road to certain death among the rocks and boulders

below. For the chestnut had succeeded in wrenching his hindquarters

outward, his heels were already over the edge, and his rider, leaning

well forward, was applying whip and spur with a coolness and vigour

that could not fail to excite the man's admiration.

It was a matter of seconds: Lenox could not stop to calculate possible

risks. Buffaloes and herd-boy scattered right and left before his

furious onset. A swinging blow from his hunting-crop sent two of the

bulky beasts scrambling up the inner slope, while Brutus, who found the

situation all that heart of dog could desire, sent a third crashing

over the khud to the accompaniment of shrill lamentations from the

terrified child in charge.

The whole thing passed in a flash; the pony, by a frantic but futile

effort to right himself, had just sent a shower of loose stones

rattling from under his hind feet, when Lenox, dismounting, gripped the

cheek-strap with one hand, the other being occupied with his own reins.

A vigorous forward pull landed the chestnut, panting and quivering,

with all four feet on terra firma. But the rider's right arm had

fallen limply to her side, and Lenox, looking up, for the first time,

into a face deeply shadowed by a wide-brimmed helmet, recognised . . .

his wife.

Her breath was still coming In small, quick gasps; but there was no

shadow of fear in her eyes; no lightest tremor about her close-set lips.

"Great God! _You_!" he ejaculated under his breath, and involuntarily

took a backward step away from her.

At the shock of their encountering glances her cheeks flamed, and she

lowered her lids.

"I suppose I may say thank you for that," she said, and her voice shook

ever so little. "A minute later, I should have gone over."

He nodded, keeping his teeth close, his eyes down; and a deadweight of

silence fell between them.

Small sounds became suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels

along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a

charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a

dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn

with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side.

He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found

the buffalo incident very much more to his taste.

At length, in desperation, Quita made a movement as if to pass on. But

Lenox laid a peremptory hand upon her bridle.

"Tell me, how do you come to be _here_ of all impossible places on

earth?"

His voice was harder than he knew, and a slight shadow passed across

her face.

"Is it really necessary to explain?" she asked, coldly.

He relinquished her bridle at that.

"As you please, of course. Only--it is a little awkward our being here

together; and it might be as well to come to some sort of understanding

before we separate. Are you up here for the season?"

"Yes, we have been up all the winter, Michael and I, except for two

months at Lahore. When the snow melted we moved to the highest cottage

on Bakrota. It is beautiful up there. We came out here eighteen

months ago," she went on a trifle hurriedly, grateful, now that the ice

was broken, for the relief of commonplace speech. "I had heard a good

deal about India, you know. I wanted to see it for myself, and if

possible put a little of it on canvas."

"And you are not disappointed?"

"No, indeed. It is wonderful beyond words."

They had themselves well in hand now. Each had given the other a false

impression at the start, and when two people are living at

cross-purposes it is easier to move mountains than to remove that most

intangible of all barriers, a false impression.

"And are you--up for the season?" Quita added, after a pause, with a

natural touch of hesitancy.

"No. Two months' leave. I am free, therefore, to go elsewhere, if my

presence here is in the least degree . . . annoying to you."

"Oh, but that would be a pity. You must have had a special reason for

choosing Dalhousie."

"Some friends of mine were coming up, and asked me to come too. But

they will quite understand if I say I should prefer to go shooting

beyond Chumba."

"Don't say it, though, please. I would really rather you did not put

yourself out in the smallest degree on _my_ account. Besides," she

added, achieving a rather uncertain smile, "we need not meet often, and

no one--except Michael--will have any notion of . . . the truth."

"Of course not," he agreed, with glacial dignity. "I was forgetting

that you had--discarded my name."

Again the blood flew to her cheeks.

"It seemed the simplest way to avoid possible complications, or

unnecessary lies."

"And you flung away--my ring also?"

The question came out in spite of himself, for he had noted her

ungloved left hand.

"No. Only I could not very well wear it--under the circumstances."

He stood aside now to let her pass. He himself then mounted, and

followed her along the narrow path, raging against the irony of

circumstance, as a man bites upon a sore tooth.

On reaching the spaciousness of Bakrota Mall, he had no choice but to

ride abreast of his companion. He did so without remark, and since

Quita lacked courage to spur her pony to a canter, they continued to

ride thus for a time; each, under an admirable mask of composure,

painfully aware of the other's presence.

Speech seemed only likely to widen the gulf between them, and at all

times Lenox had a large capacity for silence.

Not so Quita. The last ten minutes had been overcrowded with

conflicting emotions; her husband's mute proximity got upon her nerves,

and a setting of pine and mountain put a finishing touch to an already

intolerable situation. She turned upon him at length, with a small

gesture of defiance,--a well-remembered tilt of her chin that pierced

him like a sword-thrust.

"Don't feel bound to escort me, please. I am constantly out alone.

You may have a long way to go; and we need hardly play at polite

conventionalities--you and I."

He glanced at her keenly for a second.

"Thanks; I am in no hurry. But--if you would prefer it?"

"I think it would be less--uncomfortable for us both," she made answer

desperately.

"In that case, of course . . ." He gathered up his reins, and lifted

his hat, "At least I am glad to have been of some small service to

you," he added, quietly. And before her brain or lips could formulate

an answer, he had cantered off and vanished round a shoulder of the

hill.

CHAPTER III.

"Flower o' the clove,

All the Latin I construe is 'Amo, I love'!"

--Browning.

Quita drew rein and sat motionless for several seconds, looking

straight before her.

"I wonder . . . I wonder very much," she mused, "exactly what one may

infer from all that. Either he has superb self-control, or I have been

wiped off the slate altogether. Most probably the latter."

Then she moved forward slowly, in a state of mind so complicated that,

for all her skill in self-analysis, she could not unravel her own

sensations. She only knew that she felt jarred through and through,

and in a mood to give way to her most dare-devil impulses. But happily

for her, no egregious piece of folly was ready to hand at the moment.

Her appearance in India was itself the outcome of an impulse generated

by the arrival of two cheques, whose united figures took away her

breath; and confirmed by the fact that Michael's relations with the

inevitable woman of the moment threatened serious complications--for

the woman. For Michael himself serious complications seemed out of all

question. Frank Pagan though he was, he lacked, in a peculiar degree,

the needful leavening of common clay. Love, as he knew it, was not

inevitably based on passion. It was his imagination rather than his

heart that took fire, and only under the influence of a dominant

emotion did he appear to be capable of the highest achievement.

Briefly, he was in love with Love, with that elixir of the heart that

stirs the pulses, and quickens inspiration. The object loved stood

second. But, so long as the enchantment held, so long as no new

impression caught and whirled him in another direction, he honestly

believed her to be supreme.

Hence complications, many and embarrassing, which went far to interpret

Quita's inconsequent flittings from one continental town to another.

For, although the younger by eighteen months, she was many years older

in thought and character than her irresponsible brother; and in all

matters of moment she took, and was expected to take, the lead.

The key to a perplexing character may often be found in the

idiosyncrasies of its nearest and dearest; and this reversal of the

natural order of things explained much in Quita that appeared

_difficile_ and contradictory; explained also her instant gravitation

to Lenox, in whom she divined a supply of moral force, and the

masculine spirit of protection, both strangely undeveloped in the

brother she so devoutly loved. And if at times the uncongenial task of

conscience-keeper, and general financier, coupled with complexities,

arising from her own false position, had proved something of a strain

upon her, Michael had never yet discovered the fact. She understood

and shared enough of his Pagan spirit to accept his emotional aids to

self-expression at their true value. Do what he might, she could not

find it in her heart to be angry with him for long. He carried his

fine crop of failings with a cheerfulness and assurance so engaging,

that it seemed almost ungracious to be aware of them.

But there were moments when the woman in her rebelled, even to

remonstrance, with small result; and when, at length, the arrival of

two cheques coincided with Michael's announcement that a certain

enamoured Countess obviously expected him to free her from the tyranny

of an unloved husband, Quita had laughingly suggested India as an

inviting means of escape from entanglements present and to come.

Half a night of meditation had sufficed to set her on the rock of

decision. There were possibilities about India not to be named, even

to her own heart. There were also empty spaces where white women would

be scarce, and where Michael must learn to work without the spur of a

fictitious stimulant.

Before the week was out, behold them ploughing through the

Mediterranean, leaving the misguided Countess to pacify a suspicious

husband. A summer in Kashmir, and a winter in a deserted Himalayan

station, had confirmed Quita in the wisdom of their flight; and now her

own unnamed possibility had been sprung upon her so suddenly, so

strangely, that it took away her breath, and left her as yet neither

glad nor sorry, but profoundly disturbed.

Arrived at her own turning, she relieved her feelings a little by

getting Yorick at a canter up the twisted scrap of a path that climbed

to a wooden doll's house, christened by a poetical Hindu landlord, the

"Crow's Nest." Perched on an impossible-looking slope of gravel and

granite, eight thousand feet above the Punjab, it seemed only to be

saved from falling headlong by an eight-foot ledge of earth, which

Quita spoke of proudly as her "garden," and which actually boasted two

strips of border aglow with early summer flowers. Here she found her

_sais_ squatting on his heels; and springing from the saddle, dismissed

Yorick without his customary lump of sugar.

On the steps of the trellised verandah she paused, nerving herself to

recount her astonishing adventure in the right tone of voice, and

instinctively her brain noted every detail of the view outspread before

her. The golden stillness of morning rested on hill and valley like a

benediction. Green cornfields, white watercourses, granite

promontories, and black patches of forest--all were bathed in warmth

and light without languor. The breath of the snows was still ice-cool,

and exhilarating as wine; its freshness penetrated and enhanced by the

faint sweet scent of Banksia roses, that clothed the rickety woodwork

in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was

crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the

high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the

crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached

flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so

that an occasional creamy petal fell circling to the ground.

But for the first time Quita Maurice felt out of tune with it all. A

disturbing element had thrust itself into her life, deranging its

perspective, altering its values. She felt badly in need of common

human sympathy, and the exalted calm of these high latitudes irritated

rather than soothed her.

With an impatient sigh she turned to enter the house.

The glass doors of the centre room stood open, a characteristic room,

half drawing-room, half studio; furnished mainly with two large easels,

painting-stools, and cane chairs, yet bearing in every detail the stamp

of Quita's iridescent personality. A pianette, a violin, a litter of

music, and back numbers of the 'Art Journal' occupied one corner. A

revolving bookcase showed an inviting array of books. Her own canvas

was hidden by draperies of dull gold silk, and beside it, on a carved

stool, sprays of Banksia roses and honeysuckle soared plumelike from a

vase of beaten bronze.

Before the second easel Michael stood, with his back towards her, brush

and palette in hand, head critically tilted, his velveteen coat sagging

a little from rounded shoulders. Absorbed in his picture, he was quite

unconscious of her presence. This irritated her also to an

unjustifiable extent. Her vanity had suffered recent shock, and an

unreasoning longing possessed her to be cared for, to be supremely

needed.

"_Michel_!" she cried imperatively from her post in the

doorway,--Michael objected strongly to the harsher pronunciation of his

name; and the two seldom spoke English when alone. "Is it necessary to

fire a salute before you will deign to be aware that one has come back?"

At that he turned quickly about, and treated her to a burlesque bow of

apology.

"_Mais non, cherie_ . . . a thousand pardons! But it is no fault of

mine that you have the footfall of a bird!"

She laughed in spite of herself.

"Keep those sort of speeches for Miss Mayhew. She may possibly believe

them. It would be all the same if I had the footfall of an elephant!

Nothing short of siege-guns would distract your mind from that picture.

It has bewitched you."

"_Eh bien_! When it is complete it will be a masterpiece," he assured

her loftily.

"No doubt! But, in the meanwhile, it may interest you to know that

except for a genuine miracle, I should not be here at all."

"_Mon Dieu_! But what happened? Tell me."

Flinging aside palette and brushes, he caught her hands in his, and it

cost her an effort to preserve her lightness of tone.

"Nothing blood-curdling, since you see me without bruise or scratch.

Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar

Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and

if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we

should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch

of Indian corn'!"

Maurice frowned. "Don't be gruesome, Quita."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be. I was only quoting that uncannily clever

Kipling boy at Lahore. Yorick and I were slithering over, just like

the loathly Tertium Quid on the Mushobra Road; and there is plenty of

Indian corn in the valley! I thought of it, all in a flash, and it

wasn't enlivening, I assure you."

"That is enough," Maurice protested hastily. Tragedy oppressed him to

the verge of annoyance. "But tell me--who was the knight-errant, that

I may at least shake hands with him."

The blood tingled in Quita's cheeks, and she went quickly forward into

the room.

"I doubt if you will want to do that when you know his name," she said.

"It was--Captain Lenox."

"_Nom de Dieu_! That fellow!" Michael flung out his hands with a

dramatic gesture of despair. "What is he doing here, _par exemple_,

instead of poking about among his glaciers? _Now_ I suppose he will

not rest till he has taken you from me again."

The frank selfishness of the man's first thought was so characteristic

that Quita smiled. But her smile had an edge to it.

"Set your mind at rest on that point," she said. "He is no more

anxious to claim--his property, than I am to be claimed."

"Curse him! Did he dare to tell you so?"

Quita lifted her head; a spark of anger flashed in her eyes.

"You seem to forget that he is a gentleman, and--my husband." Then,

recovering herself, she added more gently, "There are ways and ways of

telling things, _mon cher_, and since I have relieved your anxiety, we

need not mention him again. The subject is distasteful to me. Now, I

want to see how you have got on with the masterpiece!"

She went to the easel; and Maurice, following, stood at her elbow

anticipating the sweet savour of praise. For the picture was a notable

bit of work, daringly simple in colouring and design, yet arresting,

convincing, alive.

It represented a young girl, with the promise of womanhood on her

gravely sweet lips, and in the depths of her eyes, half-sitting upon

the crossed rails of the verandah. An ivory-white dress of Indian silk

fell in shimmering folds to her feet. A dawn of clear amber made a

tender background to the dull gold of her hair. Trailing sprays of the

rose that ran riot over the house drooped towards her; and a pine

branch, striking in abruptly, made an effective splash of shadow in an

atmosphere palpitating with the promise of fuller light. The only

intense bit of colour in the picture was the violet blue of Elsie

Mayhew's eyes--eyes that looked into you and through you to some

dream-world unsullied by the disconcerting realities of life, which

seemed only awaiting the given moment to rush in and dispel the dream.

For, as the sky gave promise of fuller light, so did the girl's spirit

seem hovering on the verge of fuller knowledge.

Such at least was Quita's thought, as she stood silently appraising her

brother's work; and it brought a contraction to her throat, a stinging

sensation to her eyeballs.

"I congratulate you, Michel," said she softly. "You have never done

anything to equal that. It is more than a portrait. It is an

interpretation, or will be, when it is complete. Her hopeless little

'Button Quail' of a mother won't understand it in the least, but

Colonel Mayhew will. I wonder if you know yourself how much you have

put into it?"

"I know that I have put some superlative workmanship into it," he

answered, looking upon the creation of his hand and brains with

critical grey-green eyes, curiously out of keeping with an ill-formed

and unrestrained mouth.

"Indeed you have. The thing is full of atmosphere, and your flesh

tints are worthy of Perugino. You mean to give it to her?"

"_Cela va sans dire_. She wants it as a present for her father."

"Why not hang it first, at Home?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. If she permits."

"It is a big gift, Michel. It would fetch a high price; and we need

money."

Michael shrugged his shoulders with all an artist's scorn of "the

common drudge."

"Since when have you turned commercialist, _petite soeur_? If it is a

question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this

one, _voila tout_. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of

Swinburne under it for title. They express her to perfection. Listen--

'Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate,

For love upon them like a shadow sat,

Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things,

A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings,

That know not what man's love or life shall be.'"

On the last line his voice deepened to an impassioned tone that brought

an anxious crease to Quita's forehead.

"I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note

of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever

treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little

embarrassing for a child of twenty!"

"Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the

right to say to her what I please."

"Not altogether, _mon ami_--unless----"

But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed

consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never

been.

"I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped

out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music."

Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking

simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the

passionate side of things involves himself in a big moral

responsibility. And even _you_ cannot shelve the moralities

altogether."

"_Dela depend_. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the

best place for them in my opinion."

His sister did not answer at once. Michael's confession of faith was

not a matter to be lightly dismissed; for the simple reason that he

lived up to it in so far as human inconsistency will allow any man to

live up to his faith, however ignoble.

"I sometimes wonder whether one's art really does gain by that form of

freedom," she said thoughtfully, "or only--one's consuming egotism."

But the suggestion was rank heresy, and Michael would have none of it.

"Really, Quita, you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my

soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience!

But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A

wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals.

Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy you, _ma belle_?"

"It might, if I had not heard a good deal of it before. You are

chronically devoted to one or other of us, my beloved Pagan! That's

the root of the difficulty."

In atonement for directness of speech, she laid hands upon his

shoulders, and smiled very tenderly into his face.

"I am chronically devoted to you, _coeur de mon coeur_," he declared in

all sincerity. "That is the only form of it I have yet known."

His reward was a butterfly kiss between the eyebrows.

"Out of your own mouth you stand condemned! It is quite charming for

me; and for the rest--one accepts the unavoidable! But in sober

prosaic truth, Michel, Elsie Mayhew is a great deal too good for you;

and that nice Engineer boy, Mr Malcolm, is desperately in earnest about

her, I have seen his whole heart in his eyes when he looks at her----"

"_Mais, ma chere_, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael

broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a

practical machine--even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must

have been left below for pumping purposes!"

She stamped her foot in helpless irritation.

"Michel, how exasperating you are! Can't you see that I am in earnest?"

"Like my incomparable rival?" he queried unabashed. "Poor devil! I

wish him no harm. Is it my fault, after all, if the lady prefers a man

who is not cut out on a pattern, and filed for reference at the War

Office? He is immaculate, _ce cher Malcolm_, from his parting to the

toes of his boots. And, _ma foi_, he is clean--like all that

redoubtable army of British officers--aggressively clean, inside and

out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no

_savoir faire_ where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him

try weapons more compelling than his _beaux yeux_. A man was not given

lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he

cannot turn them to good account, he deserves the fate that will

assuredly be his."

Quita's sigh, as she turned impatiently away, may have arisen from a

passing thought of that other, who had also been remiss in putting lips

and hands to their legitimate use, and had reaped disaster accordingly.

She took off her helmet, as if suddenly aware of its weight, and tossed

it into a chair.

"Is Miss Mayhew giving you another sitting after our sunrise picnic, on

Dynkund, to-morrow?" she asked in a changed voice.

"Yes, and I intend that she shall stay on for tiffin also."

"Then I will persuade Major Garth to follow suit, so that we may be a

_parti carre_. And now, as it's more than half-past breakfast-time, we

might begin to think about sitting down! I believe Major Garth is

riding up this morning with some books I lent him, and I must get

forward a little with my picture before he comes."

"His office hours seem to have become a negligible quantity lately,"

Maurice remarked casually, his eyes on Elsie's face.

"Yes, I told him so a few days ago, apparently without much effect.

Major Garth is one of those men who combine a maximum of pleasure and a

minimum of work with the capacity for securing good appointments, which

is quite an achievement--of its kind. I suppose I must gently point

out to him that now the station is waking up it would be well to

consider the proprieties a little more than we have done so far; or the

'Button Quail' will be forbidding Elsie the house. She is volubly

disapproving already, denounces him as a 'dangerous man' . . .

delectable adjective! But the cackle of Quails is nothing to me. So

long as the man behaves himself, and amuses me, I shall continue to see

just as much of him as I think fit."

Major Garth, it may be mentioned in passing, had lately secured the

coveted post of Station Staff Officer. He also had spent the winter

months in Dalhousie; and he could by no means be reckoned among the men

who fail with women through undue fastidiousness in regard to ways and

means.

CHAPTER IV.

"A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings

shall tell the matter."--_Eccles_.

"Tired already? Nonsense! The air at this height is pure elixir

vitae. It gives one a foretaste of the joy of being disembodied! I

feel five years younger since I left the bungalow."

"And I, on the other hand, feel uncomfortably aware that I shall never

see the forty-third milestone again!" And, seating himself

deliberately on the trunk of a fallen deodar, James Garth looked up at

his companion, where she stood above him on a rough-hewn block of

granite, her alpenstock held high like a shepherd's crook, the slender,

shapely form of her outlined upon a sky already athrill with the

foreknowledge of dawn.

Standing thus, lightly poised, impatient of delay, slim and upright as

a young birch-tree, a cluster of roses at her waist, her expressive

face shadowed by the wide-brimmed helmet, she appeared triumphantly,

girlishly young, for all her eight-and-twenty years. Her cheeks

glowed; irrepressible animation sparkled in her eyes. The shock and

jar of twenty-four hours ago seemed forgotten, as though they had never

been, for Quita Maurice was blessed with the happy faculty of living

vividly and exclusively in the present, and the exhilaration of ascent,

the prospect of watching the world's awakening from a pine-crowned

pinnacle, nine thousand feet up, were, for the moment, all-sufficing.

James Garth, in his upward glance, appraised every detail of her dress

and person; savoured to the full her very individual--if, at times,

thorn-set--charm. He was a connoisseur of woman--of their moods, their

minor vanities, their methods of defence and attack--this man whose

career had been mainly remarkable for a succession of sentimental

friendship, innocuous and otherwise.

During the past air months he had spent an infinite deal of leisure in

a pastime whose every move and countermove he knew by heart, and for

the first time in eighteen years he had found himself out of his

reckoning.

An element little known to him had upset the balance of power. He was

beginning to be aware that, for all his unquenchable self-assurance, he

had never for one moment felt sure of this woman, whose companionship

was so accessible, and whose inner self stood always just out of reach,

airy, impregnable, and by a natural sequence, the more entirely

desirable. It had taken Garth some months to realise the truth: and on

this morning of golden promise he decided that Quita Maurice must be

made to realise it also.

Quita herself, meeting the eloquence of his eyes with that frank look

of hers which had been largely responsible for the unprecedented turn

of affairs, was vainly trying to repress a mischievous enjoyment of the

fact that her companion was patently out of his element; that his

drawing-room attitudes and demeanour struck an almost ludicrous note of

discord with the untamed majesty of his surroundings.

Face, figure, and point-device attire, culminating in a buttonhole of

freshly picked violets, stamped him as a man mentally and physically

addicted to the levels of life; a soldier of carpet conquests and

ball-room achievements. A brow not ill-formed, and a bold pair of

eyes, more green than brown, suggested some measure of cultivated

intelligence, without which Quita could not have endured his

companionship for many hours together. But the proportions of his

thick-set figure, and a certain amplitude of chin and jaw, bewrayed

him; classed him indubitably with the type for whom comfort and leisure

are the first and last words of life. The fact that he had ascended a

matter of fifteen hundred feet before daybreak, and that with no more

than the mildest sense of martyrdom, was proof conclusive that the

balance of power had been very completely upset; and it is quite in

keeping with the delicate irony of things that the one woman who had

succeeded in upsetting it was, at that moment, dissecting him with the

merciless accuracy of the artist.

"Poor man!" she remarked, sympathetically. "I'm afraid I have been

treating you rather mercilessly; and you don't look particularly happy

sitting on that deodar, either! I suppose I may consider it something

of a triumph to have dragged a high priest of the arm-chair

unprotesting up to the heights at this unearthly hour of the morning?"

"A triumph exclusively your own," he answered, with lingering emphasis.

"No other woman in the world could have achieved as much."

Quita glanced at him quizzically.

"I honestly wonder," she said slowly, "if you could reckon up at random

how many times you have said that sort of thing before."

Garth reddened visibly; less at the justice of the retort than at the

humiliation of being put out of countenance by a woman from whom he

desired no less a gift than the gift of herself.

"Well, I never meant it fair and square before," he declared stoutly.

Whereat, to his consternation, she laughed outright.

"You seem to have a high opinion of my powers of credulity! That is

too big a compliment for me to digest without salt! But I think we

have talked nonsense enough for one while, and it's growing lighter

every minute. Are you coming on? Or would you sooner sit there in

peace while I push up to the top?"

The suggestion brought him to his feet.

"No, by no means. When I set out to do a thing, I go through with it."

"Rally your forces, then, for one more spurt of climbing. Time is

precious. Can you really manage this formidable boulder, or would you

like a hand up?"

She laughingly flung out her free left hand; and the mockery in her

clear voice fired the man to make good his opportunity. He took prompt

possession of the proffered hand, crushing it in his with unnecessary

force, but made no attempt to scale the rock; while she, instantly

perceiving his manoeuvre, sprang down to his side and freed herself

with imperious decision. Then she turned upon him, her head held high,

a spark of genuine scorn in her eyes; and he realised that he was

dealing with no mere coquette, whose elusiveness might be taken as an

inverted form of encouragement, but with a woman of character and

spirit.

"Major Garth," she said in a tone of quietness more cutting than anger,

"when I pay a man the compliment of going out alone with him, I take it

for granted that he is in the habit of behaving like a gentleman. I

should be sorry to find myself mistaken in your case."

Without giving him time to answer, she leapt lightly on to her deserted

rock, leaving him to follow, if he chose.

And he did choose. For her scorn, while it stung his vanity to the

quick, fired his lukewarm blood with a lust of conquest far removed

from his usual cool-headed assurance at the critical moment. He seemed

destined to experience more than one new sensation this morning; and

new sensations rarely came amiss to this epicure of the emotions.

Being quite incapable of emulating his companion's chamois method of

cutting corners, and striking out a direct line for the summit, he did

not succeed in coming up with her till the arduous feat was

accomplished,--the Pisgah height attained. Here he found her

established on a slab of granite, hands loosely clasped over her knee,

helmet tilted a little backward, forming a halo round her head and

face. He arrived in a very unheroic state of breathlessness, and she

greeted him with a frankly forgiving smile.

"That last bit came rather hard on you, I'm afraid. But surely all

this makes ample amends."

She included in a wide sweep of her arm the superb panorama of hill and

valley and far-stretching plain, robed in a haze of its own tierce

breath, through which a silver network of rivers could be faintly

discerned in the crescent light. Uprising from this blue interminable

distance, the first crumplings of the foothills showed like purple

velvet, and from these again the giant Himalayas--the "home of the

greater gods"--sprang aloft, in a medley of lovely lines and hues, till

they reached the uttermost north where the hoar head of Nanga Parbat

soared twenty-five thousand feet into the blue.

Quita motioned her companion to another rock, a little distance behind

her own.

"Sit down there, and recover your lost breath," she commanded, gently.

"I would rather not talk for the present, if you don't mind. It would

jar somehow. I daresay you understand what I mean."

He was many leagues removed from understanding: but he obeyed in

silence, wondering at himself, no less than at her. And straightway

Quita forgot all about him, in the mere rapture of looking, and of

feeling in every fibre the incommunicable thrill of dawn.

A passionate nobility, freedom, and power breathed from the wide scene.

Already a pearly glimmer pulsed along the east; already the mountains

were awake and aware. Peak beyond peak, range beyond range, a shadowy

pageant of purple and grey, they swept upwards to the far horizon,

where the still wonder of the snows shone pale and pure against the

dovelike tones of the sky. Away across the valley, where night still

brooded, Kalatope ridge, serrated and majestic of outline, made a

massive incident of shadow amid the tenderer tints around. The great

hushed world seemed holding its breath in expectation of a miracle--the

unconsidered miracle of dawn.

A Himalayan dawn is brief, as it is beautiful. One after one, the

snow-peaks passed from the pallor of death to the glow of life. Then,

sudden as an inspiration, the full splendour of morning broke, sublime

as the eternity from which it came. Rapier-like shafts of light

pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley.

Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all

their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and

moss, and rested, like a caress, upon Quita's face and figure.

At last, with a long breath of satisfaction, she forced her sun-dazzled

eyes and mind back to earth; only to discover that Garth had risen and

was standing at her side. The man had seen and studied her in many

moods. But never in one so exalted, so self-forgetful, as the present;

and to the varied new experiences of the morning was added a wholesome

sense of his own unworthiness to lay a hand upon her. In that

illumined moment he was vouchsafed a glimpse into the temple of Love; a

temple he had desecrated and defiled time and again; whose holy of

holies he had never entered, nor ever could.

"Does it really mean as much as all that to you?" he asked, still

watching her, with unusual concentration.

She nodded, and a soft light gleamed in her eyes. "Yes--as much as

that, and more--infinitely more. One's cramped mind and heart seem to

need expanding to take it all in."

Garth's smile lacked its habitual touch of cynicism.

"I am afraid even sunrise on Dynkund in your company has no power to

lift me to such flights of ecstasy."

"I never supposed it had, you poor fellow! I wouldn't change souls

with you for half a kingdom. Nearly every day of my life I thank the

goodness and the grace that dowered me with the spirit of an artist.

Think what a heritage it is to be eternally interested in a world full

of people who seem to be eternally bored!"

"I suppose you include me in that noble army of martyrs?"

"Decidedly. It is one of your worst faults."

"At least I never commit it in your presence."

She laughed, and lifted her shoulders.

"At least you know how to flatter a woman! But, for goodness' sake,

don't let's talk trivialities in the face of these stupendous

mountains."

"And why not? In my opinion, the trivialities of a human being are

worth more than the grandeur of a mountain, any day. But, seriously,

Miss Maurice--if you can be serious with me for five minutes--does all

this, and the Art in which you live and breathe, so satisfy you that

you feel no need for the far better things a man might have to offer

you?"

She frowned, and looked with sudden intentness at a distant, abject in

the valley.

"Yes--seriously--it does. What is more, it seems to me that most men

set too high a value on what they have to offer a woman, and that a

good many of us are better off without it."

Garth set his teeth, and did not answer at once. That his first

genuine attempt at a proposal of marriage should be thus cavalierly

nipped in the bud was disconcerting, to say the least of it.

"But not you--of all women," he protested, incredulously. "Are you

quite sure you understand what I mean? Won't you give me a chance to

explain----?"

Her low laughter maddened him.

"Oh, no--please have mercy on me! Explanations are the root of all

evil! If only people had not such a passion for explaining themselves,

there would be fifty per cent fewer misunderstandings in the world.

Don't you know the delightful story of a zealous mother reading the

Bible to her boy, and explaining profusely to bring it within the scope

of his small mind, and when she asked him, anxiously, 'Are you quite

sure you understand it all, darling?' he answered, with the heavenly

frankness of childhood, 'Yes, beautifully, mummy--except when you

explain.' That's my feeling exactly; so we'll skip the explanations,

if you don't mind."

He stifled an oath, and flung his half-smoked cigar down the khud.

"You're enough to drive a sane man distracted!" he declared hotly, and

was not a little surprised at his own vehemence.

"No, no! That's exaggeration, I assure you. The strong wine of the

morning has got into your head. Do be reasonable now, and keep

personalities at arm's length. I detest them."

He moved away for a space; then, turning on his heel, came back again.

"At least you don't object to my companionship?" he said, ignoring her

request.

"Of course not, so long as it amuses you to bestow it upon me."

"Amuses me! God in heaven, what makes you so hopelessly detached?"

"Some radical defect in me, I suppose. The Pagan strain, perhaps, that

comes out so strong in Michael. I believe I am incapable of _les

grandes passions_. But that does not prevent me from being a good

friend, and a constant one, as you will find, if you care to test me in

that capacity. Now you may sit down here," she patted her slab of rock

invitingly, "and discourse about anything you please, except myself.

Egoist though I am, I have had enough of the subject for to-day!"

And Garth--the man of surface emotions and ready tongue--found nothing

to say in answer to this kindly but inexorable dismissal of his

unspoken suit. He had no choice but to accept the inevitable, and the

proffered seat. But the permission to discourse about anything he

pleased left him dumb, and it was Quita herself who guided their talk

into a less personal channel.

"Have you had any new arrivals at the Strawberry Bank lately?" she

asked, conversationally; and the question was more relevant to the

tabooed topic than Garth was likely to guess. He lived close to the

hotel, and dined there when he felt convivially disposed.

"Yes; two new fellows came up this week. A doctor from Mooltan and a

Gunner from 'Dera Dismal,'--the Thibet man,--Lenox, who seems to be

making a reputation of sorts. But he looks a wreck. Smokes like a

chimney; and is apparently working himself to death; a thankless form

of folly."

"Perhaps. Yet India needs a few unsparing workers--like Captain Lenox."

She spoke with studied indifference; but her fingers were busy

uprooting a patch of moss.

"Oh yes, India has a healthy appetite for unsparing workers! She is a

grasping harridan, who demands all and offers nothing. She devours the

lives of men who are foolish enough to lose their hearts to her, and

wrecks their bodies by way of thanks."

Quita's lips lifted in the merest shadow of a smile. "Aren't you a

little ungrateful to her? She has been fairly merciful to you!"

"I have never given her the ghost of a chance to be otherwise! I don't

believe in overwork, plus the Indian climate. More men kill themselves

by a happy mixture of both than the importance of their achievements

justifies. I was chaffing Lenox only last night about his leaning

towards that unrecognised form of suicide; and all the answer I got was

that a man might die of a more degrading disease. You never by any

chance get a rise out of old Lenox!"

"Do you know him well?"

"As well as it's possible to know a fellow who lives with all his

shutters up. And in any case an anchorite, and a woman-hater, would

never be much in my line. The symptoms appear to have developed in the

last few years. Not without reason, as I happen to know."

"_What_ do you happen to know?"

The question came almost in a whisper; but Garth, who had all a woman's

weakness for other people's affairs, was too intent upon his ill-gotten

scrap of gossip to observe his companion's slight change of manner.

"Why, that it's simply a case of _cherchez la femme_, as usual," he

answered, lightly. "I believe it's a fact that he went so far as to

marry one of these women he affects to despise, when he was on leave

five years ago."

Quita started, and bit her lips. "What reason can you have for

believing anything . . . so improbable?"

"My dear lady, marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of

tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the

details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the

same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and,

as she had taken rather a fancy to him, she tried to find out what had

become of him. After a good deal of questioning, it transpired that he

had been seen coming out of the English church with a lady; and further

inquiry revealed the fact that an officer named Lenox had been quietly

married there the day before. Naturally, she scented a romance, and

was keen to know more. But he seemed to have vanished outright. Then

ten days later she met him on the station platform, travelling alone,

and obviously down on his luck. He told her he was off to join his

battery in India: nothing more. Problem: What, in the name of mystery,

had he done with the lady?"

At that Quita rose abruptly, her cheeks on fire, her whole frame tense

with suppressed agitation.

"Oh, stop--stop. I can't stand any more!" she protested, in a

smothered voice; and at once Garth was beside her, contrite and amazed.

"Miss Maurice--what have I said to upset you so?"

"It's not your fault. You couldn't help it," she answered, without

looking up. "But--you were telling me my own story!"

"Good Lord! Then--it was _you_?"

"Don't say any more, please. I never meant to speak; only--one had to

stop you--somehow. It's time we went back to the others now. I am

sure you must be wanting your breakfast. And remember"--she faced him

at last, with brave deliberation--"I trust you, as a gentleman, never

to speak of this again--to me, or to any one else."

And Garth bowed his head, and followed her, in a bewildered silence.

CHAPTER V.

"He that getteth a wife beginneth a possession; a help like unto

himself, and a pillar of rest."--_Ecclesiasticus_.

Eldred Lenox stood alone in the Desmonds' diminutive drawing-room,

patiently impatient for companionship more responsive than that of cane

chairs and tables, pictures and a piano. Yet the room itself, with its

atmosphere of peace and refinement, gave him a foretaste of the

restfuluess that made Honor Desmond's companionship a growing necessity

to this man, whose heart and brain were in a state of civil war. It

was filled with afternoon sunlight, with the faint, clean fragrance of

violets, wild roses, and maiden-hair fern, and its emptiness was

informed and pervaded by countless suggestions of a woman's presence; a

woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the beautifying of daily

life.

In this era of hotels, clubs, and motors, of days spent in sowing hurry

and reaping shattered nerves, the type is growing rarer, and it will be

an ill day for England's husbands and sons, nay, for her supremacy

among nations, if it should ever become extinct. For it is no

over-statement, but simple fact, that the women who follow, soon or

late, in the track of her victorious arms, women of Honor Desmond's

calibre--home-loving, home-making, skilled in the lore of heart and

spirit--have done fully as much to establish, strengthen, and settle

her scattered Empire as shot, or steel, or the doubtful machinations of

diplomacy.

A half-acknowledged conviction of this truth was undermining Eldred's

skin-deep cynicism; and it did not tend to alleviate his renewed sense

of loss. A week had passed since his astounding experience on the

Kajiar Road; a week in which the hours of sleep had been a more

negligible quantity than usual; in which he had fought squarely against

an imperative need to escape from the haunting consciousness of his

wife's presence, and had been squarely beaten. His present need to see

and speak with Honor Desmond was an ultimate confession of that defeat.

On reaching the bungalow, he was told that the Mem-sahib bad gone out

with the Chota Sahib, but would doubtless be back before long, and had

decided to await her return. During his ride with her that morning, he

had not been able to bring himself to speak. But this time he intended

to go through with the ordeal. He felt too restless to sit down; and

she did not keep him waiting long.

Footsteps and low voices, punctuated with silver laughter, heralded her

coming, and a few minutes later she entered, carrying a pocket edition

of herself, who clung about her neck, and pressed a cool rose-petal

cheek against her own.

Lenox had described her as a magnificent woman. A Scot may generally

be trusted not to overstate his facts; and certainly Honor Desmond, in

those radiant early days of marriage, deserved no less an adjective.

Height, and a buoyant stateliness of bearing, lent a regal quality to

her beauty. Her grey-blue eyes under very level brows were the eyes of

a woman dwelling in the heart of life, not merely in its outskirts and

pleasure-grounds.

She expressed no surprise at seeing Lenox again so soon. Come when he

might, his presence was accepted as a matter of course; the surest way

to put a man at his ease.

"So sorry I kept you waiting," she said simply, and the hand she gave

him was at once soft and strong,--an epitome of the woman. "Theo was

lunching out with Colonel Mayhew--they are both very full of that book

of his on the Hill Tribes--and I have been devoting most of my time to

this very exacting person!"

Lenox caressed the child's red-gold hair with a cautious reverent hand,

and a contraction of envy at his heart.

"What a beautiful little chap he is! Begins to look an out-and-out

Meredith already. Desmond must be tremendously proud of him."

She smiled and pressed him closer.

"He is; and I'm nearly as bad! One son, three fools, you know! Poor

little Paul, it's not fair to call him names when he can't hit back."

"You called him after Wyndham?"

"Yes. They're like brothers, those two. Now let me get rid of him,

and we'll have a quiet talk till Theo comes back. Sit down and smoke,

please."

He complied; and she, returning, established herself beside her

work-table, and took up an elaborate bit of smocking without question

or remark.

His trouble and stress of mind were very evident to her; but she was

one of those rare women who are chary of questions--who, for all their

desire to help and serve, never approach too near, or say the word too

much, which was, perhaps, one reason why men found her so restful, and

instinctively talked to her about themselves.

But Lenox was long in beginning.

By imperceptible degrees, this unsought gift of friendship was melting

the morsel of ice at his heart; was reviving in him, against his will,

that keen appreciation of a cultivated woman's sympathy and

companionship, which, among finely tempered men, is as potent a factor

in the shaping of destinies as passion, or hot-headed emotion.

For a while he permitted himself the bitter-sweet satisfaction of

merely watching her where she sat, in a shaft of sunlight, that struck

golden gleams through the burnished abundance of her hair; of noting

the grace and dignity of her pose, and speculating as to the nature of

her thoughts. His wife's reckless impulse on that fateful September

day was bringing him now within measurable distance of a very human

danger. The deep, passionate heart of him, crushed and stifled during

the past five years, was in no safe state to be brought into contact

with a lighted match. But of this danger he was, by his very nature,

sublimely unaware.

Finally he took the short pipe from his lips and spoke.

"Of course you know I have something definite to say, or I should

hardly have the cheek to inflict myself on you twice in the twenty-four

hours."

She looked up and smiled. "You're evidently in one of your bad moods,

or you would not vex me by putting it like that."

"Sorry to vex you, but I _am_ in a bad mood; have been for the last

week; so you must make allowances, I can't sleep, and a restless devil

inside me won't let me settle to steady work. Nerves, I suppose. I

don't look a likely subject, do I? But they give me a deal of trouble

at times; and I came to say that I must go back on my arrangement with

you and Desmond and clear out of this before the end of the week."

"Oh, but surely that would be a great pity; a great disappointment to

us both. Is it really a case of 'must'?"

"I think so."

"And you have only been here a fortnight! Isn't it rather early days

to give in?"

"Very early days--as the case must appear to you; and the evil of it is

that I have no power to make things clearer. Think me an overwrought

fool; a broken-backed corn-stalk, if you choose. It will hurt, of

course; but it can't be helped."

He spoke with undisguised bitterness, and, laying down her work, she

looked at him straightly, a great compassion in her eyes.

"You misunderstand the fundamentals of friendship if you can talk like

that," she said gently. "It is rooted in reticence in respect for

another's individuality. Whatever you choose to do, you may be very

sure that I shall neither doubt your good reasons, nor seek to know

them. That is my idea of what it means to be a friend."

"I stand rebuked," he answered gravely, "and I'm not likely to forget

what you have said."

"At the same time," she added in a lighter tone, "one is only human!

And I can't let you leave Dalhousie without a word of protest--even if

it is useless." She hesitated. "May I speak straight?"

"As straight as you please. I should prefer it."

"Well, I think that if it is a case of nerves, or--worry of any kind,

nothing can be worse for you than your own society. Such amusement as

we can offer you up here may be frivolous and insignificant enough,

but, believe me, it is far better for you just now than the most

sublime snowfields and glaciers at the back of Beyond! You know you

are free to come here whenever you please. Theo enjoys having you; so

do I. And I'm sure it's good for you to fraternise with something more

human than a mountain!"

He smiled, but did not answer at once; and suddenly she lifted her

head, her face all animation.

"Look here, I have a notion--an inspired notion. Why should not you

two get Colonel Mayhew's permission to go off on a week's shooting trip

beyond Chumba. Ten days if you like. Theo would love it. You would

come back to your writing like a giant refreshed. There now, isn't

that a plan worth thinking over?"

Moved beyond his wont, Lenox leaned impulsively towards her.

"My dear Mrs Desmond, your kindness overpowers me. But I really can't

see that you and your husband are called upon to put yourselves out

like that, on my behalf. You are up here to enjoy your short holiday

together; and you are rare good companions, as I know. What right have

I to monopolise him for ten days, and leave you alone? Why should you

care, after all, if I do go and knock myself to bits in the interior?"

"That question is unworthy of you, and doesn't deserve an answer," she

said on a note of gentle reproof. "Mine does. Will you do what I ask?"

"Since you ask it of me--yes. Always supposing that it suits Desmond

to go."

"Of course it will suit him. We will settle it when he comes in."

He leaned back in his chair, and sighed.

"You're amazingly good to me, Mrs Desmond; and I'm an ungrateful brute.

Will you overlook that, and play me something warranted to soothe

jarred nerves, till your husband comes?"

"Of course I will, gladly. Only you mustn't expect real music from a

hireling!"

She chose one of Beethoven's most tenderly gracious Allegrettos, and

the soul of the hireling responded creditably to the magic of her touch.

But before she had played many bars a clatter of hoofs announced

Desmond's return. He flung himself from the saddle, cleared the

verandah steps at a bound, and entered the room:--a man of magnetic

vitality, with a temperament like a clear flame; a typical officer of

that isolated force to whose gallantry and unwearied devotion to duty

India owes more than she is apt to acknowledge, or, possibly, to

perceive. He nodded a welcome to Lenox, signed to him to remain

seated, and going straight to the piano laid a hand on his wife's

shoulder.

"Don't stop. Finish your piece," he said, as she smiled up at him; and

he did not remove his hand, but remained standing there, in simple

satisfaction at having got back to her.

Now and again, at very rare intervals, Nature seems to select a

favoured man and woman to uphold the torch of the ideal, lest it be

reduced to sparks and smoke, to refute the cynic and the pessimist; to

hearten a world nauseated and discouraged by the eternal tragi-comedy

of marriage, with the spectacle of a human relationship of unsullied

beauty: a relationship that passes, by imperceptible degrees, from the

first antiphony of passionate hearts to a deep deliberate bliss,

"durable from the daily dust of life."

Desmond's first marriage had brought him no such revelation of the

hidden mysteries of union; no companionship worthy of the name; and the

happiness that comes late, on the heels of conflict and pain, takes a

more conscious grip on the heart, is more firmly held to, more

jealously guarded, than that which meets us on the threshold, and is

accepted as part of the natural order of things. Blest with vivacity,

courage, and an ardent zest for Frontier soldiering, Desmond had rarely

found life other than very good; but he had only proven the full

measure of its goodness since his marriage with Honor Meredith. And

the mouths brought increasing reliance on her comradeship; increasing

insight into the depths and delicacies of a passion that was almost

genius. His need of her was deeper now than it had been two years ago,

when he had believed himself at the summit of desire. For a great love

is like a great mountain-range. Each height scaled reveals farther

heights beyond. Attainment is no part of our programme here; and there

may well be truth in the axiom that "to travel hopefully is better than

to arrive."

But Eldred Lenox, tangled in the twofold cords of temperament and

circumstance, was denied even the privilege of travelling hopefully,

and at moments like the present he suffered the additional torment of

looking into happiness through another man's eyes. It was futile to

reiterate the obvious drawbacks of marriage for an ambitious man,

standing on the threshold of a coveted career. These distracting

Desmonds cheerfully and unconsciously refuted them all! But he

accepted the thorns of the situation as toll paid for the privilege of

an intimacy he would on no account have forgone, and endured them with

the grim stoicism that was his.

The Allegretto ended, Honour swung round on her stool, and set forth

her Chumba project without reference to Eldred's threatened departure.

Desmond laughingly professed himself ready to obey orders, within

reasonable limits; and it was finally decided that he should write at

once to Colonel Mayhew, Resident of the native State in which

Dalhousie's hills are situated, and whose capital lies in a cup-shaped

valley eighteen miles below the English station.

Thereupon Lenox rose to take his leave; but on the threshold he paused,

as though an afterthought had occurred to him.

"Next time you happen to go out calling, Mrs Desmond," he said, with

studied carelessness, "you might like to look up a Miss Maurice and her

brother. They've been here all the winter; and are living on the top

of Bakrotas. I met them--some years ago, in Switzerland. Artists, out

here for painting purposes--and rather out of the common run. You

might find them interesting."

"They sound as if they would be! Thank you for letting me know of

their existence. I'll amuse myself by exploiting them while you two

are away."

But Lenox had no wish to expatiate upon the subject, and with a

muttered disclaimer he was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

"I will but say what mere friends say--

Or only a thought stronger.

I will hold your hand as long as all may--

Or--no very little longer."

--Browning.

"No, I don't like her, and I don't believe I ever shall. One cannot

deny that she is beautiful, charming, complete; too complete for my

taste. _Cela me gene_. I know no other way to express it."

Quita Maurice balanced herself on the railing of her matchbox verandah,

and gazed critically at the corner where the last of Honor Desmond's

_jhampannis_ had not long since disappeared from view. Garth, the

inevitable, stood close beside her, faultlessly equipped as always,

even to the gold-tipped cigarette, and the violets that blossomed

perennially in his coat. He grew them in pots expressly for the

purpose; and his bearer set them in a wine-glass on his breakfast-table

every morning.

Quita's verdict on her visitor moved him to a smile of half-cynical

amusement. He enjoyed her occasional unabashed lapses into the eternal

feminine.

"I'm with you there," he answered, heartily. "The worst fault a human

being can commit is to be faultless. Poor Mrs Desmond! She will have

to subsist without our admiration."

"No need to waste pity on her, _mon ami_. I am convinced that she gets

far more admiration than is good for her as it is. She has only been

married a little over two years, I believe, and it is safe to presume

that her husband idolises her shadow. She is the sort of woman men put

on a pedestal, and worship kneeling; and women mostly detest, because,

in their secret hearts, they would like to be up there too! Personally

I have no use for pedestals. I am content to be _bon camarade_! As

for that sublime Desmond woman, I feel morally certain that she never

commits an indiscretion, or has a knot in her shoe-lace, or loses her

scissors!"

"Are you peculiarly lenient towards those three failings?"

"I am quite culpably lenient towards the whole tribe of human failings.

They are the salt of life. I have never really understood that

incessant harping on the mystery of pain and sin. The question, Why

should they be allowed to exist? seems to me simply fatuous. No world

worth living in could have been created without them. They are the

backbone of all drama; and I love drama inordinately. They put the

iron into men's souls, and the grit into their characters. Think what

a nauseating crew of sentimentalists we should be,

'If all had love, as every nest hath eggs,

And every head of maize her feathery cap.'

I, for one, should beg to be excused from spending three-score years

and ten on a planet full of sugar-plums and kisses!"

She left her perch on the railings, and stood erect, in an unconscious

attitude of defiance; and Garth watched her speculatively through

narrowed lids. He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that she

had persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond Chumba, instead of

deserting Dalhousie for the interior, might not be accountable for this

unusual burst of eloquence.

"I had no notion that you went in for studying big questions of that

kind," he remarked, with an amused air of interest.

"Studying them! But no! What call is there to study them? I have my

ears and eyes, and my priceless intuitions. It is enough. An artist

will learn more about life and character with the help of those three,

than all the _savants_ in creation could imbibe from a hecatomb of

books. Michel--where are you? What has been keeping you so quiet

since Mrs Desmond's departure?"

Michael, who promptly appeared on the threshold, held up a large

drawing-block for his sister's inspection.

"_Voila donc_! _Que dis-tu_? Is it not to the life?"

The picture was a rapid, delicate pastel study of Honor Desmond,

presenting her, as Michael had said, "to the life." The broad brow,

the short straight nose, the strength and tenderness of the mouth and

chin, the smile that hovered like a light in her serious eyes; every

detail was faultlessly rendered. But Quita's cry of surprise expressed

annoyance rather than admiration.

"What possessed you to do _that_?" she asked, sharply. "It is a living

likeness--yes. Better send it to her friend, Captain Lenox. He would

give you a hundred and fifty rupees for it like a shot."

The instant the words were out she tingled with mortification at having

spoken them in Garth's presence. But he assumed a critical interest in

the picture, and Michael, in the first flush of achievement, had eyes

and thoughts for nothing else.

"A hundred and fifty? _Parbleu, non_!" he answered, hotly. "It is a

possession, a triumph. I do not part with it for money. All the while

she talked to you, I never took my eyes from her face, and I struck

while the iron was hot. _Mon Dieu, mais die est superbe_! _C'est une

deesse veritable_! _Rien non plus_!"

In ecstatic moments Michael deserted English altogether for the natural

language of the emotions; and Quita flashed a glance of amusement at

Garth.

"The pedestal already, you see!"

But Michael, deaf or unheeding, continued his paean of praise.

"But the head alone is not enough. _Il faut le tout ensemble_. _Ca

sera magnifique_. Now at last I have the centre figure for my great

picture--Mater Triumphans. In a day or two I call on her. I ask her

permission to immortalise her and myself in one achievement. No woman

in her senses could refuse so flattering a request; and her lips, her

eyes, betray that, goddess or not, she is before all things a woman."

"But, my good Michel," Quita interposed, with a deliberate lightness,

"ride your enthusiasm on the curb, I beg of you. Isn't one goddess at

a time enough to fill your expansive heart? I warn you that if you are

going to disgrace me by ostentatiously falling in love with this Mrs

Desmond, I shall give you up for good, and insist on a legal

separation! Now, I am tired of idling, and it's high time I went back

to my picture." She held out a hand to Garth. "_A demain_," she said,

with a gracious smile of dismissal. "But not till tea-time, please. I

have a certain amount of work to get through every day if _you_ have

not!"

Garth's reply was conveyed to a lingering pressure of her hand. He was

a past master in this discreet method of expressing the inexpressible;

and he had the satisfaction of seeing the colour deepen in her cheeks,

as she released herself hastily, and passed on into the house.

During a long ride homeward, Garth found time for much interested

speculation on the possible issue of events. The situation appeared

sufficiently incomprehensible to afford scope for dramatic

developments; and he shared to the full Quita's taste for drama,

provided always that it did not deprive him of sleep, or render him

personally uncomfortable. He shared also her magnanimous attitude

towards human shortcomings; frankly acknowledging his own, and

skilfully utilising those of other men--and women. But bad men are as

often tripped up by the unquenchable spark of good in human nature as

good men are by the equally unquenchable spark of evil; and James Garth

was not altogether devoid of the little leaven that leavens the whole

lump. There were even moments--and the present was one--when it

asserted itself to the detriment of his cool-headed schemes. Generally

speaking, a husband in the background in no way disturbed his

accommodating code of morals. But scruples, hitherto unknown, seemed

set like a hedge of defence about this girl, who was, in every respect,

so very much a woman.

For all her love of dangerous ground, her airy scorn of conventions,

she had a knack of compelling some measure of uprightness, even from so

unpromising a subject as James Garth. Thus, bone-bred gossip though he

was, his silence in respect of her astounding revelation was assured.

Her words, "I trust you, as a gentleman," had quickened that good grain

in him, which is the saving grace of us all. Also the knowledge itself

hurt him more than he could have believed. It seriously upset his

equanimity for no less than a week; not indeed to the extent of

damaging his appetite, or his sleep, but enough to make her society a

distraction more bitter than sweet; enough to drive him into dining at

the Strawberry Bank Hotel, though the cuisine of that mixed

establishment compared very unfavourably with his own.

Here he naturally met Lenox, and the meeting reawakened his consuming

curiosity; awakened also those primitive savage instincts which no

surface civilisation will ever annihilate while the world holds one

woman and two men. And how should it be accounted theft to rob a man

of that which, to all appearance, he neither possessed nor desired to

recapture?

In twenty years of philandering he had never experienced so keen a

desire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leave

his wife in an equivocal position, he must be prepared to accept the

consequences, which are, in general, the last things that any average

man is prepared to accept. Shrewdness and vanity alike convinced Garth

that Quita's attitude on Dynkund, viewed in the light of her subsequent

disclosure, counted for nothing; while the fact that for six months she

had readily accepted his companionship counted for much. Her fine

sense of honour had naturally compelled her to "head him off" dangerous

ground. But he consoled himself with the reflection that a woman's

sense of honour is rarely her strongest point. Pit her heart against

it, and the outcome is merely a question of time. A conviction founded

on his own complicated past!

In his esteem, then, nothing stood between him and his desire but a

poor crop of scruples, readily trampled under foot; and by a fine

stroke of irony Lenox himself completed the trampling process. He, who

rarely took an active part in the random, unedifying talk congenial to

after-dinner "pegs" and cigars, had one night been moved to administer

advice to a rapturous subaltern, in the shape of a few trenchant

cynicisms in respect of women and marriage, bidding him not be fool

enough to run his misguided head into the noose; and the subaltern had

collapsed like a pricked air-ball. But Garth, to his own surprise,

retorted with no little warmth; and Lenox, turning in his chair, looked

at him deliberately--a glint of steel in his eyes.

"I couldn't presume to cross swords with you, Major," he remarked, on a

quiet note of contempt. "Your experience is as extensive as my own is

limited; and you have the good luck to be popular. I have not. But

that is simply a question of _metier_. Yours is to flatter women, even

behind their backs; whilst I am blockhead enough to speak the truth

about them, even to their faces. And the last thing a normal woman

wants from any man is--the truth."

From that moment Garth had hardened his heart. And now--a week

later--as he rode down from the Crow's Nest, he chuckled to himself

over the satisfactory way in which Lenox was playing into his hands by

adopting an attitude that would plainly act as a foil to his own

deferentially persistent courtship; a metaphorical walking round the

walls of Jericho, that must end in capitulation, soon or late.

From his point of view, Quita's unique position of personal freedom,

coupled with legal bondage, added a distinct flavour to the whole

affair: and so well pleased was he with the aspect of things in

general, that, before reaching Potrain, he headed his pony up another

corkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow. Here he

spent a couple of hours, lounging in the drawing-room of one of the

lesser lights in his firmament, flattering her by a delicately conveyed

impression that he found her the only woman in the station worth

talking to. And so, home to his own well-appointed house, where, two

hours after an irreproachable dinner, he slept the sleep of the man

whose conscience has been trained not to make inconvenient remarks.

CHAPTER VII.

"God uses us to help each other so,

Lending our lives out."

--Browning.

Before May was out Honor met her unpromising acquaintance several

times, by chance. But nothing beyond formal greetings passed between

them. Twice she happened to be riding alone with Lenox; the third

time, her husband was with them: and on every occasion Quita's

companion was James Garth,--the only one among them all who enjoyed the

situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of

her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's

presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a

two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her

unspoken intimation _au pied de la lettre_, steeled himself to

half-cynical, half-stoical endurance.

He had returned heartened, and fortified by a week of stirring sport,

and by closer contact with a personality wholesome and invigorating as

a hill wind; a sympathy of the practical order, that found expression

in matter-of-fact service and good fellowship, rather than in speech.

He had given up all thought of leaving the station; had decided to set

his teeth, and go through with his ordeal, sooner than disappoint these

new-found friends, who seemed already to have become a part of his

life. Such rapid intimacies are a distinctive feature of a country

where a guest may come for a night, and stay for a month; where all

white men are brothers, in the widest sense of the word.

And Eldred Lenox did not hold with half measures. Since he stood his

ground in order to please the Desmonds, he held himself ready to fall

in with any joint plans they might choose to make. Thus, he agreed to

share in their arrangements for the June camp, at Kajiar,--a natural

glade hid in the heart of Kalatope Forest: and even accepted, without

demur, Colonel Mayhew's proposal to preface the 'week' with a two days'

house-party at the Chumba Residency;--a picturesque house, whose garden

of lawns, and roses, and English trees falls sheer to the eddying river

below. The two sportsmen had spent a couple of days here on their way

back, the Resident being down in Chumba on State business; and his

suggestion had been the natural outcome of Desmond's keen interest in

the book which was his hobby of the moment.

"I must be down here then," he explained, "for the _Minjla Mela_, a

superstitious ceremony by which we test the luck of the State for the

coming year. An unfortunate buffalo is flung into the Ravee, just

above the rapids; and if he succumbs, or scrambles out on the far side,

the gods will not fail us. But if he lands on the town bank, they

won't trouble their heads about us till next June. Naturally we do our

best to prevent such a catastrophe, in spite of our conviction that the

matter is settled by the will of the gods! As far as I know, the

ceremony is peculiar to Chumba; and this would be a good chance for you

to see it, if you don't mind a trifle of heat, and if your wife would

care to come too, so much the better."

"She'll come like a shot, thanks," Desmond answered heartily.

"Good!--We'll get up a native dinner at the Palace in honour of the

occasion. My little girl has set her heart on the plan, rather to my

wife's dismay. The Maurices want to come too; and we may have to

include Garth, on her account; though I confess I wanted her for

myself! She's worth talking to, that girl. There's a touch of genius

in her composition, and a touch of the folly that's apt to go along

with it; or she would never give the gossips a chance to couple her

name with Garth's. If he is in earnest, so much the worse for her.--We

may count on you, Lenox, I hope?" he added, turning to the impassive

man at his side, whom he had unwittingly smitten between the joints of

his harness.

Lenox's muttered assent was a trifle indistinct, owing to the thick

pipe-stem between his teeth, and rising deliberately, he passed out of

the smoking-room into the wistaria-shadowed verandah, where the

turbulent voice of the river seemed to echo his own mood. It was well

for himself, and for James Garth also, that he ran no risk of meeting

the man at that moment.

The thought of that first fortnight in June unnerved him. For Colonel

Mayhew's words had done more than turn the knife in an open wound.

Lenox was blest, or curst, with that most pitiless of mentors, a Scotch

conscience. Whatever Quita's failings, or her attitude to himself,

there could be no shelving the fact that he was her husband:--the

guardian of her good name, the one man on earth who could claim the

right to criticise her conduct. Her probable repudiation both of his

criticism, and his right to offer it, did not, in his view, justify him

in standing aloof, if need for speech should arise. Possibly passion,

smouldering at the heart of duty, urged him towards the desperate

experiment. But if so, he would not admit it, even to himself. He

merely decided--with an access of fastidious disgust at the whole

situation--to accept this fate-sent opportunity for judging how far her

behaviour warranted Colonel Mayhew's kindly concern. For he knew

enough of Garth and his methods to feel certain that, in his case, to

covet an invitation was to procure it.

After all, he reflected bitterly, a closer acquaintance with facts

might cure him of an infatuation against which pride and inherited

instinct had rebelled ill vain: and so intricate are the mazes of

self-deception, that he firmly believed in his own desire to be cured.

It was, no doubt, solely in pursuance of this purpose that, a few days

later, he added his initials, with a wry face of resignation, to a

subscription list, proposing that the bachelors of the station should

give a ball on the third of June. He had not seen the inside of a

ballroom for years: but since the season seemed marked for strange

experiences, this one might as well be included with the rest. And in

the meantime, this inconsistent misogynist slept little, smoked

inordinately, and spent the greater part of his leisure at Terah

Cottage. Perhaps this also was part of the cure!

Desmond noted the fact, not without an occasional spark of annoyance.

For all his magnanimity, the man was masculine to the core;

hot-blooded, and still very much a lover at heart. But pride and a

boundless trust in the woman he had won had withheld him as yet from

serious comment.

Lenox dined with them on the night of the dance; and came armed with

programmes, at Honor's request.

"Are you going to give me my share before we start?" he asked, as they

shook hands.

"If I do, will you try to dance?"

He laughed abruptly. "Not I. It would be a sight to make angels weep!

I shall take you right away from the whole thing, and talk to

you--that's all. Is that good enough?"

"Quite good enough!"

He scanned an open programme with perplexed interest, as though it were

an Egyptian hieroglyph.

"How long do each of these things last?" he asked, with evident

amusement.

"About twelve minutes, with the pause."

"What's the good of twelve minutes? Can't I have them in batches,

three at a time. Or would that be going quite out of bounds?"

Honor laughed. . . . "I'm afraid so! Though it would be far nicer.

But I will give you one 'batch,' and two isolated ones; and that's a

generous allowance, I assure you."

"Thanks.--I suppose Desmond takes you in to supper?"

"Yes. It's a standing engagement! Why don't you ask Miss Maurice?"

There was a moment of silence.

"We are not intimate enough for that," he answered, with a bad

imitation of unconcern; and Honor wondered, as she had done before now,

wherein lay the key to a curiosity-provoking situation. But just then

Desmond joined them; and no more was said.

The moment they entered the ballroom Lenox was aware of his wife,--the

focal point in a circle of men, distributing her favours with a smiling

impartiality that was, in itself, a delicate form of coquetry, while

Garth stood sentinel beside her, with an unmistakable suggestion of 'No

Thoroughfare,' which he could assume to a nicety; and which Lenox noted

with a curse at the restrictions imposed upon civilised man.

But a second glance at Quita crowded all else out of his mind. It was

his first sight of her in full evening dress, and he stood spellbound

by the radiant quality of her charm: a charm that triumphed over minor

imperfections of feature and form; a mental and spiritual vitality that

had deepened rather than diminished with the years. Her dress, like

everything about her, was an instinctive expression of herself: though

Lenox, while appreciating its harmony, could not have defined it in set

terms. He knew that it was of velvet; that it sheathed her rounded

slenderness as a rind sheathes its fruit; that the light and shade on

its surface, as she moved, reminded him of willows in a wind; that,

from shoulder to hem, the eye was nowhere checked, the simplicity of

outline nowhere marred by objectless incidents of adornment. He noted

also that its indefinite colour was repeated in a row of aquamarines,

that glistened like drops of sea-water at her throat.

A light touch on his arm recalled him to outward things.

"Captain Lenox, where are your manners?" Honor Desmond remonstrated,

with laughter in her eyes. "The Mayhews have just gone past, and you

looked straight through them! Is that the way you welcome your guests?"

He muttered an incoherent apology, and fervently hoped that she had not

observed the direction of his gaze. A vain hope, seeing that she was a

woman!

"Better get safe into the card-room before I do anything worse!" he

added uneasily. "I'll be back for number five. Trust me not to

forget."

As he crossed the barn of a room,--lavishly draped with bazaar bunting,

and starred with radiating bayonets,--his eyes lighted on Kenneth

Malcolm, the Engineer subaltern, whose current of courtship had been

checked by Maurice's arrival on the scene:--a boy of stalwart build;

his straight features and well-poised head justifying the sobriquet of

Apollo, bestowed upon him by an effusive admirer, whose sole reward had

been a cordial detestation. He leaned against the wall, absently

twirling the cord of his programme; his attention centred on a corner

of the room, where Elsie Mayhew--an incarnate moonbeam of a girl--was

critically examining the pattern on her fan, while Maurice possessed

himself of her programme, and sprinkled it liberally with the letter M.

In the boy's bottled-up resentment Lenox saw a reflection of his own;

and the fact moved him to scorn rather than sympathy.

"Damned idiots, both of us!" he reflected savagely. "A couple of dogs

whose bones have been confiscated, and we haven't even the pluck to

snarl."

The opening valse struck up as he reached the cardroom. Without

looking directly at his wife, he saw Garth's arm encircle her waist,

saw him hold her thus, for an appreciable moment, before starting; and

sat down to the whist table with murder in his heart.

At number five he re-entered the ballroom to claim Honor Desmond for

his 'batch' of dances, and to take her, as he had said, right away from

it all. She found him little inclined for talk; yet none the less

quick to appreciate her understanding of his mood.

"Thank you for bearing with me," he said, as they parted in one of the

many doorways opening on to the long verandah. "I won't come in. I am

in the humour for the profound philosophies of tobacco and the stars."

"Better companions than a mere woman!" she answered, smiling into the

gravity of his eyes. "Don't deny it. I have no taste for lip service."

"Nor I the smallest gift for it. Still, truth is truth; and a good

deal depends on the quality of--the mere woman."

She vouchsafed him the stateliest shadow of a curtsey.

"I believe I shall end in converting you, after all! Number twelve.

Don't forget."

And turning from him she saw that her husband stood a few paces off,

watching them with a thoughtful scrutiny that caught at her heart.

Gliding across the polished floor, she slipped a hand under his elbow,

and leaned close to him.

"Darling," she whispered, "I am so glad this is ours." Without a word,

he put his arm round her, and swept her into the crowd.

For a while Lenox followed them with his eyes, as they circled smoothly

in and out among the dancers, as notable a couple as the room

contained. Then he raked the shifting crowd for Quita's grey-green

figure,--in vain. Neither she nor Garth was to be seen. It needed

small perspicacity to locate them: and grinding his teeth Lenox went

out again into a night jewelled with the unnumbered bonfires of the

universe. Striking a match, he lit his pipe, in defiance of the

knowledge that for the past few weeks he had been persistently

overstepping his self-imposed allowance, and fell to pacing the railed

path outside the building.

Was it altogether his own fault, he wondered bitterly, that he stood

thus, cut off from the core of life, breaking his teeth upon the husks

of it, and making believe that they satisfied his hunger? In the

tragedies resulting from 'the ill-judged execution of the well-judged

plan of things,' that question flung, again and again into the

'derisive silence of eternity,' mocks the soul with echo's answer.

Where lies the blame? Where, indeed? For all his vaunted supremacy

man is not always master of his fate. Circumstance, heredity, the

despicable trifle, the inexpert finger, which a certain type of human

is so zealous to thrust into an alien life, compass him about with a

cloud of witnesses to his own impotence.

With which conclusion, softened by the kindly influence of drugged

tobacco, Lenox knocked the ashes out of his pipe; and decided that

since he was here to observe his wife and Garth, and to cure himself of

an undignified infatuation, it would be well to return to the ballroom

till number twelve.

But as he moved forward a low laugh, near at hand, chained him to the

spot. Then Quita emerged from a patch of shadow, closely followed by

Garth. She tilted her chin, and flung a smiling threat at him over her

shoulder.

"If you can't be more reasonable, I shall cancel your remaining dances

and give them to the Riley boy." Which announcement brought him

swiftly to her side; and Lenox failed to catch his murmured reply.

They passed on without perceiving him; and he followed . . . merely

from a sense of duty!

At one of the open doorways, that flung panels of light across the

verandah, they paused; and he paused also, a few paces off. The

couples within were forming themselves into ordered squares.

"Lancers," she said, in a tone of distaste.

"Are you dancing them?" he asked.

"No."

"Come and sit out again, then; and I'll be as reasonable as you please."

She glanced quickly round the room, as if in search of something.

"Very well," she said: and turning on the threshold, came face to face

with her husband.

With a scarcely perceptible start, she acknowledged his grave bow of

recognition, and drew back to let him pass. But he remained close

enough to catch what followed.

"I'd rather dance than sit out, after all," she announced, with a brisk

change of manner.

"But, dear lady, . . . why?"

She laughed. "What a question! I thought you pretended to know

something about women? I claim the divine right of whim. _Voila,

tout_! One can't spend the evening in explanation. The spirit moves

me to romp. It's infinitely more wholesome than mooning under the

stars. All we want now is a cheery _vis-a-vis_. Ah . . . there's

Michel. The very man!"

She signalled across the room with her fan, and Michael came skidding

and slithering towards her, a delighted girl clinging to his arm:--a

girl in the glamour of her first season, a-thrill to her white kid

finger-tips because these rested on the sleeve of a living artist, who

had already paid her one or two chivalry-coated compliments.

"Now why the deuce did she weather-cock round like that?" Lenox

wondered, floundering in the quicksands of masculine ignorance.

But no answer suggested itself; because this woman, who was his, and

yet not his,--this woman, with her many-hued personality, rich in

subtle contradictions--was a sealed book to him, and seemed like to

remain so. And what, after all, are the hearts that beat closest to

our own but sealed books, which we open from time to time, at random;

too often at the wrong page? But a ballroom is no fit place for

abstract meditation. The lust of eye and ear, the pride of life,

challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems a mighty

bloodless affair.

Lenox moved back to the doorway, leaned against the woodwork, and

folding his arms, surveyed the scene before him with the apathetic

interest of the large and mystified. The long room was crowded with

jumbled atoms of colour, like a damaged kaleidoscope; with talk and

laughter; with the whisper of sweeping skirts, and the clink of spurs.

Then the first provocative bars set every foot in motion; and the

kaleidoscope effect was complete.

Lenox,--towering isolated, amid a world of light-hearted couples,--was

aware that beneath his surface indifference there lurked a certain

shamefaced envy of these bewildering mortals who could shuffle off the

years, and revert, unabashed, to the entrancing follies of childhood;

and who could yet, in lucid intervals, grapple undismayed with

intricacies of Indian legislation, lead a forlorn hope, love and suffer

and die, if need be, with a stiff lip, and an obstinate faith in 'the

ultimate decency of things.' For of a truth, the earth holds no more

fantastic farrago of folly and heroism than your average human being;

and musing on these things, Lenox decided that there must have been

some radical flaw in his own education.

Not twenty feet away, the General himself--the host-in-chief of the

evening--condemned, despite increasing years and girth, to the Eton

jacket of boyhood, pranced and glided with elaborate precision, and

took every opportunity of twirling plump little Mrs Mayhew almost off

her feet. Both laughed inordinately at each repetition of the mild

joke: and if the C.B. blazing on the General's mess-jacket, and the

little lady's full-grown daughter contrasted oddly with their passing

display of childishness, both were serenely blind to the fact.

But among a hundred dancers, not one plunged more whole-heartedly into

the folly of the moment than Quita. She had stationed herself opposite

the door where Lenox stood, and the very spirit of devilry seemed to

have entered into her, driving her to italicise every trait in herself

that must needs grate on his fastidiousness where a woman's conduct was

concerned. Her effervescent gaiety dominated the 'set,' which speedily

degenerated into a romp till, in the third figure, an incident occurred

which partially brought her to her senses.

The room reeled and hummed with spinning circles, like living

Katherine-wheels, when Quita,--losing her precarious hold upon her

partner's coat-sleeve, and flying outward, by a natural impetus that

must have sent her crashing against the woodwork of the door,--found

herself caught, and steadied by her husband's hands at her waist. For

a lightning instant he held her thus--breathless and throbbing, like a

bird prisoned in his grasp: then he straightened himself, and let fall

his empty hands.

"I am sorry," he muttered, barely looking at her. "But I was afraid

you might hurt yourself."

"Thank you. It was very stupid of me."

She left him hurriedly, red-hot vexation tingling in her cheeks: and

when next the Katherine-wheels spun about, she remained stationary,

smiling and waving her hand in answer to repeated invitations to "come

on."

Lenox remained stationary also, though the whole scene had suddenly

become hateful to him: for that moment of contact, and the rush of

colour to his wife's face, had roused him to the need for immediate

action. Thus, when a final mad galop scattered the coherent atoms of

the kaleidoscope, he intercepted Quita and her partner, as they hurried

out to secure a favourite nook.

But the polite formula of the ballroom did not spring readily to his

lips.

"Have you a spare dance to give me?" he asked bluntly. "Since you

evidently don't object to sitting out."

His tone had in it more of demand than of request, an effect heightened

by his deliberate omission of her name; and against his will annoyance

lurked in the last words. But some men have a positive talent for

standing in their own light.

For a second or two her eyes challenged his in mute amazement. Each

seemed trying to read the other's thought. But pride darkens insight:

and at the critical moment a slight movement of the arm she held

reminded her of Garth's glimpse behind the scenes. She pulled herself

together, and made an obvious feint of consulting her programme.

"If you really wanted one, you should have spoken earlier," she rebuked

him lightly. "I'm afraid I haven't so much as half an extra to offer

you now."

He accepted his dismissal with a curt bow of acknowledgment.

"Thought I wanted to make love to her, no doubt," he reflected

savagely, as he moved away. And she passed on into the verandah,

wondering . . . wondering why he had wanted that dance, and whether she

would have thrown some one over for him, but for Garth's opportune

reminder at her elbow.

On the opening of the next dance, Lenox sought and found Honor Desmond,

silently offered his arm, and led her through the verandah out into the

starshine,--which is a reality in India, on moonless nights.

"What a thundering relief it is to get away from it all!" he said at

length. "Would it bother you to stroll a little way up the hill? We

shall be crowded out here, in no time; and I must have another pipe."

"Let's stroll then, by all means. I should enjoy it; and you know how

I love tobacco. I saw you looking on at that dance; and I rather

envied you. I often wish I could set aside a few dances just for

looking on, without having to make talk for any one. People interest

me so passionately; always have done, since I can remember."

"Even Button Quails, and black-hearted woman-haters?"

"Yes. Especially the woman-haters; because they need converting!"

"And are unconvertible," Lenox declared with a laugh. "But don't you

ever get sickened with the deadly sameness of the whole tribe of

us,--grinding ourselves to dust in the eternal treadmill of hatred and

love, hope and despair? Every conceivable human complication has been

repeated _ad nauseam_ since Adam made a fool of himself in the garden

of Eden."

"And through all that endless sameness, no two men and women have ever

behaved twice alike! That's where the interest comes in, don't you

see? To-night, for instance, Miss Maurice and that pretty child Elsie

Mayhew are both wasting their sweetness on men quite unworthy of them;

but each is doing the same thing in a fashion so entirely her own, that

it is not like looking on at the same play at all. I am specially

concerned over the Mayhew muddle, for I believe that handsome Engineer

boy is capable of breaking his heart in earnest because Elsie has lost

hers _pro tem._,--engaging little goose that she is. Really I

sometimes think that the man and woman puzzle is just an endless game

of cross questions and crooked answers!"

Lenox laughed again, harshly.

"That's a straight shot!" he said. "It's a mad world; and the maddest

creature in it is the man who stakes his happiness on the state of a

woman's heart."

Honor slipped her hand from his arm.

"Really, Captain Lenox," she protested, half-laughing, half in earnest,

"that remark almost amounts to an insult! What do you suppose Theo

would say if he heard you?"

"Wouldn't stop to pick his language," Lenox answered with a twisted

smile. "But his testimony counts for nothing. He has found the one

woman among a thousand, that even Solomon failed to find; and the Lord

knows he didn't judge them from hearsay!"

The sincerity underlying his bluntness brought the blood to Honor's

cheeks. "Theo has simply found--a woman who loves him," she answered

softly. "A discovery most men can make if they choose; even rank

heretics like you! Will you forgive me, I wonder, if I say that I

believe the thing you really need, though you may not guess it,

is . . . a woman in your life?"

Lenox did not answer: and they walked on for a time in silence.

"Have I vexed you?" Honor asked at length.

"No. You touched an exposed nerve. That was all. And I should like

you to know the truth now; or at least part of it.--Five years ago I

did take . . . a woman into my life, as you put it; and I have never

known real peace or comfort since."

Honor started, and turned upon him a face of incredulity.

"Captain Lenox! Do you mean--have you actually--been married?"

"I actually am married, in the eyes of the law, at least. What's more,

my wife is here, in Dalhousie, in that cursed ballroom,--with neither

my name nor my ring to protect her--playing the fool for the amusement

or perdition of another chap. You spoke of her a minute ago. I need

hardly say more, need I?"

"No, no. I understand it all now," she murmured, deeply moved. "Then

that was why you wanted to go away last month?"

"Yes."

"And I stupidly made things harder, in my blind zeal to help you?"

"No, indeed. You simply convinced me, without suspecting it, that it

would be cowardly to bolt at sight. Besides, it would have amounted to

an open confession that--one cared."

"And don't you--care?"

Lenox clenched his teeth upon an inarticulate sound; and his amber

mouthpiece snapped like a stick of sealing-wax. He took the pipe from

his mouth; eyed it ruefully, and slipped it into his breast-pocket.

"A good friend gone," he muttered. "And all on account of a woman who

doesn't care a snap of the fingers whether one is alive or dead."

"In my opinion that remains to be proved."

"Does it? Isn't her conduct with that confounded ladykiller proof

enough to convince you?"

"No."

"Well, then, look here. Ten minutes ago I went so far as to ask her

for a dance. She gave me the snub direct: and she'll not get a chance

to refuse another request of mine--that's certain."

Honor's lips lifted at the corners.

"I wonder what tone of voice you asked her in?" was all she said.

"Quite the wrong one, no doubt. I was in no humour for going on my

knees. But she knew right enough that I wouldn't have risked refusal,

unless I was very keen on the dance."

"All the same, you _will_ give her another chance. You must. No act

of folly on her part can make it right for you to leave her in such a

false position."

"The position was her own choice,--not mine."

"One could guess as much. Yet the fact remains that she is--yours, to

make or mar: and it seems to me no less than your duty to pocket your

pride, and save her from her own foolishness in spite of herself."

Lenox drew an audible breath, like a man in pain.

"You do know how to hit between the eyes," he said very low. "But--I

have suffered enough at her hands."

"And has she suffered nothing--at yours?"

Honor's voice was scarcely louder than his own, and her pulses throbbed

at her own daring. Lenox stood stock-still, and looked at her.

"Upon . . my . . soul," he said slowly, "you are a stunning woman!

I . . ."

"Please don't think I meant you to answer such a question," she broke

in hurriedly, with flaming cheeks.

"Of course not. You meant it as a reminder that there are two sides to

every question."

"Yes. How nice of you to understand! I have no shadow of right to

take you to task. But when the fate of two lives seems hanging on a

thread, one dare not keep silence.--Now, I think we ought to turn back.

And I wonder if you would mind telling me a little about your wife,"

she added, with diplomatic intent to prolong his softened mood. "She

is so charming; so individual. But I haven't been able to get at her

at all. She seems almost to dislike me; and I am just beginning to

guess why."

"Nonsense . . . nonsense," he protested brusquely. "You are entirely

mistaken."

"That also remains to be proved!"

They retraced their steps down the rough path that descends from the

Mall to the Assembly Rooms, walking very slowly, as people do when

absorbed. Honor, with all a woman's skill, imparted a flavour of

reminiscence to their talk; and no man with a spark of love in his

heart can hold out, for long, against the magic suggestiveness of

memory. For all his guarded indifference of manner, she felt the ice

melting under her touch: and the passionate human interest, of which

she had already spoken, held her, to exclusion of such minor

trivialities as possibly distracted partners. For this woman, the

human note,--be it never so untuneful--surpassed the sublimest music

plucked from the heart of wood or wire.

Arrived on the gravel ledge outside the building, they paused in a

shaft of light, still intent on their subject; till the inspiriting

rhythm of a polka shattered the stillness, and Honor, turning hastily,

caught sight of an erect figure in the doorway behind her.

"There's Theo. He seems to be looking for me," she said. "Why, we

must have talked through two dances. Come."

But at the foot of the verandah steps Lenox held out his hand.

"The evening is ended for me. I am going straight home, to think over

all you have said. I'll be round by ten to-morrow. Good-night--and

thank you."

He italicised the last words by a vigorous hand-clasp; and a moment

later she stood in the doorway, confronting her husband. A glance at

his face put her laughing apology to flight.

"I tell you what it is, Honor," he broke out hotly, "you're going too

far altogether. Here has Maurice been letting half Dalhousie know that

he couldn't find you anywhere; and the last dance--was mine. Heaven

knows where you buried yourselves. I didn't attempt to look. Lenox

has no business to monopolise you in this way. Woman-hater, indeed!"

"It was not _his_ fault," she flashed out, in an impulse more generous

than wise: but her blood was as quick to take fire as his own.

"Then it was yours, which is fifty times worse."

Honor lifted her head with a superb dignity of gesture.

"As you please," she said quietly. "It is useless to attempt

explanation here, or anywhere, till you are more . . like yourself."

Returning couples were by now besieging the doorway; and she passed on

into the ballroom, her head still high, her lips compressed, lest

others should note their tendency to quiver. A woman who loves the man

of her choice with every fibre of her being does not readily forget,

though she may forgive, his first rough words to her.

Honor was claimed at once by Kenneth Malcolm, a favourite partner, boy

though he was. But the keen edge of her interest was blunted. She

wanted one thing only to be alone with Theo; to set his mind at rest:

and those 'separated selves,' who drew her like nothing else on earth,

became of a sudden mere voluble obstructions between herself and her

desire.

Half an hour later she came up to him, where he stood, laughing and

talking in a group of men.

"I am tired, Theo," she said in a low tone. "Mr Maurice is getting my

dandy for me. But don't come away if you'd rather stop on."

Their eyes locked for an instant.

"Is that likely?" he asked, a gleam in his own.

"I don't know."

"You do know. Look sharp and get your things on."

Michael Maurice did not hurry himself over the congenial task of

settling his _deesse veritable_ among the cushions of her dandy,--a

hybrid conveyance, half canoe, half cane lounge, slung from the

shoulders of four men, by an ingenious arrangement of straps and cross

poles. Closer acquaintance had deepened his admiration: but a nameless

something in her manner warned him that it must not be expressed in his

usual promiscuous fashion. She had refused, very sweetly but

decisively, the honour of appearing in his great picture. But Desmond

had succumbed to the temptation of procuring a portrait of her and

'little Paul.' "At the worst, I can sell a pony to pay for it," he had

said, in answer to her remonstrance. "And I shall think it cheap at

the price!"

And now, as the dandy-bearers turned to mount the ascent, he came to

his wife's side. She had drawn off her gloves, and one hand rested on

the woodwork of her canoe. He covered it with his own, walking by her

thus, for a few steps, in silence: and it was enough.

"Mount now," she commanded him softly. "And let's hurry home, I've

ever so much to tell you."

He obeyed: and they journeyed upward to familiar music of hoof-beats,

and the murmur of _jhampannies_, wrapt about by the magic of a night so

still that all the winds seemed to have gone round with the sun to the

other side of the world.

A tray set with glass and silver awaited them in the drawing-room.

Honor, entering first, slipped the long cloak from her shoulders with a

satisfied sigh, a sense of passing from the unreal to the real, which

she often experienced on returning from a dance: and underlying all, a

profound pity for the lone and ill-mated women, in a world of oddments

and misfits, who have never felt the thrill of such home-comings as

this of hers to-night. Then she swept round, and fronted her

husband:--a gleaming figure, like a statue cut in ivory; no colour

anywhere, save the living tints of her face and eyes and hair.

"Well?" she laughed, on a low clear note of happiness. "I hope you are

properly ashamed of yourself!"

But before the words were out, he had her in his arms; and for a

supreme moment the great illusion was theirs that they were not two,

but one, as the Book decrees.

Then she pushed him gently into a chair, and kneeling beside him drew

his arm around her, resting her head against his in a fashion

inexpressibly tender. The natural dignity that was hers set a high

value on such sweet familiarities: and if Desmond submitted to them in

silence, it was because the man in him was too deeply moved for speech.

Then she told him, at some length, all that she had gleaned of the past

and present relations between Lenox and his wife.

"Now, do you see how I came to lose sight of everything for the time

being?" she concluded, smiling up at him. "So far as I can gather,

things seem to be at a deadlock, unless one can persuade him to take

the first step forward."

"And you want to play Providence, as usual? Is that it?"

"Don't laugh at me, Theo! I am in earnest. I would gladly move heaven

and earth to put things straight between them."

"But this seems a case of moving a Scot. A far tougher job, I can tell

you!"

"Well, I think I moved him a little to-night; and he is coming round

to-morrow for a ride." Desmond frowned; and she made haste to add;

"Now that is just where I must have your co-operation, Theo, or I can

do nothing. I want you to trust me, and give me a free hand for these

next few weeks. Will you, . . please?"

"Does that mean I am to let you be about with Lenox as much as you

choose?"

"Probably not more than I have been so far. I only want to be sure

that whatever I do you won't speak to me again as you did to-night."

She felt the muscles of his arm tighten.

"I think you may feel sure of that much," he said. "But you are asking

a very hard thing of me, Honor. Lenox is a thorough good chap; and I

don't want to be driven into disliking him. It isn't as if I were a

saint, like Paul. I'm just a man, and a grasping one at that! What's

more, I am very jealous for you; and I have the right to be. Society

doesn't recognise philanthropic motives. It takes you and your acts at

their face value . . ."

"I know, I know,"--she straightened herself impulsively; her hands

clasped, her bare arms laid across his knees. "And I'll be ever so

circumspect, dearest, I promise you. But oh, Theo, . . . don't you

understand? It is just because we are so blessedly happy, you and I,

that the thought of what those two foolish people are missing troubles

me so sorely."

Such an appeal was irresistible. They had lived deeply enough, these

two, to know the real importance of happiness.

"Bless your big heart," he answered warmly. "I understand right

enough. By all means help 'em if you can. I'll not baulk you. But

it's a delicate task; and I don't quite see how you are going to set

about it."

"Nor do I,--yet. One can only trust to intuition, and the inspiration

of the moment. From the little he said, it seems that the first move

ought to come from her: and possibly my intimacy with him may help to

bring her to her senses. Everything depends, of course, on how much

she cares. That's still an unknown quantity. But she dislikes me

already; which is a promising sign!--Now I am going to fill your pipe,

and pour you out a peg; and we'll enjoy ourselves till it's time for

second supper!"

It is just such quiet hours of heart-to-heart intimacy that constitute

true marriage. For in these uneventful moments links are forged and

soldered strong enough to resist the buffeting of storms, or the

deadlier, corrosive influence of those minor miseries which poison the

very core of life.

A handful of stars--visible through the open glass door into the

verandah--had began to pale, when Desmond lifted his wife to her feet,

and blew out the lamp. In the profound stillness their footsteps and

low laughter sounded up the wooden stairs. Then a door shut somewhere

in the house, and the night absorbed them into herself.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Ce n'est pas le mort qui separe le plus les individus."

--De Coulevain.

And what of Lenox, after Honor Desmond's sympathetic exertions on his

behalf?

He went straight from her side to the cloak-room; and thence slowly

back to his unhomelike rooms at the hotel; a dark solitary figure, with

bent head, and a heart full of tumultuous hopes and fears. The events

of the evening had stirred him as he had not been stirred since those

early days of torment, of undignified oscillation between yearning and

despair: and now, at last, love unsteadied for the first time the

foundations of his pride; brought home to him the cardinal truth that

all the beauty and terror of life spring from the inexorable law of

duality that links man and woman, act and consequence, with the same

passionless unconcern.

All the way up the hill, this man--who loved night and her

manifestations as most men love the morning--had no thought to spare

for the splendour of the heavens or the shrouded majesty of earth, so

absorbed was he in framing and rejecting possible letters to his wife,

who, for all he knew, had already half-lost her heart to another man.

The small sitting-room where Brutus, the faithful, awaited his coming,

was more or less a replica of his larger one at Dera Ishmael: the

chronically disordered table, books, pipes, sketches, his inseparable

friends, the bull terrier, and the brown tobacco-jar. All these, the

familiars of his lonely hours, gave him silent greeting as he crossed

the threshold. But for once his spirit failed to respond. The

witchery of his wife's lips and eyes; the distracting music of her

laughter; that one poignant moment of contact with her living,

palpitating self, and Honor Desmond's belief in an undreamed-of

possibility, had kindled the man's repressed passion as a lighted match

kindles dry powder; had revived in him the common human need, which

neither ambition nor work, however absorbing, has yet been known to

satisfy.

"My God," he thought. "If I believed I had a ghost of a chance to get

hold of her again, I'd go back to that infernal ballroom this minute!"

He turned, as if to carry out his resolve: but at the last, shut down

the flood-gates of emotion, fell back on years of self-discipline, and

told his heart he was a fool. He had yet to learn that there is a

folly worth more than all the wisdom of philosophers, the folly of a

man who loves a woman better than his own soul.

Going over to the table, he turned up the lamp, acknowledged the

ponderous jubilations of Brutus, and took the damaged pipe out of his

pocket. Then he stood looking at it thoughtfully, as it lay in the

palm of his hand; an eloquent testimony to that which had been starved,

denied, trampled upon for years,--with this result! Smiling

half-scornfully at his new-found sentimentalism, he put the pieces into

an empty cigarette tin, and thrust it into the top drawer of his table.

As he did so, a strange thought invaded his mind. Some day, perhaps,

he would show it to her; and how delightfully she would laugh at him

for his pardonable foolishness!

But in the meantime the wooing and winning of her still remained to be

achieved; a unique position for a husband!

Absorbed in thoughts evoked by the bare possibility of success, Lenox

mechanically drew out his empty tobacco-pouch, opened the jar, and

thrust a hand into its capacious depths.

Then he started; and two lines of vexation furrowed his forehead. For

his fingers, descending in search of the good brown leaf, that was more

to him than meat and drink, encountered only a chill hardness,--the

bottom of the jar.

He had not emptied it when filling his pouch that morning; and being

much preoccupied had not even noticed how little was left. Evidently,

during his absence, a hotel servant had helped himself to the remaining

handful, and a clear ten days must elapse before the arrival of a fresh

consignment from home.

He gathered up the remaining scraps, and gazed at them blankly. His

consignments were carefully timed to overlap one another. By rights

the jar should have contained quite a fortnight's supply of his elixir

vitae: and it took him one or two seconds to grasp the full

significance of that which had befallen him.

"Great Heaven! I must have been overdoing it like blazes this last

month," he reflected grimly, "And how about the next ten days?"

He stood aghast before that simple question, and its obvious answer.

It was as if the earth has opened under his feet; as if he had suddenly

discovered that only a thin crust intervened between himself and the

crater of a volcano. And he had travelled hitherward blindly; goaded

by the threefold necessity to work, and sleep, and forget. Thus,

stealthily, inexorably, a habit creeps upon a man; enclosing him mesh

by mesh in a network imponderable as spun silk, tenacious as steel

wire. A sudden movement, a break in the hypnotic influence of routine,

and he wakes to find himself prisoned in a web of his own weaving.

Lenox pushed aside the jar impatiently, as though it were in some way

to blame; and sank into his chair, head bent, legs outstretched; the

picture of defeat. All his thoughts and hopes crashed about him in

ruins: and Lenox, contemplating the fragments with a numb acquiescence

far removed from resignation, saw only the old maddening irony at work;

saw himself, standing yet again, on the threshold of an Eden locked and

barred against him; felt in every nerve the grip of the pitiless fact,

and asked himself fiercely; "What next?"

Gradually thought penetrated the dull ache of rebellion; and Memory,

that capricious handmaid of the brain, unearthed from the rubbish-heap

of things forgotten, an incident of early days.

He recalled how, on a certain night, after the confiscation of their

candles, and a stern injunction from old Ailie to speak "nae word" till

morning, his elder brother--greatly daring--had invaded his bed, and

with lips set close to his ear had startled and thrilled him with the

following announcement:--

"Listen, Eldred,--what do you think? I've found out at last why Uncle

Jock won't tell about grandfather, and why there's an empty place in

the big album where he ought to be. Ailie told me. I bothered her,

and bothered her, till she said I should hear it for a warning; and I

think you ought to hear it for a warning too. She says grandfather

served the East India Company for forty years. He was a grand soldier,

and a sportsman; a great tall man, like you will be. Ailie says you

'have his face.' But he went to hell"--this in an awestruck

whisper--"through eating too much opium, like some of the natives do

out there. I wonder if it's nice stuff to eat; don't you?"

To the boy of ten, listening with rapt interest, his grandfather's

backsliding had sounded only a few degrees more heinous than

gormandising at Christmas; and since Ailie had proved obdurate when

pressed, and even bribed for further information, the spark of

curiosity had died out for lack of fuel. But to the man of

five-and-thirty, racked with reawakened passion, and with a restless

irritability, whose significance could no longer be ignored, the memory

of his brother's whispered revelation flashed like a lightning-streak

across his present dilemma; leaving him in the grasp of those invisible

forces that are the true masters of destiny; that must either break or

be broken by man's individual spirit and will. For some of us the

struggle is conscious; for some unconscious; for others it never arises

at all: because only the touchstone of circumstance can evoke any one

of those past lives whereof each single life is so mysteriously compact.

For Eldred Lenox, imbued with his uncle's iron creed, the fight would,

of necessity, be conscious and unremitting. But he had no heart to

begin it yet. He felt as a man may feel who is suddenly struck blind.

Thought, movement, life itself, seemed paralysed by a fear unnameable,

and new; the fear of that other self, who is the arch-enemy of us all.

One certainty alone stood out, like a black headland from a sea of

mist; all immediate hope of ratifying his marriage was at an end.

There spoke his tyrannical conscience with disconcerting directness:

and Lenox had never acquired the art of disguising plain fact in a

garment of high-sounding words. He told himself straightly that no

right-minded man could deliberately risk handing down to others such a

heritage of struggle and possible failure as was his. Yet, in the same

breath, the Devil whispered a plausible reminder that men as good as he

had taken the risk time after time; that De Quincey himself had

followed passion's dictates seemingly without a twinge of

self-reproach. But Lenox was too single-minded to take shelter behind

the failures of others. For him the principle was all. For him all

thought of marriage must be set aside, at least, until he knew for

certain how completely the subtle poison had entered into his blood.

"Thank God she didn't give me the chance I wanted!" he breathed in all

sincerity: and flinging himself back in his chair, he lay open-eyed and

still, while night slipped silently on toward morning.

Brutus made one or two attempts to attract his master's attention by

means of a moist nose and an urgent paw; and failing, returned

philosophically to the hearth-rug.

The lamp burned low, and lower, till the room reeked with fumes of

kerosene. This minor discomfort roused Lenox. He lit two candles,

blew out the lamp, and throwing aside his mess jacket, yawned and

stretched himself extensively. By this time one craving outweighed all

others. Every nerve in him ached for the respite of sleep; and his one

chance lay in succumbing to mental or physical exhaustion.

He sat down to the table, and took up his pen, determined to write till

it dropped from his fingers. But here also defeat confronted him. For

although his subconscious brain was discomfortably alert and voluble,

ordered consecutive thought refused to come at his bidding.

He gave it up at length for the simpler expedient of pacing to and fro

in the measured mechanical fashion most conducive to weariness of mind

and body. But though weariness came in due course, and the weight of

all time hung heavy on his eyelids, sleep held pitilessly aloof from

his brain.

For the greater part of two hours the man held out. Then his face

hardened; and he turned deliberately to a combined book-shell and

cupboard that hung on the wall. From the cupboard he took a dark

slender bottle labelled chlorodyne; and seating it on the table,

fetched a glass and water-bottle from the bedroom.

That done, he poured himself out a dose far exceeding the normal

allowance, and diluted it with the least admissible amount of water.

He drank the mixture slowly, savouring its sweetness and warmth; its

uncanny power to soothe and bless. But as he set down the glass

revulsion took hold of him; and on the heels of revulsion came

self-scorn. This last roused him like the prick of a spur: for to men

of Eldred Lenox's calibre, self-respect is the oxygen of the soul. The

spirit of his grandfather had "scored a point" to-night. But such an

achievement must not be risked again.

With the same deliberation that had marked all his former movements,

Lenox picked up the bottle, emptied its sluggish contents down one of

those primitive sluices that are to be found in every Indian bungalow,

and returned, still absently holding it between his finger and thumb.

A confession of weakness: there is no denying it. But let him who has

not yet found the devil's chink in his own defences cast the stone.

Head, heart, or heel--there is a weak spot in the strongest. Not even

Achilles' self was plunged wholesale into the waters of immunity.

Quite suddenly Lenox realised that he was still holding the bottle: and

for some unfathomable reason the trivial detail acted as a fuse that

fires the magazine. For the first time that night, unreasoning anger

mastered him: anger against himself; against the whole tragi-comical

scheme of things: against the man whose dead sins he was called upon to

expiate in his own living flesh.

A curse forced its way between his teeth; and he flung the unoffending

scrap of glass into the open hearth, where it clinked and shivered into

a hundred splinters, filling the room with the strong sickly odour of

the drug.

Then he went back again to the long chair; limbs and brain weighted

with a luxury of weariness. Shattered hope; a life-and-death struggle

ahead:--the words held no meaning for him now. His lids fell. The

balm of Nirvana shrouded his senses, blotting out thought, as sea

mists, rolling landward, obliterate all things.

The June morning broke in one sheet of gold. Creeping in through the

interstices of lowered "chicks," it emphasised the untidy, up-all-night

aspect of the room; the sharp lines, pencilled by pain and struggle, on

the sleeper's face, where he lay full length, in shirt-sleeves and

scarlet waistcoat, unhooked and flung open before weariness overpowered

him.

A deep sound, persistently repeated, at last invaded and dispelled the

drugged torpor of his brain: the voice of Zyarulla murmuring:

"Sahib--Sahib," with the regularity of a minute-gun.

Lenox stirred, yawned, and looked blankly about him, as though he had

waked in another world. Then remembrance sprang at him, like a wild

thing upon its prey: and his lids fell again heavily. In that first

moment of consciousness he understood why men of proven honour and

courage have been known to take liberties with the laws of life and

death.

Zyarulla, entering soundlessly, set down the _chota hassri_ on a small

table at his master's elbow without betraying his surprise and concern

by so much as the flicker of an eyelash. For not even your immaculate

family butler can excel, in dignity and true reserve, a bearer of the

old school, whose Sahib stands only second to his God, and who would

almost as soon think of defiling his caste as of entering another man's

service. We have educated the grand old ideal of service out of our

own land; and we are fast educating it out of India also: though it

remains an open question whether the good wrought by over-civilisation

can honestly be said to counterbalance the evil. A question few

Anglo-Indians will be found to answer in the affirmative.

Lenox poured out his tea, and drank it thirstily. But the first

mouthful of toast was enough for him. He pushed the plate away; and

his hand went out instinctively to the pipe Zyarulla, had laid beside

it.

"Damn!" he muttered between his teeth, almost flinging it from him; and

at that instant the door opened.

"_Desmin, Sahib argya_," [1] the Pathan announced; and with a startled

sound, Lenox got upon his feet, and began fastening his waistcoat.

"Good morning," he said quietly. "Made a night of it, as you see; and

overslept myself."

But beneath his quiet he was acutely aware of the contrast between his

own dishevelled aspect, and Desmond's unobtrusive neatness and

freshness.

"Hope I don't intrude," the latter apologised, smiling: but his keen

eyes searched the other's face, and read tragedy there. "As you hadn't

turned up by ten-thirty, my wife was afraid something might have gone

wrong. So I came over to set her mind at rest!"

"Your wife? Why, of course! And I promised to be round by

ten--ill-mannered cur that I am!" He sank wearily into his chair.

"Truth is," he added in a changed tone, "I couldn't get a wink of sleep

till near dawn; and then it came down on me like a sledge-hammer. You

know the sort of thing."

Desmond nodded, and took a seat on the edge of the table.

"Are you often given that way?" he asked with seeming unconcern.

"Now and again."

"Ever been really bad with it?"

"Pretty bad. Why d'you ask?"

"Because from the looks of you, I should say it was wearing your nerves

to fiddle-strings. Ever take anything for it?"

Lenox frowned; and Desmond made haste to add: "No call, of course, to

answer a question of that sort. But you look downright ill; and it's

unwise to let that kind of thing become a habit."

"Damned unwise!" Lenox answered, with a smile that did not lift the

shadow from his eyes. "As I know to my cost. The thing has been a

habit with me for longer than I care to reckon."

Desmond raised his eyebrows. He had noticed the fragments in the

fender: the faint suggestion of chlorodyne that still clung in the air.

"My dear Lenox, I am sorry for that. And--the remedy? You must have

tried something before now?"

"Yes. Drugged tobacco:--opium, a good strong mixture," the other

answered bluntly. "You may as well have it straight. You're an

understanding fellow; and no Pharisee."

Then, in a few clipped sentences, he stated the bald facts of the case,

culminating in his discovery of the previous night. He leaned forward

in speaking; elbows on knees; eyes averted from the other's face.

"You see, it's in the blood,--that's the hell of it all," he concluded

fiercely. "This morning, when I'd had my fill of thinking things out,

I took a stiff dose of chlorodyne. Smashed the bottle afterwards, in

disgust. But where's the use? The dice are loaded: and no doubt one

will be driven back to it again, sooner or later."

Words and tone betrayed the dread note of fatalism--the moral microbe

of the East. But men of Theo Desmond's calibre rarely succumb to its

paralysing influence.

"Look here, Lenox,"--he spoke almost brusquely,--"you must get quit of

that notion. No man worth his salt goes to meet failure half-way. I

grant you're on the edge of an ugly pit, and if you insist on peering

into it, your chance is gone. All you have to do is to shut your eyes,

and hang to the reins like the very deuce; if it's only for the sake

of--your wife. Honor told me about her," he added, with more

gentleness.

But Lenox threw up his head impatiently. "My wife?" he repeated on a

note of concentrated bitterness. "The greatest kindness I could do her

would be to plunge wholesale into the pit, and give her back the

freedom she wants. A man with a taint in his blood has no business to

beget children foredoomed to fight--and lose."

"My good chap," Desmond broke in hotly. "I'll never believe that any

living soul is foredoomed to lose. The chance of a fight, no matter

how heavy the odds, includes the chance of victory. And even if things

do look a bit hopeless for a time, our orders are plain and straight;

'No surrender.'"

Lenox searched his face.

"Ever been through the fire yourself?"

Desmond nodded.

"I suppose moat of us have to go through hell once or twice," he said

quietly. "And I know how it feels to wish that some one would lock up

my revolver."

For answer Lenox got up and paced the room, head down; hands plunged

deep into trouser-pockets; lost, by now, to all sense of his

incongruous appearance.

The other watched him thoughtfully. Then his hand went to his

breast-pocket, and drew out a leather case. A man proffers tobacco to

a friend in trouble as instinctively as a woman proffers a caress.

"Have a cheroot?" he said, holding them out: and Lenox checked his

pacing.

"Thanks,--no. I've no taste for 'em. Never had."

"Better cultivate it, then. These are A1 Havannahs. A passing

extravagance. Good to begin upon. I'd drop pipes for a time, if I

were you. When it comes to breaking a habit, association is the devil.

And whatever happens, don't let this heredity bogey get the upper hand

of you. The taint you speak of is no more, as yet, than inherited

tendency: and this accident--if you believe in accident, I don't--gives

you the chance of killing the snake in the egg. Now light up, there's

a good chap; just to keep me company."

Lenox helped himself with a wry face; lit the cigar, and continued his

walk. The iron had bitten into his soul: and, at the moment, he was

incapable of gratitude. Bit by bit brain and body were adjusting

themselves to the new outlook, the new demands enforced upon them; and

the process was not a pleasant one.

Suddenly he drew up, and faced his companion.

"You can leave me out of the reckoning now for Chumba and Kajiar," he

said abruptly. "I'm in no mood for that sort of foolery. I'll stay

here and grind at this book of mine instead. You must excuse me to Mrs

Desmond; and tell her just as much of the truth as you think fit."

But before he had finished speaking, Desmond was on his feet, decision

in every line of him.

"Not if I know it, my dear fellow! You won't get a stroke of work done

just at present; and 'that sort of foolery,' as you call it, will do

you all the good in the world. Your best chance is to get right

outside yourself; and we'll make it our business to keep you

there--Honor and I."

At that Lenox turned huskily away; and his broken attempt at a laugh

was not good to hear.

"Damn it all, man, why don't you leave me alone, to go to the devil in

my own way? What can it matter to you, or to any one, whether I break

myself in pieces, or am merely broken on the wheel?"

Desmond's quick ear detected emotion beneath the ungraciousness of

speech and tone; and following him, he laid a hand on his shoulder, a

friendly liberty to which Lenox was little accustomed.

"Come along home with me," he said quietly. "Stay for tiffin, and talk

it all out with my wife. She'll be able to answer you far better than

I can. Nothing like a woman's sympathy to put a dash of conceit back

into a man. Will you follow on? Or shall I wait while you change?"

For an instant Lenox stood silent; then, greatly to his own surprise,

he held out his hand.

"I'll be ready in ten minutes," was all he said.

An hour later, Desmond rode away from Terah Cottage, leaving Lenox and

his wife alone together. He had promised to give her what help he

could in the delicate task she had set her heart upon: and he belonged

to the satisfactory type of man who may be counted upon for good

measure, pressed down, and running over.

[1] Has come.

BOOK II.-JUST IMPEDIMENT.

CHAPTER IX.

"So many men; so many loves."

--M. O. Willcocks.

A dinner of native dishes served on leaves--to each guest his own

portion on his own leaf--eaten picnic-fashion on a Kashmir carpet in

the presence of twelve regally reproachful chairs, is a form of

entertainment only to be met with in India; and when, to these

incongruities, is added the crowning one that the host may not defile

himself by sharing the meal with his guests, you have a situation

typical of the land where all things are possible.

Prompted by Colonel Mayhew, the Chumba Rajah, a shy taciturn boy of

sixteen, had despatched a formal invitation, hoping that the Residency

party would honour him with their company at the Palace on the evening

of their arrival from Dalhousie; though in truth he wished them

anywhere else in the world; and Colonel Mayhew, who was by no means too

old to enjoy a spasmodic daylight flirtation with a woman of Quita's

intelligence, had devised the native menu mainly for her delectation.

A large sheet, promoted to the rank of tablecloth, covered the carpet,

while ten cushions apologised for the absence of chairs. A bowl of

roses, rigidly arranged in alternate lines of flower and fern, filled

the room with fragrance. In front of each guest a snowy dome of rice,

ringed about with a strange assortment of curries, gleamed on a silver

salver. A quaint array of flat baskets held fragments of roast chicken

and kid; unleavened cakes of a peculiarly greasy nature did duty for

bread; and the only concessions to civilisation were knives and forks,

table-napkins, and champagne.

"Why shouldn't we have the courage of our barbarism, and do without

knives and forks as well?" Quita had suggested airily, at the outset;

and a faint look of horror convulsed Mrs Mayhew's bird-like face.

Her husband saw it, and came promptly to her aid.

"No forks, no champagne!" he retorted, laughing; and Quita picked up

her fork straightway.

"Hobson's choice!" she said, in a tone of mock resignation. "It would

be sheer brutality to deprive six men of champagne!"

She was sitting now on a cushion, at the Resident's right hand, feet

tucked away under her skirts, and a napkin laid across her knee. On

this she had set a leaf piled with saffron-tinted rice, which she was

exploring eagerly for incidental sultanas and yellow lumps of sugar,

exchanging bulletins, from time to time, with Desmond, who had taken

her in to dinner, and in whom she speedily recognised a morning quality

of mind that matched her own.

Lenox, sitting opposite between Honor and Elsie, acutely aware that his

legs were too long for the occasion, almost forgot the torment of the

past week in looking and listening, and wondering how he had ever

attained even a passing hold upon a spirit so lightly poised, so

compact of volatile essences, that he shrank, almost with awe, from the

bare thought of subjecting her uncaptured loveliness to the pains and

penalties of marriage. He sat for the most part in silence; content to

let the ripple of her voice and laughter play over him like water over

parched earth. Her voice had drawn him irresistibly from the first.

It was a thing of exquisite modulations. It thrilled like a caress.

Its clear, cool tones, pure from passion, intoxicated him like the

rarefied atmosphere of the heights. Once or twice she flung him a

question or a remark, as if compelling him to be aware of her

existence. He answered her with grave politeness, and an occasional

direct look, before which her eyes fell, as if dazzled by a helio-flash

from the man's inner fire.

All these things Honor Desmond noted; and, by the searchlight of her

womanhood, discerned more than Quita herself had yet realised.

Garth, from his uncoveted post of honour at Mrs Mayhew's left hand,

noted them also; but with less of understanding. Stung to irritation

by a sense of vague happenings in which he counted for nothing, and by

the fact that Quita was evidently enjoying herself far more than the

occasion seemed to warrant, he was in no mood to do justice to the

supreme event of the day--his dinner. Strange foods, too, were an

abomination to his clockwork order of mind; and when, in addition, he

found himself condemned to eat them sitting cross-legged on the ground,

a leaf balanced precariously on one knee, he began to entertain grave

doubts as to the comparative values of the game and the candle.

He quite resented the manifest contentment of Elsie Mayhew and her

partner, who sat facing him, absorbed in the low-toned talk of

incipient lovers, blind and deaf to the insignificant doings around

them. Nor was he greatly blest in his left-hand partner, Bathurst, the

Rajah's tutor--a clean-limbed athlete of the two-adjective genus, who

discoursed complacently of "bags," "mounts," and handicaps; the staple

topics of his kind. And while the stream of words flowed on, unchecked

by his flagrant inattention, Garth's ears were tantalised by snatches

of talk from the lively end of the table, where Desmond and Quita were

behaving like two children; by the silver quality of her laughter that

whipped his senses, while it lulled his conscience like a narcotic, and

set him devising a moonlight stroll with her later on, in the Palace

courtyard, by way of compensation for present martyrdom endured on her

account. For since the night of the dance she had been so uniformly

gracious, that he was beginning to regard his rebuff on Dynkund as

little more than a delicate prelude to surrender after all.

Such absorbing reflections made him so neglectful of his hostess, that

the little lady's spasmodic efforts to enliven him with spiced snippets

of gossip--more than one item of which had emanated from

himself--fizzled out dismally, long before the meal was over; and it

was with an audible sigh of relief that she glanced across at Mrs

Desmond, and got upon her feet with as much dignity as a cushion, a

plump figure, and cramped limbs would allow.

"What? You do not desert us?" Quita asked, as Desmond offered her his

arm.

"No--I do not desert you!" He spoke lightly, but significance lurked

in his tone. "The Rajah and his suite are waiting to receive us in the

Durbar Hall, and unless you object to my cigar, or send me to the

right-about, I claim you as my prisoner of war for the evening!"

"_A la bonheur_! Smoke as much as you please. You will not need to

tie a thread round my ankle, I promise you. Why didn't I get to know

you sooner?"

"Perhaps because you discovered metal more attractive?"

The light thrust drew blood. She flushed, and laughed uneasily.

"A palpable hit! I might retaliate with a coal of fire in the shape of

a compliment. But you don't deserve it. Anyway, let's make up for

lost time now. I have a feeling that we shall be good friends,

only . . . ."

"Only--what?"

"Mrs Desmond may disapprove of me."

"You'd not say that if you knew her better," he answered, warmly. "She

isn't one of your good women who make a hobby of disapproval."

"That's a mercy! It is the pet vice of the virtuous; and Mrs Mayhew

deals in it largely. No doubt it keeps her happy, and makes her feel

superior; and I wouldn't rob my worst enemy of such a heavenly

sensation! I'm sorry for her to-night, though. She hates natives

almost as much as Colonel Mayhew loves them; and I'm afraid she's not

envying herself; nor will poor Elsie, if Captain Lenox makes _her_ a

prisoner of war for the evening! He hardly vouchsafed her half a dozen

words through dinner."

"Lenox is no conversationalist," Desmond answered, looking straight

before him. "But he is a splendid fellow--worth fifty of your

drawing-room acrobats."

"You like him so much, then?"

"I do more than that. I admire him."

"You are an enthusiast!"

The shadow of change in her tone did not escape him.

"Is that also one of the vices you detest?"

"But, no! I gave you credit for more discernment. Enthusiasts and

idealists are the salt of the earth. That's why I want to know more of

_you_. There! In spite of myself I have crowned you with a coal of

fire after all! Now, please introduce me to our resplendent Rajah

Sahib. I am going to make him talk. Colonel Mayhew has dared me to

succeed!"

They entered the Durbar Hall as she spoke--a long room overloaded with

gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and

musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence

throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab

would dream of living in a Palace devoid of either.

Rajah Govind Singh and his four companions stood together by a

marble-topped table, laughing and whispering over a book filled with

photographs of music-hall celebrities, while beside it a spurious

album, whose heart was a musical box, tinkled an age-old air from "Les

Cloches" with maddening precision. At the far end of the room a native

conjurer had established himself, and was already performing

indefatigably for the benefit of no one in particular.

The group by the table showed a medley of colour quite in keeping with

the flash and glitter of the whole. Over spotless shirts and trousers

the boys wore brilliant silk _chogas_[1] cunningly patterned with gold

wire, and surmounted by turbans of palest primrose, orange, and green.

But Govind Singh, by divine right of Rajahdom, eclipsed the rest.

Beneath his scarlet coat gleamed a waistcoat of woven gold, and the

jewelled buckle of his Rajput _chuprass_.[2] Three strings of pearls

formed a close collar at his throat, and in front of his sea-green

turban a heron's plume sprang from a cluster of brilliants. The faces

of all were no darker than ripe wheat; for your high-caste hill-man

never takes colour, like his brother of the plains.

They had long since eaten their own simple dinner, in the scantiest

clothing, and in a solemn silence, squatting on a bare mud floor. For

to the Hindu a meal is a sacred ceremony, and the Sahib's idiosyncrasy

for making merry over his food can only be accepted as part and parcel

of his bewildering lack of sense and dignity in regard to the conduct

of life.

During a long minority this boy had been zealously inoculated with

Western knowledge and Western points of view; and with the deceptive

pliancy of the Oriental he had smilingly submitted to the process. But

deep down in the unplumbed heart of him he waited for the good day when

he would be rid of these well-meaning interlopers,--tireless as their

own fire-carriages,--who troubled the still waters of life and talked

so vigorously about nothing in particular; when he would be free to

forget cricket and polo and futile efforts to cleanse the State from

intrigue; free to sit down in peace and grow fat, unhindered by the

senseless machinations of the outer world.

And in the heart of Govind Singh you have a fair epitome of the great

heart of India herself: aloof, long-suffering, illogical to a degree

inconceivable by Western minds; ready to lavish deep-hearted devotion

upon individual Nicholsons and Lawrences when they come her way; yet,

for all her surface submission and progress, not an inch nearer to

racial sympathy, or to the inner significance of English life and

character than she was fifty years ago.

But, in the meanwhile, our concern is with a minor Maharajah, and his

passion for musical boxes.

At the Resident's approach, the laughter and whispering ceased; and the

four boys endured with impassive politeness the mysterious rite of

introduction. The tinkling album gave Quita her cue. She insisted on

hearing its entire repertoire, which was mercifully limited; and her

natural ease of manner, her knack of plunging whole-heartedly into the

subject of the moment, soon put Govind Singh's shyness to flight. He

deserted monosyllables for clipped, hurried sentences, jerked out with

an odd mixture of nervousness and self-satisfaction. Quita flashed a

smile at Desmond, who stood sentry at her elbow, in seeming ignorance

of the fact that Garth was making tentative attempts to usurp his place.

"You must show me some of the others, Rajah Sahib," she declared, as

the complacent album clicked into silence, "and when I go home to

England I will hunt you up a new kind to add to your collection!"

The boy's eyes lost their look of lazy indifference; a gleam of superb

teeth illumined his face.

"An upright grand is the last trifling addition to it, Miss Maurice,"

Colonel Mayhew informed her, "but the Rajah was a little disappointed

when he found that it couldn't be set going by the turning of a key."

"I am liking the big noise--the big _tamasha_," the young monarch

explained in all gravity. "And I think that one is too much price for

a box that will do nothing unless somebody knows to make it speak."

"Mrs Desmond can make it speak for you, Rajah Sahib," Colonel Mayhew

suggested; and the boy turned upon her with shy eagerness.

"Can you really do a tune?" he asked.

"Several tunes!" she answered, smiling. "A big noise, if you like."

"Oh, that is very good business. Thanks awfully."

He spoke the slang phrases, picked up from Bathurst, with mechanical

precision; and Honor, still smiling, went over to the piano--a

flamboyant instrument of rosewood and gold. After a second of

hesitation Lenox followed, opened it for her, and resting a hand on the

gilt back of her chair, bent down to speak to her before she began to

play. The suggestion of intimacy in his attitude was not lost on

Quita, who saw it all, without glancing in their direction. Her lips

tightened; and she started slightly when Desmond spoke to her.

"Will you go round the musical boxes with me?" he asked, in an

undertone that bordered on tenderness. For he saw that something in

her suffered, whether it were pride or love.

"But yes--by all means," she answered, with a lift of her head which

suggested to Desmond a jerk on the curb-chain. In moving off together

they passed close to Garth. But Quita, who was abstractedly opening

and closing her fan, did not seem aware of his presence; and he stood

looking after them--nonplussed and inwardly blaspheming. He did not

hold the key to this new phase of the situation.

Mrs Mayhew--noting his detachment from the Palace group, and quite

needlessly alarmed lest politeness should impel him to return to

her--sought out a strategic seat near the piano; though in truth Honor

Desmond's masterly rendering of Chopin's heroic polonaise was, for her,

no more than a complicated tumult of sound without sense, and her wrapt

expression resulted from the fact that she was debating whether her

_durzi_ could possibly reproduce at sight the subtle simplicity of Mrs

Desmond's evening gown. For she had sons growing up at home--this

insignificant woman, whose plump proportions and bird-like eyes had

earned her the nickname of "the Button Quail"; and even a good

appointment did not annul the vagaries of the rupee, which was behaving

peculiarly ill just then. In the intervals of imaginary dressmaking,

she was enjoying shrewd speculations as to the nature and extent of the

budding "affair" between the two at the piano; for her small mind clung

tenaciously to the Noah's Ark view of life. Also it seemed that

Elsie's own "little affair" was assuming quite a promising aspect.

Personally, she disliked the man, but his talent was undeniable. She

supposed he must be making money by it; and he was quite clearly making

a right-of-way into her daughter's heart.

They had drifted apart from the rest without need of spoken suggestion;

and now, under cover of Honor's music, which produced a tendency to

gravitate towards the piano, the man grew bolder.

"There is moonlight out in the courtyard," he said, very low; and he

tried, without success, to look into her eyes. "_Que dites-vous_?

Shall we go?"

She did not answer at once. A new spirit of boldness was awake in her,

urging her to take hold of her golden hour with both hands, nothing

doubting. But the man, even when he charmed her most, failed to

inspire her trust. And while she stood hesitating, his gaze never left

her face.

"Are you thinking it would scandalise _la petite mere_?"

"It might. She is easily scandalised!"

"But you would like to come?"

"Yes--I would like to come."

"_Eh bien_--that is enough."

"Is it?"

She looked up at him now with those great, truthful eyes of hers, which

he found oddly disconcerting at times.

"Enough for me, at all events!" he answered boldly. "Come!"

And she came.

The flagged quadrangle, walled in with darkness and worn with the tread

of numberless women's feet, showed silver-grey in the light of a moon

nearing the full; and above it, in a square patch of sky, stars

sparkled with a veiled radiance like diamonds caught in a film of

gossamer. As Elsie emerged from the shadow of the verandah, she had a

sense of stepping into an unreal world, and the Palace walls, shutting

out the familiar contours of earth, strengthened the illusion. The

night seemed the accomplice of her mood, in league with her own

exquisite sensibility; a night created for sheltering tenderness.

Michael Maurice, divining her sensations with the uncanny accuracy of

his type, pressed a little closer to her as they walked, so that now

and again, as if by chance, his arm brushed her own, and each contact

quickened her happy commotion of heart and pulse. They came upon a

rough stone bench, and he paused.

"It is pleasanter to sit, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Yes. But we mustn't sit long."

"Mustn't we? How does one measure time on such a night as this? By

the beating of hearts, or by the pulsations of stars?"

She laughed softly.

"How foolish you are!"

"It is good to be foolish at the right time, and with the right person!

Wisdom is the death's-head at the feast of life. But we are going to

shut her outside the door for a whole week--you and I."

The strangely sweet magic of those linked pronouns stirred Elsie as

never before; though the sound of them had pleased her once, not a

little, on the lips of Kenneth Malcolm. Bud she answered lightly, as

women will, when they feel barriers giving way.

"I never knew I had agreed to anything so desperate!"

He had laid his arm along the back of the seat; so that his hand was

within an inch of her shoulder. He moved it closer.

"You have done more than that without knowing it--_petite amie_," he

said, yielding himself, as always, to the witchery of the moment. "It

is your doing that I have achieved an inspired picture. It is your

doing that I want this week in Arcadia to be an idyll we shall neither

of us forget--an idyll of sunlight, moonshine, and blessed freedom from

_les convenances_. No past--no future--only the present; and in it two

spirits tuned to one key. That is the secret of perfect enjoyment."

She shook her head.

"I don't quite understand. It sounds too fantastic. The past and the

future are there always. One can't get rid of them."

"But one can shut the door on them when they threaten to disturb the

present, which is the great reality after all."

"Can one? You seem to have a talent for shutting doors!"

"A convenient talent; worth cultivating! You may take my word for it."

Something in the statement or its manner of utterance jarred, ever so

slightly,--threatened to break the charm that held her.

"Dangerously convenient," she murmured, in gentle reproof.

"Little Puritan! What a narrow track you walk upon. Hardly room on it

for two abreast. Is there?"

The last words were almost a whisper. He pressed nearer, bringing his

face close to hers. At the same moment she felt a light touch on her

shoulder, and drawing back to escape the disturbing eloquence of his

eyes, she discovered the presence of his encircling arm. The discovery

brought her to her feet--flushed, palpitating, aquiver with anger at

this first shadow of insult to her maidenhood.

"Will you take me in again, please?" she said quietly, and the request

savoured of command. For her gentle nature was founded on a rock; and

a very little below the unresisting surface one came upon adamant, pure

and simple. But the unabashed Frenchman caught one of her hands, and

crushed it against his lips.

"_Petite amie_--forgive me! I was overbold. I am not fit to touch the

hem of your dress. But one is only flesh and blood; and you . . . say

you are not angry with me, in your heart . . . ."

She drew her hand away decisively; and with unconscious cruelty rubbed

the back of it against her dress, as if to remove a stain.

"I am angry--I have a right to be angry," she answered in the same

toneless voice. "And if you will not come in with me, I shall go

alone."

He rose then; and they crossed the enchanted courtyard together--a

clear foot of space between them.

The brilliance of the Durbar Hall smote the girl painfully. It was as

though the light had power to penetrate and reveal her hidden

perturbation. Without looking up, she felt her mother's eyes upon her;

and the wild-rose tint of her cheeks deepened under their scrutiny.

But she avoided meeting them, and, going straight to her father,

slipped a small hand under his arm. She felt indefinably in need of

protection, not only from the man, whose kiss had moved her more than

he guessed, but from herself, and the new emotions quickening at her

heart; and in all times of trouble she turned spontaneously to her

father. He was the true parent of her spirit; and, but for the

matter-of-fact, half-condescending devotion of three boys at home, Mrs

Mayhew might, at times, have felt left out in the cold.

"Enjoying yourself, little girl?" the father asked, smiling down at her.

"Yes, of course, dear--ever so much," she replied, with brave

untruthfulness; and the lie must have been forgiven her in heaven.

But the veil of enchantment was rent; and no needle of earth has ever

been ground fine enough to draw its frayed edges together.

[1] Long loose coats.

[2] Cross-belt.

CHAPTER X.

"Woman, I grope to find you; but I cannot,

O, is there no way to you, and no path,--

No winding path!"

--S. Phillips.

And the good folk of Chumba,--men, women, and children,--were early

astir on this June day, in whose fiery lap lay hid the luck of the

State for the coming year.

The stone streets of the little town, so steep as to be cut out, here

and there, into a rough semblance of steps, were alive with quickly

moving figures, in holiday attire: which, in the East, is a true

outward and visible sign of its wearer's inward and spiritual sense of

festivity.

Open shop fronts and quaintly carven balconies were noisy with shrill

voices. Every self-respecting house was plastered with fresh mud;

every window and doorway garlanded with marigold and jasmine buds;

every brain, absorbed in the paramount speculation, as to how the

sacrificial buffalo would behave.

At three o'clock, under a blazing sun, the Rajah set out, enthroned on

his State elephant, whose silver howdah and gala trappings formed a

fitting pedestal for the red and gold magnificence of the young prince

himself. Two ropes of pearls hung down to his waist: a huge uncut

emerald made a vivid incident of green upon his gilded chest: and the

diamond aigrette, surmounting his turban of palest green muslin,

flashed and quivered in the sunshine, like living fire. The Resident,

in immaculate grey suit and tall white helmet, sat beside him in the

awkwardly swaying howdah with an admirable air of comfort and

unconcern; and their triumphal progress was enlivened by the brazen

cheerfulness of trumpets and trombones, the melancholy squeal of

bagpipes, and the ear-piercing shriek of native instruments; while,

through all, and above all, and under all, the throbbing of innumerable

tom-toms suggested the heart-beats of the mighty crowd made audible.

Journeying thus, along the unshadowed road that overhangs the river,

they came at length to the promontory itself. Here, beneath the huge

State _shamianah_, gaily coloured Kashmir rugs were spread, for Govind

Singh and his court: while curtained enclosures, set at duly decorous

distance, concealed the women-folk, who had been conveyed thither under

close cover much earlier in the day.

Through the surging chattering crowd,--which fell back right and left

before their quietly determined advance,--the Residency party made

their way in to the partial shade of the _shamianah_, wherein chairs

had been set for the English guests; four on either side of the Palace

group.

It was a very dignified Elsie who slid to the ground before Maurice

could get to her, and carefully avoided his reproachful gaze. But he

followed her into the tent, and took his seat beside her unrebuked.

The trifling incident of the night before had increased not merely her

charm but her value in his eyes. If this were not the 'real thing,' he

reflected, in a virtuous glow of self-approval, then surely there could

be no reality on earth.

At this moment he became aware that Garth and Mrs Desmond were

established in the two neighbouring chairs. His surprise at this

unexpected conjunction showed so plainly in his face that Honor,

meeting his glance, responded with dimplings of sheer enjoyment before

devoting herself to the entertainment of her victim.

Desmond, in pursuance of a policy which at least saved Lenox from the

sharpest sting of all, had managed to ride close behind Quita and

Garth; and being nimbler in dismounting than the older man, had

successfully usurped his privilege of lifting her from the saddle. She

herself, though not a little puzzled as to the meaning of it all, was

beginning to relish the humour of the game; and as Desmond escorted her

into the tent, she turned upon him a smile of unabashed amusement.

"This is flattering! I appear to have made a conquest of _Monsieur le

Capitaine_!"

"And for once appearances are not deceitful," he capped her straight.

"How enchantingly direct you are! But at this rate Mrs Desmond really

_will_ disapprove. . ."

"No fear! Mrs Desmond is enjoying it quite as much as I am!"

She divined a hidden meaning in his words: but merely lifted her

eyebrows and shoulders in characteristic fashion.

"Well--it she doesn't object, I am sure I don't!"

"Nor I, by any means. . . . Come this way."

He led her across the tent, having noted and admired his wife's skilful

bit of strategy: and Lenox instinctively took the same direction.

Quita chose the chair farthest from the Palace group; and in a few

moments, she knew that her husband was standing close behind her. It

was the first time he had deliberately approached her since their

encounter at the ball: and the silent tribute, so characteristic of the

man, elated her with a renewed sense of power over a personality

immeasurably stronger than her own. It was like bringing down big game

after the mild diversion of shooting pheasants. But he had spent the

whole morning in the verandah with Honor Desmond; and the remembrance

still rankled. Upset her equanimity as he might, the spirit of

surrender was still far from her.

At his approach Desmond made a slight movement, as if to rise; but the

other shook his head. It was enough to be thus close to her, to feel

that speech was possible, yet not compulsory. All of which Desmond was

quick to understand.

"Look, . . look . . ." Quita whispered suddenly, leaning towards him.

"They are forcing that poor brute to the edge. He has been in before.

Colonel Mayhew told me. He knows; . . . he is afraid. Oh, _mon Dieu_,

how horrible! . . . He is over!"

A mighty shout from the assembled thousands, who stood ten and twenty

deep along the banks, confirmed her words. The shuddering victim had

been forced over the ten-foot drop; and for a few breathless moments,

was lost in the green swirling water. A second shout,--unanimous, as

from one Gargantuan throat,--heralded the reappearance of the flat

black head, with its dilated nostrils held well above the blinding

wreaths of foam. Tossed mercilessly from boulder to boulder, the stout

swimmer neared the first big rapid; and a moment later was swept, an

unresisting log, into its treacherous clutches. Out of it he plunged,

still swimming valiantly; and, despite the opposing force of the

current, made a bold dash for one of the few possible landings on the

town bank. But the people, foreseeing the attempt from long

experience, were gathered at this particular danger-point in

overwhelming numbers; with the result that the unhappy beast was fairly

hustled back into the boiling stream.

Here the second rapid claimed him; and excitement became intense; for

the fate of a year hung trembling in the balance. There was no

shouting now; but a breathless expectant silence. Only the

river,--full of sound and fury,--babbled unceasingly to the majestic

sky.

The moment of uncertainty was short as it was tense. Once more the

brave black head appeared, a blot on the foam-flecked surface, no

longer battling, with dilated nostrils, against fearful odds; but lying

sideways, inert . . . lifeless; . . . and a prolonged outburst of

shouting, clapping, and huzzaing informed the echoing hills that the

great spirit of rivers and streams had accepted the sacrifice; that the

luck of the State was established for twelve good months to come.

"Poor beast, poor plucky beast!" Quita murmured rebelliously. Her

sympathies had been strangely stirred; and an unbidden moisture clouded

her eyes. In that hapless drowned buffalo she beheld, not a mere dead

animal, but one victim the more to the eternal law of sacrifice;--the

law that makes one man's suffering the price of another man's

gain;--the law that lies at the root of half the tragedy of the world.

"How happy they all are!" she went on. "That Rajah boy is delighted.

They have no imaginations these people. So much the better for them!"

By now the _shamianah_ hummed with talk and laughter and congratulation

on the outcome of the _Mela_. Every one had risen; and Desmond turned

with the rest to add his quota to the polite speeches that were the

order of the moment.

But Quita, still intent upon the stirring scene without, moved forward

a little space to obtain a better view of the river and the crowd.

Lenox followed her; and with a start she became aware that he was

standing almost at her elbow; though still a little behind her, so that

she must turn if she wanted to see his face.

"Are you wishing you could put some of that on canvas?" he asked in a

voice that he vainly strove to render natural.

"Yes. It would be such a triumphant riot of colour. But I'm afraid it

would look crude and impossible in any frame except the frame of an

Indian sky."

She did not turn in speaking; but the softness of her voice soothed his

chafed spirit like a benediction, and robbed him for the moment of all

power to reply.

"I was really trying to stamp it all on my memory," she went on after a

pause. "It is a sight one doesn't see twice in a lifetime. Just for a

few seconds it was terrible. But I would not have missed it for the

world."

"Nor I. Now that I am here, I feel grateful to the Desmonds for

persuading me to come."

"Did they have to drag you here by main force?"

"Not quite! I thought I had better stay and grind at my book; that was

all. But they wouldn't hear of it."

"Do you always obey their orders implicitly?" There was veiled scorn

in her tone, and a new warmth in his as he replied:

"I would do any mortal thing they asked me to, within reason. In all

my life no two people have been so good to me."

"You evidently admire _her_ very much." The stress on the pronoun was

too delicate to catch his notice.

"I do, immensely. How could any man in his senses do otherwise? Or,

for that matter, any woman either? I hoped--I thought--you would have

been good friends with her."

He spoke his honest enthusiasm in the simple desire that she should

share it. But her nerves were still strung to concert pitch, and he

had struck the wrong note.

"You thought her many virtues might have an improving effect on me, I

suppose?"

The acorn was no longer veiled: and he winced under it.

"No: only is occurred to me that the two . . . . best women I have ever

known might reasonably have a good deal in common."

"It is kind of you to couple me with her. I am flattered, I assure

you!--But, personally, I prefer something lees exalted, something more

human, more fallible. . . ."

"Perhaps that explains your predilection for Garth?" he broke in

abruptly, pricked to resentment by her persistent note of mockery.

"I am not aware that my friendship with Major Garth requires any sort

of explanation."

She was rigid now--face, voice, figure: his golden opportunity gone

past recall. Men pay as dearly for sins of ignorance as for the baser

kinds of trespass: and the man who does not understand women is almost

worse, in their esteem, that the man who treats them ill.

"Is it wise--for your own sake . . . to be so careless of your good

name?" he persisted desperately; goaded by the knowledge that he would

not soon get speech of her again.

"Possibly not. But I don't feel called upon to retire into a convent,

or to advertise the fact that I am not . . . 'on the market.' Nor do I

choose to have my conduct called in question by any man living."

She faced him now;--defiant, a bright spot on either cheek.

And before he knew how to answer her, Colonel Mayhew was upon them,

overflowing with cheerful raillery, and radiantly unaware that he had

stepped into a powder magazine.

Long before the returning procession reached the Residency, Quita had

repented of her little-minded display of irritation, consoling herself

with the resolve that she would atone for it next time; whereas Lenox

had decided that for once Honor Desmond's intuition was at fault: that

it needed no 'bogey of heredity' to widen the impassable gulf dividing

him from his wife.

CHAPTER XI.

"O all that in me wanders, and is wild,

Gathers into one wave, and breaks on thee."

--Phillips.

In the deep heart of Kalatope Forest, where the trees fall apart as if by

unanimous consent, the natural glade of Kajiar lies like a giant emerald

under a turquoise sky. Peace broods over this sanctuary of Nature's

making, dove-like, with folded wings. No lightest echo of the world's

turmoil and strife disturbs the stillness. Only at dawn and dusk, the

thin note of the temple bell, the chanting of priests, and the unearthly

minor wail of conches, announce the downsitting and uprising of the

little stone image of godhead, housed in a picturesque temple that

nestles among low trees, beside the Holy Lake, at the southern end of the

glade.

For Hindus are the most devout Nature-worshippers on the face of the

earth. To them, beauty of place translates itself as God's direct cry to

the soul; and in the isolated glade of Kajiar, with its sweep of shelving

turf, its encircling pines and deodars, and its towering snow-peaks

standing sentinel in the north,--deity reigns supreme; deity and the

great grey ape of the Himalayas.

Only for one week in the year does Kajiar spring full-fledged into a

place of human significance. From Dalhousie, on the one hand, and from

Chumba on the other, a light-hearted crowd of revellers profanes the

quiet of earth and sky. On the outskirts of the forest tents spring up,

like mushrooms, in a night; the devotional voices of the temple are

drowned in the clamour of bugles, the throb of racing hoofs, the

challenging gaiety of the band, and the heart-stirring wail of the Royal

Chumba Pipers; wiry hill-men, in kilts and tartans;--the pride of the

young Rajah's heart.

The 'Kajiar week' is the central event of Dalhousie's season:--an

Arcadian revel of perfumed shadow, and sun-warmed earth; a carnival of

camp-life; ushering in the gloom of the Great Rains;--the triple tyranny

of mist, mildew, and mackintoshes. And early on the morning after the

_Mela_,--while the breath of night still lingered in gorges and ravines,

and in shadowed patches of the ascending path, a mixed procession of men

and horses, shuffling mules, and trotting coolies wound, snake-like, out

of the Chumba valley towards Kalatope Forest and the emerald glade.

All the Rajah's party was mounted, save Mrs Mayhew and the medical

missionary's wife, who preferred the leisurely ease of their dandies: and

in the van of the procession, a hundred yards and more in advance of it,

Quita rode with James Garth.

Her husband's bearing throughout the previous evening had convinced her

that their passage of arms in the _shamianah_ had killed the budding

possibility of a better understanding between them: and the fact that she

was to blame, did not make the knowledge easier to bear. For she knew

now--knew consciously--that she craved the love and admiration of this

big silent husband of hers, as she had never yet craved anything in earth

or heaven: that his mere presence disturbed every fibre of her in a

fashion she had hitherto believed impossible; that his aloofness drew and

held her, as no other man's ardour had ever done. These two days of

closer contact, of hearing his voice, of watching, without seeming to

watch, the familiar movements of his face and figure, had waked to

conscious life germs that had long lain at her heart, quickening in

darkness.

But pride was a stubborn element in her. Where she gave greatly, she

demanded greatly. The fact that he had taken her to task bred a

suspicion that she had been sought out for that purpose, not because he

could no longer keep away: and his evident determination to give her no

chance of retrieving the damage done in a moment of irritation, brought

her near to defiance,--the danger-point of her nature. Hence renewed

encouragement of Garth, with intent to italicise her Declaration of

Independence; and with a half-acknowledged hope that Lenox might be

goaded by jealousy to renewed remonstrance.

And Garth,--who was used to the bestowal, rather than the receipt of

favours,--accepted this woman's encouragement as gratefully as an

enamoured subaltern. Desmond's recent tactics had but served to convince

him that the walls of Jericho must be carried by assault. Whatever the

outcome, the thrill of conquest must at least be his.

The six-foot roadway up to Kajiar gave him ample excuse for riding

needlessly close to his companion; and he inclined himself closer in

talking, thus giving a provocative flavour to ordinary speech.

"I think, in common fairness, it is my turn for an innings again,--don't

you?"

She laughed, and lifted her shoulders, evading direct reply.

"Does that mean that you care nothing, one way or other?" There was

smothered passion in his tone.

"And if it does? What then?"

"Gad! How coolly you stab a poor devil, whose worst sin is that he is

in----" But before the word was out, she checked him sharply.

"Major Garth!--How _dare_ you?"

Her white-hot anger seared both his vanity and his heart. But he had

courage of a sort: and he stood his ground.

"A man in my case will dare anything. Besides, you have insight enough

to have known it these many weeks; and why should the plain statement

anger you, when evidently the plain fact does not?--Tell me that."

The question smote her to silence. For she could not tell him: neither

could she answer hotly and break with him for good. Throughout the

coming week, at least, their intimacy must remain intact; and beyond it

her mind refused to look. She saw herself caught in a tangle of her own

making: a hot wave of vexation at her helplessness, at her cruelly false

position, fired her face from chin to brow.

But Garth, noting the phenomenon, interpreted it otherwise.

"You find my riddle unanswerable?" he questioned almost tenderly: and was

met by a lightning-flash of denial.

"No. By no means! The answer is simple enough. Unhappily you cannot

wipe out--the fact. But you can avoid expressing it: and you

must,--unless you are prepared to lose everything."

"By Jove, no!--I keep what I have gained,--at any price. And at least

your proffer of friendship gives me better right to monopolise you than

that chap Desmond can lay claim to. But he appears to be privileged."

"He is privileged."

"How so?"

"Simply by being the right sort of man."

Garth scrutinised her keenly.

"And a V.C. into the bargain--eh? I don't mind betting that's half the

attraction. Just a showy bit of pluck, dashed off at a hot-headed

moment--and you women turn a man into a god on the strength of it! The

fellow got his chance, and took it--that's all."

It is of the nature of small minds to disparage great ones; and in

general Quita would have dismissed the matter with a light retort. But

in her present mood, the man's petty personalities jarred more than

usual. "I think we won't discuss Captain Desmond," she said without

looking round. "To pick holes in a man of that quality only seems to

accentuate one's own littleness."

"Yours--or mine?"

"Both."

"By Jove--but you're frank!"

"Have you ever known me otherwise?"

"Can't say I have.--But I'm hanged if I know what's come to you these

last two days! Except that you are always far too alluring for my peace

of mind, you hardly seem like the same woman."

The truth of his assertion wrenched her back to a lighter mood.

"What an alarming accusation! Is any healthily intelligent and

progressive human being ever the same for many weeks together?

Change--readjustment--is the keynote of life; the very breath of it.

When you can accuse me of _not_ changing I shall know that I have fallen

into the sere and withered leaf past redemption. And now that I have

expiated myself--(probably to your more complete confusion!)--we'll have

a short canter to blow away cobwebs. The road is rather less breakneck

just here."

A flick of the whip sent Yorick forward at a bound; and Garth--stifling

unheroic qualms--could not choose but follow her daring lead.

Throughout the remaining eight miles neither her tongue nor her spirit

flagged; and for the man at least the journey's end came too soon.

It was a transformed Kajiar that basked in the full glory of noon, as

they emerged from the forest, and drew rein on the high ground behind the

little wooden rest-house, to enjoy a few moments' survey of the brilliant

scene.

At the far end, around the Rajah's private chalet, the native camp was

fast springing into life. While, down in the northern hollow, where

white tents clustered thickest, lay the big general camp; the core of all

things social and frivolous.

Hurdles, water jumps, and a long tent pavilion had changed the centre of

the glade into a racecourse, where subalterns, undaunted by a blazing

sun, were practising ponies for forthcoming gymkhanas. Goal-posts were

already fixed for the great yearly football match between Chumba and

Dalhousie; in which contest victory was by no means always to the West,

since Jeff Bathurst, a famous performer, trained and captained the Chumba

team: and in another part of the green, three wooden sign-posts of

unequal height gave promise of tilting matches to come.

Couples and groups, in the lightest of muslins and flannels, sauntered

idly in the scented shadow of the pines; or lounged, smoking and talking,

on the warm green earth.

The appeal of the whole was to a spirit of enjoyment pure and simple, to

the casting aside of care and thought; a passing respite from the shadow

of the future: and Quita's native zest for happiness urged her to instant

response.

"Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,

Why fret about them, if To-day be sweet,"

she quoted softly. "That is clearly the motto of the week; and it looks

as if every one intended to live up to it,--conscientiously."

Garth saw his advantage and pressed it home.

"You and I among the number, eh? At least we understand one another,

which is more than most of those philandering couples do. Why shouldn't

we make the most of our seven golden days and leave next week to look

after itself?"

"Why not, indeed?"

She spoke absently; her eyes resting on the snow-peak in the north. The

answer lay too deep down for utterance. But Garth took her enigmatical

echo for acquiescence, and laid his plans accordingly.

Nor were these two the only pair who arrived at Garth's philosophical

conclusion. Life was fulfilled, for the nonce, with laughter and

leisure; with the unchanging, passion-breathing blue and gold of a

Himalayan June; and on all sides the charmed circle of pines and deodars

shut them off from the forgotten world and 'them that dwell therein.'

Atmosphere, circumstance, and her own half-awakened heart conspired with

Michael Maurice to draw Elsie down, by slow and delicious degrees, from

the small pedestal whereon she had taken refuge since the night of the

Palace dinner; till all unaware, she acceded to his fantastic notion of

shutting the door upon Wisdom. Nor was it long before those whose profit

and pleasure it is to make capital out of their neighbours' doings had

assured themselves and each other that the 'week' would be responsible

for two engagements at least.

Such talk did not readily reach Lenox's ears. But Kenneth Malcolm, whose

aspirations were no secret to the busily idle world around him, was

speedily enlightened: and there could be neither peace nor rest for him

till he had confirmation or denial from Elsie's lips.

Six months earlier he had pleaded his cause with such halting eloquence

as he could command; and the girl's refusal had been qualified by a

confession that at least she preferred him to any other man of her

acquaintance. On the strength of this admission the boy had simply stood

aside and waited: hoping, as only the young can hope, because the fervour

of their desire renders the possibility of non-fulfilment unthinkable.

Then Maurice had entered the field, carrying all before him, with the

inimitable assurance that was his; and by now Kenneth had reached the

agony-point in a painful, if educative experience. Standing aside was no

longer endurable. By some means he must secure Elsie, if only for ten

minutes, and discover the truth.

"And a man need only look into her eyes for that," he decided, with a

throb of troubled anticipation.

His opportunity came on the third day of the 'week.' The great football

match between East and West was progressing vigorously to the tune of

shouts and cheers. Maurice, who had small taste for sport, had gone

sketching with his sister at her urgent request; and as Elsie settled

herself, with a book, on a slope of hot pine-needles, she was surprised

and startled to see Kenneth Malcolm approaching her.

"May I sit here for a little?" he asked. "I have hardly had two words

with you since you came back from Chumba. I suppose you enjoyed it all

tremendously?"

"Oh yes. It was delightful. Do sit down."

The restraint of his manner was infectious, as restraint is apt to be;

and she was hampered by a prescience of things to come.

"I was awfully keen to go too," he said, as he obeyed her. "But perhaps

it's just as well that I didn't get the chance, judging from . . . from

what I hear."

"You shouldn't judge from what you hear," she murmured.

"Shouldn't I? But unluckily it fits in with . . . what I see. Miss

Mayhew . . ." he pressed forward, his eyes searching her face, devout

worship in the sincere blue depths of them. "Will you be angry with me,

if I ask you a straight question?"

She shook her head.

"And will you give me a straight answer?"

"If I can."

"Is it true that you are likely to . . . marry Maurice?"

"Not that I know of." He took a great breath, like a condemned man who

hears his reprieve.

"Then, may I still believe . . . what you told me at Lahore?"

Her answer seemed an eternity in coming; for a plain 'yes' or 'no' were

equally far from the truth. This boy of four-and-twenty gave her the

restful sense of reliance and reserve force that she so missed in

Maurice. But there was no art, no thrill in his love-making. It was

direct and simple as himself. He never struck a chord of emotion and

left it quivering, as Maurice had done many times.

"May I?"--he persisted gently.

"I still think you are . . . the best man I know," she admitted, without

looking at him; and he flushed to the roots of his hair.

"But not the one you--care for most? It's that that matters, you know."

"Oh, I can't tell--truly I can't," she pleaded distressfully.

"Then I must just go on waiting."

"I wish you wouldn't even do that."

"I can only prevent it by putting a bullet through my head."

The quiet finality of his tone was more convincing than volumes of

protestations; and she shuddered.

"Don't say such things, please.--You hurt me."

"I wouldn't do that for a kingdom. But it's the truth.--I go down on the

fifteenth, you know."

"Yes.--I'm sorry."

"Are you? Then why--oh, I don't understand you!" he broke off in despair.

"I'm not sure that I understand myself--yet. It takes time, I suppose."

"Not when the right chap turns up, I fancy. But I'll give you as much

time as you want. I have a year's leave due. Shall I take it, and go

home?"

She looked rueful.

"A year is a long time. But perhaps that would be best. You might

find--some one else there, who understood herself better."

"That's out of the question," he answered almost harshly.

"But at all events,--I'll go."

A prolonged silence followed this statement: and when he spoke again, it

was of other things. Elsie followed suit: but the result was not

brilliant. She endured the strain as long as she could; then inventing

an excuse, she left him; though, to her surprise, it hurt her more than

she could have believed a week ago.

That afternoon, during the progress of a hybrid gymkhana,--ranging from

steeplechasing to obstacle races for men and natives,--the first whisper

of current gossip reached Lenox's ears.

Standing behind a restless row of hats and parasols, he was watching with

some interest the preliminary canter of a horse he had backed heavily,

when Garth and Quita, deep in animated talk, passed across the line of

chairs, and a woman close to Lenox turned to her neighbour.

"That match is a certainty, Mrs Mayhew. Say what you like. I'm sure of

it. I only wonder it hasn't been given out before now."

Mrs Mayhew shifted her parasol and inspected the retreating pair through

her gold-rimmed pince-nez, as though, by examining their shoulder-blades,

she could determine the exact state of their hearts.

"I don't quite know _what_ to think," she remarked with judicial

emphasis. "I don't believe anything is a certainty where Major Garth is

concerned. But if they are not engaged they _ought_ to be! I don't like

that girl, though. She is much too independent for my taste; and

engagement or no, she probably lets Major Garth make love to her. He

would never have stuck to her for six months otherwise."

On the last words Lenox started as it a cold finger-tip had touched his

heart. Such a thought had never occurred to him: and he could have

murdered, without compunction, the small self-satisfied woman who had

lodged the poisoned shaft in his mind.

Turning on his heel, he made straight for his tent, where a littered

camp-table gave proof that the art of taking a holiday could not be

reckoned among his accomplishments. Then he sat down by it and bowed his

head upon his hands. To doubt his wife's integrity was rank insult. Yet

he knew Garth's evil reputation; knew also that the suggestion would

cling to his memory like a limpet, and torture him in the endless hours

of wakefulness from which there was now no way of escape.

Enforced abstinence from tobacco and stimulants had told severely upon

his nerves, appetite, and health; and a foretaste of the sleepless night

ahead of him tempted him to regret his hasty destruction of the bottle of

chlorodyne, which had not been replaced.

Till dusk he worked without intermission; and, as if by a fiendish nicety

of calculation, the evening mail-bag,--brought out by runner from

Dalhousie,--contained the coveted parcel of tobacco, whose arrival he had

alternately craved and dreaded throughout the past ten days.

Zyarulla set it before him with manifest satisfaction.

"Now will my Sahib taste comfort and peace again," he muttered into the

depths of his beard, and having cut the strings of the parcel, discreetly

withdrew.

For a while Lenox merely grasped his recovered treasure, feasting his

soul upon the knowledge that here, within the space of one small cube,

lay the promise of sleep, peace of mind, oblivion. Then, with unsteady

hands, he opened the tin: took from his pocket a briar of great age and

greater virtue; filled it; lighted it; and drew in the first mouthful of

aromatic fragrance, with such rapture of refreshment as a man, parched

with fever, drains a glass held to his lips.

A great peace enfolded him: and no thought of resistance arose to break

the enchantment. For the 'mighty and subtle' drug kills with kindness.

Coming to a tormented man in the guise of an angel of peace, it lures

him, lulls him, and wraps him about with false contentment before

plunging him into the pit.

While the holiday folk trooped into the long mess-tent, laughing or

lamenting over the afternoon's vicissitudes, Lenox sat at his table in

shirt and trousers, his pen devouring the loose sheets before him. He

bade Zyarulla bring him meat, bread, and a cup of coffee, and deny

admittance even to 'Desmond Sahib' himself. And throughout the night he

worked, and smoked, and finally slept as he had not slept since the

Bachelors' Ball.

Before dawn he was up, and out: a gun on his shoulder, field-glasses

slung across his back. He had given orders for a party of beaters to be

requisitioned, in his name, from the Rajah's camp; and Zyarulla could be

trusted to see to it that he should not starve. All day he tramped and

climbed, shot and sketched, to his huge satisfaction; and returning at

dusk, repeated his programme of the night before.

His departure without a word of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety.

He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility

confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast:

and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had small consolation

to offer him.

The 'week's' events had disappointed her grievously; for the deadlock

between man and wife seemed complete.

"Truly, Theo, I don't know what to make of them both," she concluded

desperately. "They are the most perverse couple that were ever invented.

Benedick and Beatrice were turtle-doves by comparison! After this week I

shall give them up in despair."

"Poor darling! They ought to mend their ways, if only out of

consideration for you! Come on now and comfort your soul with tilting.

I want you to carry all before you in the tournament."

"Do you indeed!" she answered, laughing. "But I shan't hit a single ring

to-day. This distracting muddle is getting on my nerves!"

And if Honor Desmond found the strain of sympathetic anxiety ill to

endure, what of Quita, whose life's happiness hung upon the issue?

For her the Kajiar Camp, despite its light-comedy atmosphere, had proved

a nightmare of surface hilarity, broken rest, and growing distaste for

the man whose name she had permitted to be coupled with her own:--all to

no purpose, it seemed, save to inflate his self-satisfaction, and fortify

his intention, now too clearly manifest, of hindering to the utmost her

reunion with her husband.

Moreover, her self-imposed attitude became increasingly hard to maintain.

A flash of defiance is one thing; but sustained defiance, when the heart

has unblushingly gone over to the enemy, puts a severe strain upon the

nerves.

And what was to be the outcome?

The question stabbed her in the small hours, when ugly possibilities loom

large, like figures seen through mist. So strongly had this late love

smitten her, that she had been capable of strangling pride, and taking

the initiative, had Lenox's bearing given her the smallest hope of

success. But unsought surrender, plus the mortification of failure, was

more than she felt prepared to risk, even for a chance of winning the one

man in all the world:--the man who could at least belong to no other

woman, she assured herself with a throb of satisfaction. Thus there

seemed no choice left but to go blindly forward along the line of least

resistance.

Lenox's non-appearance on Wednesday evening had startled her into fuller

knowledge of her dependence on his mere presence to maintain even a

mimicry of good spirits; and she heaped contempt upon her own head

accordingly. Nevertheless she escaped at an early hour; and lay awake

half the night tormenting herself with unanswerable problems.

When breakfast brought no sign of him, she concluded that he must have

returned to Dalhousie in disgust: and the conclusion brought her near to

the end of her tether. She took refuge in her tent, and, for the first

time in many years, sobbed shamelessly, till her eyelids smarted, and her

head throbbed and burned. After that she felt better, and her

unquenchable courage revived. There is much virtue in your

thunder-shower at the psychological moment! She got upon her feet at

last; hands pressed against pulsing temples, swaying a little, like a

willow that the storm had shaken. But cold water, eau-de-cologne, and

the stinging tonic of self-scorn, soon restored her to a semblance of her

normal aspect: and by lunch-time she was out again in the mocking

sunshine, swept unresisting back into the light-hearted whirl of things.

At tiffin, to her intense relief, Theo Desmond took the empty chair next

her own. He had missed her during the morning: and a glance at her face

sufficed to give him an inkling of the truth. All his heart went out to

her; and he hastened to answer the question in her eyes.

"Lenox went off at sunrise, for a day's shooting," he remarked

conversationally, when they had exchanged greetings.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Did he? Sensible man! I suppose he is tired

to death of our frivolous fooling."

"That's rather severe! I can't let you run him down. The other thing's

more in his line, that's all; and it'll do him a power of good. He

suffers cruelly from want of sleep, poor chap.--By the way, have you

heard the latest suggestion for to-morrow?"

"No. I was--lying down this morning. What is it?"

"A burlesque polo match: ladies against men: the men to play on

side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit

horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want me

to captain the team."

"You? One of the champions of the Punjaub! What impertinence! Shall

you?"

"Why, certainly. It will be rather a lark."

"Well, then, I'll play too, if they'll have me. Will you ask them,

please?"

He regarded her in frank astonishment. "Jove! I never thought of that.

Are you in earnest?"

"But yes. In cut-throat earnest!" she answered, laughing.

"Ever tried your hand at it?"

"Never, in all my days. I will this afternoon though, if you'll take me

in hand for an hour or so."

"With all the pleasure in life. You can ride Diamond, if you like. He

knows almost as much about the game as I do."

Her eyes sparkled.

"That gem of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in

a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been

deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to live for now!"

Garth received her announcement with open dismay. He suspected Desmond's

influence: and, in his zeal to dissuade her, ventured on a mild tone of

authority, with disastrous results.

"Well, I shan't have a comfortable moment till the thing is safely over,"

he concluded unwisely: and she tossed an indignant head.

"Am I such a despicable horseman?" she demanded haughtily. "Captain

Desmond doesn't find me so, I assure you."

And indeed, after an hour of assiduous instruction, Desmond had frankly

expressed his approval both of her aptness and daring.

When Lenox heard the news on Friday morning, he heartily wished he had

decided on a second day's shooting.

Anxiety apart, the knowledge that the woman he loved could thus make a

public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set

the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was

in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of

polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and

lightly swaying figure.

The polo ground, occupying the centre of the glade, was ringed about by a

crowd as varied and gay in colouring as a bed of mixed tulips in spring.

Even the open tent, where the English spectators were gathered, showed a

prevailing lightness and brightness of tint. On the farther side of the

tent, the Depot band gave out a cheerful blare of sound; and a June sun

beamed complacently over all.

For the first twenty minutes the serio-comic game went forward merrily:

the women playing in desperate earnest; the men making broad farce out of

their ludicrous handicap.

Quita, who had elected to play Diamond first and fourth, was restrained

at the outset by the fact that she was handling a priceless pony. But,

with the opening of the third _chukkur_, increasing self-confidence,

coupled with the pace and keenness of Bathurst's 'Unlimited Loo,' fired

her venturesome spirit: and she flung herself heart and soul into the

intoxication of the game; half hoping that some sudden crash and fall

might solve the problem of her life by the simple expedient of putting

out the light.

More than once Desmond called out an unheeded warning. He saw that pony

and rider alike were in danger of losing their heads; and Lenox, leaning

forward in an anguish of suspense, followed her every movement with

conflicting fury and admiration.

At last the _chukkur_ drew to an end.

Away by the farthest goal-posts a fine parody of a scrimmage was in

progress, Desmond and Quita being 'on the ball.' The advantage was hers;

and she made haste to secure it. Rising in the saddle, she swung her

stick for an ambitious back-handed stroke, missed the ball, and smote

'Unlimited Loo,' with the full force of her arm, high up on the off

hind-leg.

At this uncalled bolt from the blue, the sensitive animal,--who had never

in all his days been chastised by a polo stick for doing his simple

duty,--lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain;

and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all

the fiends in hell were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her

whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him:

and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and

left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.

And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the

unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita,

sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that

in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For

at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead

halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be

flung violently out of the saddle.

Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.

Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed,

helpless. "_Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!_" he muttered

with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all

the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.

Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing

diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.

The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his

intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by

the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.

A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited

Loo' fled faster. He passed the point Lenox was making for a bare

hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous

strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to

his knees in semi-liquid mud.

Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have

fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that

Lenox,--reaching her in the nick of time--caught and crushed her in his

arms.

"You're not hurt. Thank God, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.

With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek

against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill

the universe.

Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, and

Bathurst were hurrying towards them.

Quita felt her husband stiffen, and lifted her head.

"Thank you--thank you," she said with a twisted smile. "I think I can

stand on my feet now."

In two strides he was clear of the mud, and had set her on firm earth.

But she was still clinging to his arm when Garth came up, brimming with

concern.

"I'm quite disappointingly all right," she assured him hastily, stung by

a keen sense that her catastrophe had fallen headlong from impending

tragedy to bathos. "Please bestow all your sympathy on Mr Bathurst, and

Unlimited Loo!"

For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only

for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked

sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.

"_Ah, mon pauvre Michel_!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of

tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands

outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her

own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she

concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and

I am certainly no loss to my side!--Mr Bathurst"--she turned in Jeff's

direction--"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a

polo pony again!"

Bathurst,--who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over

with skilled hands,--shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice.

Always glad to oblige a lady!"

And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.

"_Viens, mon cher_," she said gently; and he led her away.

Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to

look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on

dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a

fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief.

She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate

Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled

hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she

might make it without fear of rebuff. But how--how?

Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her

tent;--eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at

her heart.

CHAPTER XII.

"How the world seems made for each of us;

How all we perceive and know in it

Tends to some moment's product,--thus,

When the soul declares itself; to wit,

By its fruit: the thing it does."

--Browning.

Quita lacked courage to appear again in public till the dinner bugle

sounded. Garth was her promised partner: and she found him awaiting

her just outside her tent.

"My turn now, dear lady," he said, pressing her fingertips against his

side, as she took his proffered arm. "It has been a blank afternoon

for me; but in revenge, I mean to keep you all the evening."

"You are presumptuous, as always!" she answered with admirable

lightness. "Your claim ends with dessert."

"Quite so. But you are generous; and I can trust the rest to you,

since you know how much I want it."

She smiled, as in duty bound. But to-night the man's facile gallantry

revolted her as it had never yet done. She wondered how she had

endured it these many months.

The instant they entered the long tent her eyes sought and found the

thing they craved: though the sight of Lenox in his accustomed place

between the Desmonds reawakened her smouldering jealousy of Honor, and

gave the lie to her amazing instant of revelation. But once during the

meal she encountered her husband's eyes. It was as if he had put out a

hand and touched her; and her partner's veiled love-making became a

meaningless murmur at her ear. Yet the surface of her brain travelled

mechanically along the beaten track of dinner-table talk: and Garth,

finding her gentler and more serious than her wont, deemed his hour of

triumph very near at hand. Direct encouragement, in the face of his

hidden knowledge, had strengthened his conviction that for many weeks

she had been stifling her true feelings; that one touch at the right

moment would suffice to lift the veil, to bring her at last into his

arms. Beyond that moment of mastery he did not choose to look. For

to-night passion had elbowed prudence out of the field. He had claimed

her for the evening; and he anticipated great things from the next two

hours under the stars.

At these informal camp dinners men and women left the table together;

only habitual card-players remaining behind to tempt fortune until the

small hours. Quita's hope had been that Desmond might come to her aid.

But he had made up a rubber of whist; and to her dismay, she saw Lenox

and Honor depart without him. Garth, who also noted their movements,

carefully led her round to the far side of a blazing bonfire, piled ten

feet high on this last night of Arcadia; and with a suppressed sigh she

resigned herself to an evening of comic songs and personalities; and

decided that a headache must rescue her, if no other champion were

forthcoming.

It was a clear night of stars. The moon had not yet risen; though a

herald brightness gave news of her coming. No least whisper of wind

stirred the tree-tops. Sun-baked fir branches crackled and snapped

like fairy musketry; and many-hued flames,--rose and saffron,

heliotrope and sea-green,--played hide-and-seek among them, flinging

inverted shadows on faces nearest the blaze.

Human beings break into song round a bonfire as naturally as birds

after a shower of rain, and for those who see in such a fire no mere

holocaust of dead twigs, but the Red Flower of the Jungle, the symbol

and spirit of wild life, this spontaneous minstrelsy has a charm

peculiarly its own. A charm of the simplest, certainly; for at

camp-fires the banjo reigns supreme; and the aptest songs are those

that 'rip your very heartstrings out' and offer fine facilities for

effervescing between the verses.

Already a remarkable assortment of these had challenged the winking

stars; and Quita was encouraging the requisite headache, while Garth

contemplated the suggestion of a stroll towards the lake, when Michael

Maurice came up to them.

"Quita, _cherie_, they have sent me to ask if you will sing. I have my

fiddle here for accompaniment."

She hesitated. A rare shyness, born of the afternoon's fiasco, was

still upon her.

"Who sent you?" she asked, smiling up at him.

"Colonel Mayhew, and several others." He bent lower. "_Tu es trop

fatiguee apres ce vilain polo_?"

"_Non, ce n'est pas ca . . . mais . . ._"

"Do, Miss Maurice, please, do," urged an enthusiastic young civilian on

her left. "A woman's voice, especially yours, would be a rare treat

after our promiscuous shouting."

And on her other side Garth, pressing closer, whispered his plea.

"Don't disappoint me. It is ages since I last heard you sing."

Without answering either, she touched her brother's arm. "Tune up,

Michel," she said low and hurriedly. "I have thought of a song."

Garth murmured his thanks with unusual _empressement_. Her instant

acquiescence had both moved and flattered him; and his hopes rode high.

As a matter of fact, she had not even heard his request. She had

simply obeyed an impulse, as in most crises of her life;--an impulse so

peremptory that it seemed almost a command from Beyond.

"What song is it to be?" Maurice asked, when the tuning process was

complete.

"Swinburne's 'Ask Nothing More.'"

He raised his eyebrows. "A man's song?"

"Yes. But you know I often sing it; and I want to . . . to-night."

"_Qu'y a-t-il, petite soeur_?" he asked, for her manner puzzled him.

"_Rien . . . rien de tout_. Commence."

And he played the soft chords, pregnant with pleading, that usher in

the song.

A moment later, Lenox, leaning back in a canvas chair, sat upright, and

took the cigar from his lips.

"A woman singing? Jove--it's Quita!" he added under his breath. Then

he remained motionless, straining his eyes for a sight of her between

the dancing flames.

Clear and unfaltering her voice soared into the night; and as the song

swept on, through pleading to impassioned longing, the whole awakened

heart of her took fire from the poet's faultless phrases; till, in the

last verse, it spoke straightly and simply to her husband, as though

they two stood alone in the interstellar spaces of the universe.

"I who have love, and no more,

Give you but love of you, sweet;

He that hath more, let him give;

He that hath wings let him soar.

Mine is the heart at your feet . . .

Here that must love you . . . love you, to live!"

The last stupendous chords crashed into silence; and the fall of a

charred twig sounded loud in the pause that followed. Then there came

from the shadowy circle of listeners no clatter of hands and voices,

but a low disjoined murmur;--the very attar of applause.

But by that time Quita was making her way blindly through the outskirts

of the crowd into the blessed region of darkness and stars.

For, as the last words left her lips, the full apprehension of her act

and its possible consequences submerged her in a red-hot wave of shame

and self-consciousness; and before Garth had recovered himself

sufficiently to rise and make the request that hovered on his lips, she

was gone. For a space he sat still, lost in an amazement that swelled

to exultation as the conviction grew in him that at last, after long

and laudable repression, her heart had spoken, indirectly, yet

unmistakably; that now, scandal or no scandal, he must make her

altogether his.

And while he sat stunned to inaction by the vital issues at stake,

Quita hurried on toward the temple, with no purpose in her going save

to escape from the consciousness of human presence. She stood still at

length, and wrung her hands together.

"Oh, but it was folly--worse than folly! He will only think or

hateful,--theatrical. He will never understand."

Yet if, by miraculous chance, he did understand . . . what then? She

held her breath and waited; till the night seemed alive with voices

that laughed her to scorn.

The new-risen moon hung low as if caught and tangled among the

tree-tops of the forest that broke up her golden disc in fantastic

fashion. Away there by the bonfire some one else was singing now; a

song with a boisterous chorus. Her mad impulse had simply been added

to the mass of ineffectual things that form the groundwork of our rare

successes.

Suddenly she started, and raised her head. The sound she desired yet

dreaded was close at hand. He was coming to her. He must have

understood. And because she needed all her courage to face him, she

did it at once; for nothing saps courage like hesitation.

Then her heart stood still; a chill aura swept through her and she

shivered. The dark figure nearing her was not Lenox. It was Garth.

But that all power of initiative seemed gone from her, she must have

turned and fled. Instead she stood her ground, without motion or

speech; and he, still misreading her, held out his arms.

"Quita . . . darling . . ." he began, his voice thick with passion.

But her name on his lips roused her like a pistol-shot.

"Go back . . . please go back," she cried imperatively. "I came away

because I wanted . . . to be alone."

"But I thought . . ."

"I can't help what you thought! If you have any--respect for me at

all, you will do what I ask."

"Of course. Only I shall see you again to-night. I must."

"No . . . no. Not to-night."

"To-morrow then?"

But she had already left him; and for his part, he must needs return

the way he came,--frustrated, yet not enlightened; cursing, in no

measured terms, the unfathomable ways of women. No doubt she was

upset, unstrung by the knowledge of all that her confession implied;

and woman-like, showed small regard for his consuming impatience to

possess her. But to-morrow he would ride home with her. And after

that--the Deluge!

Quita left alone again went forward with lagging feet, and a heart

emptied of hope. Her own disappointment crowded out all thought of

Garth's unusual behaviour; till renewed steps behind her suggested the

astonishing possibility that he had dared to disregard her request, and

followed her, in spite of all. The suggestion roused not fear, but

anger, and the militant spirit of independence that circumstances had

so fostered in her.

She knew now that she hated him, as we only hate those whom we have

wronged. It was intolerable that he should persecute her against her

wish; and she swung round sharply, with words of pitiless truth on her

lips.

But the night seemed marked for the unexpected:--and now it was joy

incredible that fettered her tongue and her feet, while her husband

hastened forward, his face clearly visible in the growing light.

"I followed that fellow when he went after you," he said bluntly, anger

smouldering in his tone. "And I saw him leave you. Did you send him

away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I didn't want him."

"Does that apply to me also?"

"No . . . please stay."

There fell a silence pregnant with things unutterable. Lenox came

closer.

"What possessed you to sing that song,--in that way--Quita?"

It was the first time he had spoken her name, and she turned from him,

pressing her fingers against flaming cheeks.

"Oh, I am burnt up with shame! I feel as if I had told all of them."

"Told them--what?"

"_Mon Dieu_! Will you compel me to say everything?"

She flung out both hands, and he caught and crushed them till she

winced under the pressure. Then, holding her at arm's-length, he

looked searchingly into her eyes.

And while they stood so--in this their first instant of real union,

that dwarfed the years between to a watch in the night--each was aware

of the other's answering heart; and in each, love burnt with so

flame-like a quality that neither speech nor touch was needed to seal

the intimacy of contact.

At length he drew her nearer.

"Does it frighten you now when I look right into you?" he asked, an odd

vibration in his voice.

"No . . . no. I am only afraid you may not see deep enough."

He drew a great breath.

"Thank God for that. But tell me,--for I am still in the dark,--how on

earth has such a miracle come to pass?"

Her low laugh had a ring of inexpressible content.

"Dearest, and blindest! Did it never occur to you that you could not

have laid a surer trap to win me than by just keeping clear of me, and

living in . . . that Mrs Desmond's pocket?"

He shook his head, smiling down at her. Her old subtle charm with this

strange new tenderness superadded, was working like an elixir in his

veins.

"But what does the _how_ of it matter, after all?" she went on, leaning

closer, and speaking low and fervently. "Isn't it enough that I love

you with all there is of me . . . Eldred; that I ask you to believe me,

and to make me . . . your very wife. There: you have compelled me to

say everything! Are you satisfied now?"

To such a question he could find no answer in words. But his silence

was cardinal. He put an arm round her, straining her close, and with a

sigh of sheer rapture she lifted her face to his.

Their eyes met. Then their lips; and Eldred Lenox entered into a

knowledge that he dreamed not of. The whole soul of his wife came to

him in that kiss; and for a long minute ecstacy held them.

Then he released her, slowly . . . reluctantly.

"Shall we sit out here?" he said. "The whole camp will soon be asleep;

but I can't let you go yet."

She sank down, forthwith, upon the grassy slope, in which the fire of a

June sun still lingered; and clasping her hands about her knees, looked

up at him invitingly. By way of response he stretched himself full

length, a little below her, resting on his elbow in such a position as

afforded him a clear view of her profile, that gleamed, like a cameo

against a background of deodars.

"Smoke," she said softly.

"No. I think not."

His tone had a touch of constraint, and a lone silence fell.

The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the enchantment of

being alone in it together; and there was that in their hearts that

made speech difficult.

They sat looking northward toward the moonlit hollow where the station

camp clustered close to the forest's edge. Behind the camp--a mass of

unbroken shadow--it climbed up and upward to the mystery of a sky,

powdered with the gold-dust of faint stars, on which its jagged outline

was printed black as ink. Beyond that again, one majestic

snow-peak,--like a stainless soul rising out of a tomb,--gleamed in the

light of an increasingly brilliant moon. The crowd round the bonfire

had crumbled into a hundred insignificant seeming units; and the fire

itself, no longer aspiring to the stars, glowed like an angry eye in

the dusky face of the glade.

Presently Quita spoke.

"There is so endlessly much to say, that I don't know where to begin.

And after all, I am utterly content just to feel that you are there;

that I have really got you back at last."

"You have had me, body and soul, these five years," he answered simply.

"It is I who have gained you, by some miracle of your womanhood that I

shall never fathom."

"If you set it down to your own manhood, you might be nearer the mark.

You are very much too humble, Eldred; and I love you for it,--always

did."

"Always?"

"I verily believe so."

"Good God! I never misjudged you, did I? If you . . . cared _then_,

why ever did you leave me?"

"Because you gave me no time to take it in. But I am sure now that the

germ was there. I think your . . . kisses must have waked it into

life. That was why they upset me so. And when I came back, I meant

to . . . Oh why should we rake it all up again? It hurts too much."

"But I must know everything now, Quita. You meant to tell me,--was

that it?"

"Yes. Though I own it was rather late in the day. Then you sprang it

upon me with that letter. I detest the man who wrote it, and I always

shall. There was just enough of truth in it, and in your bitter

reproaches, to make me feel the hopelessness of lame explanations.

Besides, your anger frightened me, though I didn't show it; and I

simply acted on a blind impulse to escape from the unknown things

ahead; to get back to the love and work I could understand."

"My poor darling! What a blackguard I was to you!"

"Hush! You are not to say that."

"I will. It's true. But . . . didn't you care a great deal for the

other chap?"

"I imagined I did. Girls can't always analyse new feelings of that

sort. I can see now that it was chiefly mental sympathy between us, on

my side at least. But I only discovered that when the real thing

came--in a flash."

"When was that?" he asked on a note of eagerness.

"One May morning on the Kajiar road! I knew then that I must have

cared always, without guessing it. But your coolness roused my pride;

and I vowed that if you had wiped me out of your heart, I would die

sooner than let you suspect my discovery. Yet all the while I longed

for you to know it; and in the end, goaded by your blindness, and your

astonishing want of conceit, I break my pride into a hundred little

bits. _Ai-je ete assez femme_?" she concluded with a whimsical smile.

One of her hands lay on the grass beside him. He covered it with his

own.

"And was the amazing discovery responsible for the Garth episode?" His

tone had a hint of anxiety.

"For the latter part of it, yes; though we have been friends all the

winter. He is at least moderately intelligent; and an intelligent

egoist is always interesting. Besides, companionship is the breath of

life to me, you understand; and I seldom manage to make friends with

women."

"The other kind of friendship is an edged tool."

"And therefore irresistible! It's like fencing with the buttons off

the foils."

"You speak from much practical experience?"

"Yes. I have had my share of it. But please believe me, Eldred,"--she

hesitated,--"I have been as loyal to you in word and deed, all these

years, as if I had borne your name, and lived under your roof. In

spite of my weakness for edged tools, I have never let any man tell me

that he loved me since you told me so yourself, in the dark ages. And

if a few have wanted to do so, I could hardly help that, could I?"

"No more than you could help breathing or sleeping," he answered with a

slow strong pressure of her hand.

"I know I ought not to have let Major Garth see so much of me after I

saw how it was with him, but--since it's the whole truth to-night--I

confess your aloofness hurt me so, that I wanted to see if I could

rouse you to a spark of feeling by hurting you back, and I chose the

weapon readiest to my hand."

"You struck deep with it. Does the knowledge give you any

satisfaction?"

"It fills my cup of shame to overflowing. Yet,--come to think of

things, you did much the same without realising it."

"Which makes a vast difference, surely?"

"Not to me, _mon ami_. It is only God who judges by the intention;

possibly because He never suffers from the action."

"Quita! That's irreverent!"

"Is it? I'm sorry if it sets your Scottish prickles on end! Are

you . . . a very religious man, Eldred?"

"I believe in God," he answered simply.

A short silence followed the statement. Then Quita spoke.

"But you see, don't you, dear man, that I spoke truth. My pain was

none the less sharp because you inflicted it unwittingly. It's one of

the things people are apt to forget."

"Your pain? Before God I never dreamed that any act of mine could give

you a minute's uneasiness; though Mrs Desmond . . ."

"Don't begin about Mrs Desmond, please!" She drew her hand away with a

touch of impatience. "She is everything that is perfect, of course.

But I hate her; and I believe I always shall."

Lenox turned on his elbow and looked up into her face.

"My dear . . . I can't let you speak so of my best friend. We owe her

everything, you and I. You shall hear about it all one of these days.

And apart from that, she is . . ."

"Yes, yes. I can see what she is, clearly enough. A superbly

beautiful woman, outside and in, who possesses a good deal of influence

over you. I can be just to her, you see, if I am . . . jealous."

"Jealous? Nonsense. The word is an insult to her, and to me."

She reddened under the reproof in his tone.

"Forgive me. I didn't mean it so. I am only afraid that after close

intimacy with her you will find--your wife rather a poor thing by

comparison. Just the 'eternal feminine' with all an artist's egoism,

and more than the full complement of faults."

She spoke so simply, and with such transparent sincerity, that again he

turned on her abruptly; his smouldering passion quickened to a flame.

"Quita . . . you dear woman . . . if I could only make you

realise . . . !"

But long repression, and the knowledge that was poisoning his perfect

hour, constrained him to reticence. He dared not let himself go.

"I think I do realise . . . now . . ." she whispered, stirred to the

depths by the repressed intensity of his tone.

"Then don't belittle yourself any more. I forbid it. You understand?"

Again he heard the low laugh on which her soul seemed to ride. Then,

leaning impulsively down to him, she put her bare arms round his

shoulders from behind, and rested her cheek upon his hair.

The man held his breath, and remained very still, as if fearful lest

word or movement should break the spell. After five years of unloved

loneliness, this first spontaneous caress from his wife, with its

delicate suggestion of intimacy, seemed to break down invisible

barriers and set new life coursing in his veins.

"You forbid it?" she echoed, on a tremulous note of happiness. "And

you have the right to. You, and no one else in all the world! You

laughed at me in the old days--do you remember?--for clutching at my

independence. Well, I have had my surfeit of it now; and I am

desperately tired of standing alone . . . darling."

She paused before the unfamiliar word, unconsciously accentuating its

effect, and Lenox, taking her two hands in one of his own, kissed them

fervently. The moment he dreaded was upon him, and in the face of her

impassioned tenderness he scarcely knew how to meet it.

"You should not stand alone one minute longer, if I could have my

will," he said in a repressed voice.

She lifted her head and looked at him.

"And why can't you have your will? What are we going to do about it,

Eldred?"

"Nothing in a hurry," he answered slowly. "We paid too dearly for that

last time."

"But, _mon cher_ . . . we have waited five whole years."

"That is just the difficulty. Five years of overwork and bitterness of

spirit are not to be wiped out in a single hour; even such an hour as

this. The man you married had not gone through the fire, and been

badly burned in the process."

He paused. The irony of their reversed positions stung him to the

quick, and she sat watching his face. The pallor of moonlight

intensified its ruggedness, its deep indentations of cheek and brow.

She began to be aware that the dropped stitches of life cannot always

be picked up again at will; that there is no tyrant more pitiless than

the Past; and a vague dread took hold of her, sealing her lips.

"We have got to look facts in the face to-night," Lenox went on with

the doggedness of his race. "I'm a poor hand at discussing myself.

It's an unprofitable subject. But I can't let you rush headlong into a

reunion that may prove disastrous . . . for you. To-night's revelation

has astounded me. It isn't easy to get one's bearings all at once; but

before we take any further irretrievable step I am bound, in

conscience, to tell you how the land lies. When you--repudiated me, I

accepted your decision as final. I never dreamed of your coming back;

and I acted accordingly. I took to work as I might have taken to

drink, if I had been made that way; with the natural result that

I . . . smoked a great deal too much, and slept too little. I saw no

earthly reason to husband my strength, or my life; and in consequence,

I have gained something of a reputation for tackling dangerous and

difficult jobs. There's plenty more work of the kind ahead, with the

forward policy in full swing; and one can't go back on all that has

been done. You see that, don't you?"

"Yes. But couldn't I ever go with you?"

He smiled. "I believe you have grit enough! But it would be unheard

of. Besides . . . there is another trouble, and a very serious one,

blocking the way."

"You will tell me what it is?"

He did not answer at once. To blacken himself deliberately in the eyes

of the woman he loves is no light ordeal for a man; and Lenox shrank

from it with the peculiar sensitiveness of a nature at once humble and

proud; the more so since to-night had brought home to him the

heart-breaking truth that in "the devil's wedlock of evil and pain" one

can never suffer alone.

But a great love had been given him, and a force stronger than his will

impelled him to speak truth, even at the cost of losing it.

"Yes . . . I will tell you what it is," he said slowly, looking

straight before him. "You have the right to know."

And in a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he

told her, not the fact only, but his dread of its far-reaching effect.

"And it seems plain as daylight to me," he added bitterly, "that a man

so cursed has no right to multiply misery by taking a woman into his

life. That was the real reason why I kept clear of you latterly, and

tried to thank God that you did not care."

He could not trust himself to look round at her face, but he felt her

lean close to him again. For the unobtrusive strength of the man stood

revealed in his confession; and it is woman's second nature to admire

strength.

"Eldred, . . . my husband," she breathed, her voice breaking on the

word. "How cruelly you must have suffered! And it was all _my_ fault."

There spoke the woman!--intent upon the individual; blind--wilfully or

otherwise--to the larger issues involved.

"It was _not_ your fault," he answered with smothered vehemence. "And

in any case, don't you see, it's no question of blame, but of

consequences. And we dare not shut our eyes to them. For this

business of marriage is a complicated affair. What's more, I believe

the wrench of immediate separation, with the comparative freedom it

involves, would come less hard on you in the long-run, than actual

marriage with a man of my stamp.--Oh, you would find me a sorry bargain

all round, I assure you," he concluded with a short, hard laugh. "And

you will do well to think twice before you burn your boats for me!"

She slid lower down the slope, and laid one hand on his knee.

"I don't choose to think twice; and I _have_ burnt my boats as it is!

Besides . . . you will be strong to conquer your trouble, now you know

that all my happiness depends upon it." She paused for an appreciable

moment. "We seem to have changed places since that long-ago morning,

Eldred. It is I who want--to begin now--on any terms."

He put out his arm, and drew her very close to him.

"Feckless as ever!" he chided without severity. "You dismissed me on

an impulse; and now you would take me back again with the same

stupendous disregard for results. It is very evident you need some one

to look after you, and teach you common-sense."

"I have told you already _who_ it is that I need. Isn't that enough?"

The thrill in her low tone set all the man in him on fire. The

influence of the hour was strong upon him.

"My God!" he muttered under his breath. "How can mere flesh and blood

hold out against you?"

"Must you hold out against me--even after what I said?"

She nestled nearer, and stray tendrils of hair softly brushed his

cheek. His lips whitened, but he set them close. Her touch, the

perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect on him. Her weakness

challenged his strength.

"Yes; I must," he answered quietly. "For your sake, my dear, and for

my own self-respect. I am fighting this thing, you understand, with

every weapon at my command. And until I see my way clear out on the

other side, I will not--I dare not--take you back. Now come. It is

high time you were asleep. We can't stay out here together all night."

"We have every right to . . . if we choose," she murmured, still

rebellious.

"You forget, I am to teach you common-sense! There is to-morrow to be

thought of, and your long ride back to Dalhousie."

A small shiver ran through her.

"I am afraid of to-morrow. I shall wake up and feel as if all this had

been a dream. When shall I see you again . . . alone?"

"I will come up and call on you the day after!" he said, assuming a

deliberate lightness in sheer self-defence. "Don't let me find Garth

there, though; or I warn you I shall not be accountable for my

behaviour!"

He rose on the words, and lifted her to her feet. They descended the

slope in silence, walking a little apart, as if accentuating the fact

that their reunion in this June night of enchantment and faint stars

was an incomplete thing after all.

The moon was near her zenith; and, outside the formless dark of the

forest, the great glade held her radiance as a goblet holds wine. Past

the half-hidden temple of the holy lake they moved leisurely towards

the cluster of tents that showed like a pallid excrescence at the

forest's edge. To-night again, as on that earlier unforgettable day,

they seemed the only living beings in a world of shadows and folded

wings; and the decree of separation, coming at such a moment, put a

severe strain on their self-control.

Fifty feet from Quita's tent they stood still.

She held out her hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that

were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed

forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his

shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs.

A woman in tears sets even a case-hardened man at a disadvantage; and

Lenox, confronted with the phenomenon for the first time in his life,

experienced a sense of helpless bewilderment, coupled with a vague

conviction of his own brutality in having brought this happy-hearted

wife of his to such a pass. He could not guess that after a week of

ceaseless tension, played out with no little fortitude, this moment of

unrestraint came as a pure relief to her overwrought nerves; a relief

that verged upon ecstasy, since her husband's arm was round her, his

hand mechanically stroking her hair.

"Hold up, hold up," he urged her gently. "This sort of thing will

never do."

But control, once lost, is ill to regain. His words produced no

visible affect, for in her momentary abandonment, she could not see his

face; or guess at the struggle that was enacting behind its curtain of

self-mastery. And now, to discomfiture was added an overpowering

temptation to trample on all scruples of conscience; to take that which

was his, without further let or hindrance; and put an end to their

distracting situation once for all.

"Quita, . . . my darling wife . . . !" he broke out desperately. "For

Heaven's sake pull yourself together. You are torturing me past

endurance. Do you suppose it is an easy thing . . . to let you go?"

She raised her head at that, compressing her lips to still their tremor.

"Forgive me, . . . dearest. It was stupid of me to make a fuss. I

will go now; and I promise not to behave like this again."

She deliberately drew his head down to her own; and they kissed, once.

Then she left him, something hurriedly; and he stood transfixed looking

after her, till the falling flap of the tent hid her from view.

There could be no thought of sleep for Eldred Lenox that night.

Till the moon slipped behind the pines, and the sentinel snow-peak in

the North caught, and flung back, the first glimmer of dawn, he paced

the empty glade from end to end. His mouth and throat were parched.

His every nerve clamoured for the accustomed narcotic. But pipe and

tobacco-pouch reposed in his breast-pocket--untouched.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Ah, Love, but a day,

And the world has changed!"

--Browning.

An early return journey had been advocated by all experienced weather

prophets of the mushroom colony of Kajiar. The great monsoon was

already rolling up from the coast-line, and at any moment might break

in thunder over the hills.

By eight of the morning tent-poles were swaying and falling on all

sides: and the wide glade that had slept in silver when Quita parted

from her husband, was astir from end to end. From every corner came

the brisk insistent tapping of hammers on tent-pegs; the shrill

neighing of ponies, and shriller chatter of coolies, bargaining for

payment in advance; repudiating loads a few ounces overweight, and

tragically prophesying death on the road if the illegal incubus were

not removed.

Peremptory bugle-notes rang out upon the air; and mounted Englishmen,

galloping hither and thither, scattered commands right and left in a

series of deep-chested shouts.

Striking camp,--breaking up! It is the key-note of Anglo-Indian life.

The chord of change unchanging sounds unceasingly in travel-weary ears.

But experience breeds proficiency; and the native servant is an adept

in the art of so oiling the wheels that his master shall accomplish his

appointed pilgrimage with the least possible damage to his much-tried

nervous system.

Zyarulla, the indomitable, was a man of this order. In his opinion the

Sahib had no concern whatever with the minor details of the march: an

opinion with which the Sahib in question had not the smallest desire to

quarrel. And on this particular morning Lenox had little attention to

spare even for the sorting and bestowal of his priceless

manuscripts,--so impatient was he to verify the dream-like happenings

of the night; to look into his wife's eyes and feel the answering

pressure of her hand. Swallowing a hasty cup of tea and a banana while

he dressed, he hastened out to the place of their parting seven hours

earlier.

Afar off he caught sight of her, standing, in habit and _terai_, on the

open space where her tent had been, supervising the departure of her

last load of luggage, and listening patiently to tales of coolie

villainy and extortion poured forth by her Kashmiri ayah, on a high

note of vituperation.

He checked his advance for the pure pleasure of watching her from a

distance: and when the ayah,--denouncing as she ran,--hurried off in

the wake of her refractory army, he went briskly forward and held out

his hand.

She gave him her own without a word, and for a full minute of time they

stood thus, hands and eyes inter-locked, oblivious of the noisy world

about them, which, happily for them, was absorbed in matters of far

greater moment.

"Can't I help you?" Lenox asked; and the simple question, with all that

it implied of his renewed right of service, thrilled her like a caress.

"I wish you could. But I've got through most of it already."

"That's bad luck. Maurice not much use on these occasions, I suppose?"

"Not the smallest use, bless him! He says I have more talent for it

than he! But call him Michael, _cher ami_, only to me."

"Michael then, by all means--Quita.--You can't think what it is to me

to be able to call you by your name again," he added with sudden

fervour.

She laughed and blushed deliciously.

"I noticed that you never called me by--the other one," she said,

looking intently at a distant tree.

"Good Lord, no--I'd have bitten my tongue out sooner!"

He could not keep his eyes from her face; and as the blush died down

its pallor smote him.

"Did you sleep at all?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes; for an hour or two. Did you?"

"Didn't even lie down."

"Oh, _mon pauvre_----!"

"Hush!--Don't trouble your dear head about that,"

"But I must. It breaks my heart----"

He laughed. "That's worse than ever! You've got to keep your heart

intact--for me."

His eyes travelled from her face to her unadorned left hand. Hers

followed them; and a half smile parted her lips.

"Where d'you keep them?" he asked under his breath.

Still smiling, she unfastened two buttons of her habit and vouchsafed

him a glimpse of gold and diamonds. "They live on a chain--in there,"

she explained softly.

"You have worn them, then, after a fashion?"

"Yes: since I learnt to love--my bondage!"

"Did you really never wish that I might be conveniently wiped out, even

in the early days?"

"No, never:--and I am thankful now that I _can_ say 'No' with perfect

truth."

She drew in a long breath of ecstasy. The morning cheerfulness of the

world at large, the music of her own pulses, and of the man's voice,

vibrant with things inexpressible, filled her with a very oppression of

happiness.

"Oh, Eldred," she breathed. "It still feels like a dream. Let's talk

sheer prose just to make it feel real!--Are you and the Desmonds riding

back with Colonel and Miss Mayhew?"

"Yes."

"So are we."

"And Garth?"

"I suppose so. But I want _you_ to ride with me. Will you--darling?"

She added the entreaty of her eyes to the last word, and he hesitated.

"It will look a little odd, and sudden, of course. But I don't see why

I shouldn't."

"Nor do I. We can at least begin our courtship--can't we?--to prepare

people for what is to come! Besides--if it isn't you, it will be Major

Garth, and . . . I'm a little afraid of him after last night."

"Why? What the devil did he do?"

"Nothing--nothing definite. He only spoke rather strangely before I

sent him away; and I don't want to be alone with him, if I can help it.

You see, he . . . he cares for me, Eldred; and I am afraid he thinks

now that I--care for him. Oh, I feel contemptuously wicked! But I

have been rather desperate this week, all on account of you; and I

really think it's your business to protect me from the consequences!"

"Of course it is my business, and my privilege to protect you," he

answered fervently. Her confession of dependence was sweeter to him

than honey in the honeycomb. "But you gave me an almighty snubbing the

other day when I made a clumsy attempt at it."

"Make allowances, _mon cher_, and don't fail me now."

"Fail you?" He flashed a reproachful glance at her. "I hope I may

never do that, while there's breath in my body! Trust me to be at your

right hand when we start. Mrs Desmond will have wit enough to

capture--your friend, if she sees that I want you."

"Why? Does she know all about it?"

"Just the bare facts. I told her myself."

"And he?"

"Certainly. They are one, those two, if ever man and woman achieved

the miracle."

"Does that account for his flattering attentions to me since Chumba?"

"Quite possibly."

"But that wasn't fair play! He is such a grand fellow; and I was so

proud of my small conquest!"

Her lighter mood was even more irresistible than her seriousness had

been: but Lenox palled himself together.

"Tell him so, and you'll make your conquest at once, if you've not made

it already! Hullo--there is the last breakfast bugle. Shall we go in

together? If I am doomed to fall in love with you, I may as well set

about it at once!"

Her answering look set a crown on him.

"Ah, my dear," she whispered. "In spite of all you said last night, I

am happy beyond words."

"So am I," he answered simply. "Come."

From her own area of luggage-strewn ground, Honor Desmond,--carrying

little Paul, whom she had insisted on bringing into camp,--looked after

them as they went, her glad heart in her eyes; and Desmond, coming up

from behind, took her lightly by the arm.

"Well, old lady," he asked. "Are you satisfied yet?"

"Abundantly."

"And am I to get my wife back again as a reward for distinguished

services rendered?"

"I imagine so!" she answered, laughing happily. "Unless you would

rather keep your grievance!--Now go on to breakfast, darling; and I'll

follow when I have packed this priceless person into his dandy.

Whatever happens, he and Parbutti must run no risk of getting drenched."

Breakfast was half through before Garth sauntered into the mess-tent:

and Honor, who had watched for his coming, felt an unbidden pang of

pity at sight of his blank face, when he beheld Quita sitting beside

her husband, a bright spot of colour in either cheek, her eyes

radiating a light that refused to be hidden under a bushel.

The unexpected blow roused all the devil in him. Man of prudence

though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life

rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far

end of the table; and, for once in his life, ate a meal without being

aware of its quality. His brain was busy reviewing the events of the

previous day; putting two and two together, and trying not to see that

they made four. A physical chill took him as he realised how narrowly

he had escaped the ignominy of betraying the fact that he had counted

on the consent of this proudest among women to the only proposals

possible in the circumstances.

It was an awkward corner for James Garth; and in his chequered

experience of awkward corners the _role_ of victim had rarely been his.

Even the witness of his eyes did not carry conviction. By some means

he must contrive to ride home with her, and learn from her lips the

'wherefore' of this astonishing change of front. He reflected that

Lenox had little _finesse_, and anticipated small trouble in

circumventing him.

But he reckoned without Honor Desmond, whose strategical skill came to

her from a long line of distinguished soldiers, and whose sympathies

had been touched to the quick by the grave contentment in Eldred

Lenox's eyes when they lingered on his wife's face and figure.

Breakfast over, she accosted Garth straightway with a cheerful morning

greeting: and from that moment, to the time of their departure, she

took charge of him, gently yet irresistibly; keeping him well away from

Quita's neighbourhood; and so isolating him that he could not desert

her without open rudeness: proceedings that at once mystified and

flattered him, as Honor herself was delightedly aware.

For a full hour the exodus of man and beast went noisily forward. But

Colonel Mayhew's departure was delayed by his desire to see the Chumba

contingent well under weigh before leaving: and by the time he

announced his readiness to start, the last remaining units of the Great

Camp were out of sight, trotting briskly along the shadowed road that

winds up through the forest to Bukrota Mall.

"If we push along briskly we may get in with dry skins yet," he said,

scanning the sky, where a vanguard of tattered cloud trailed aimlessly

across the blue.

"And I was actually hoping we might get caught!" Quita confessed on a

mock note of apology. "It would make such a thrilling _finale_: and I

delight in your Indian storms."

Colonel Mayhew laughed and shook his head.

"When you have seen and heard as many of them as I have, Miss Maurice,

you will simply find them 'demnition damp and disagreeable,' like

Mantalini's dead body! And even at the risk of disappointing you, I

intend to make a bolt for it.--Come on, my contingent!"

Lenox was at his wife's right hand, as he had promised: and Garth had

so far succumbed as to lift Mrs Desmond into her saddle.

"You are a practised hand at it!" she said, smiling down upon his

obvious annoyance at the fate in store for him. "Why shouldn't you and

I head the contingent? Some one must go first!"

There was nothing for it but to acquiesce; and to endure, as best he

might, the torment of Quita's clear tones close behind, alternating

with her husband's bass; both voices pitched too low to be articulate,

Desmond followed with Mayhew, while Maurice and Elsie, and the

customary string of coolies, brought up the rear.

For the first few miles splashes of sunlight gleamed and quivered on

the rough pathway, on red-pine stems, and moss-coated rocks. But

before half their journey was accomplished, it became evident that they

were not to escape the opening storm of the great monsoon.

A shuddering wind set the dense pines above and below them swaying and

moaning, a sound of strange and infinite melancholy. The sunlight went

out like a snuffed candle; battalions of clouds, charged with

electricity, rolled silently northward, obliterating all things; and an

ochreous twilight settled down upon the forest. Save for the

whispering of wind-tossed trees, all Nature seemed hushed, expectant,

holding her breath.

The dusky stillness wrought upon the nerves of the riders, producing a

vague, discomfortable sense of foreboding. Talk grew fitful; and was

instinctively carried on in lowered tones.

"Push on a bit faster, Mrs Desmond. It would be as well to get out

where the trees are thinner before the worst is upon us."

Colonel Mayhew's voice had an anxious note. He had weathered the

opening storm of many monsoons; but his daughter's presence wakened in

him a new fear of the thunderbolts of the gods.

Even as he spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a

passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It

was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the

minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like

ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering,

from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after

scarce five seconds of stillness, was smart, crisp, short as a

revolver-shot; and long before a hundred peaks had made an end of

flinging back the sound, a second flash and crash--in swifter

succession--smote the eyes and ears of the riders, who now urged their

horses to a canter, _saises_, coolies, and three devoted dogs panting

zealously behind them.

Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles

ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and

impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June

morning.

The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane.

Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all

directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it

faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge

to marge.

As yet no rain had fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little

party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound.

Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and

wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at

her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared

impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and

ear. Everything human,--life, death, love itself,--seemed trivial in

face of this stupendous battle of the elements. Above them, and on all

sides of them, the lightning leaped and darted, like a live thing

seeking its prey. It was as if the sombre heavens were bringing forth

brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with

ear-splitting peals of Titanic laughter.

Then came the rain:--not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water,

blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the

storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon

them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and,

through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher

sound,--the death note of a mighty tree.

Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.

"How appalling!--What was it?" she asked between two breaths.

"A pine struck somewhere up the _khud_. Not frightened, are you,

lass?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted.

You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"

A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great God!" he

cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on

the top of us!"

And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice

reached him through the rush of the rain.

"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."

But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed

down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's

shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under

the blow:--then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the

steep, rain-lashed ravine.

A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid

repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he

had never asked.

For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the

hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless

nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:--wiped out, as

though he had never been.

Then Desmond's practical vigour asserted itself, and he sprang lightly

to the ground.

"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"

And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady

hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough

to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.

"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree;

and these _khuds_ are the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after

him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."

Speech was beyond her; but she thanked him with her eyes.

A moment later he was kneeling in the mud, rapidly unfastening boots

and gaiters; for one downward glance had convinced him that it would be

a matter of climbing, and difficult climbing at that.

By now Colonel Mayhew had dismounted also; and as Desmond stood

upright--in socks and breeches--and flung aside his dripping helmet,

the older man drew him to the path's edge.

"Look here, my dear chap," he mid, when they were out of earshot of the

group, who sat spellbound in the grip of tragedy, "are you justified in

running a serious risk, probably--to no purpose? For I'm afraid poor

Lenox hasn't a ghost of a chance. You're a married man, remember; and

it looks to me uncommonly like madness to attempt that _khud_ in such

weather. It'll be a case of holding on with your eyelids; and there's

a coolie track not far from here, that leads down to the valley."

Desmond's month took the dogged line that his _sowars_ knew and loved;

and a combatant light flashed in his eyes.

"Your blood's cooler than mine, sir," he answered quietly. "But I have

a fairly steady head; and my wife would be the last person in the world

to hold me back, thank God. In such cases five or ten minutes may mean

just the difference between life . . . and death. If you will get

together some sort of a stretcher--a good strong one--and come on

post-haste down the coolie track, I'll be grateful. I suppose we

haven't a drop of brandy among us?--bad luck to it!"

"There's a provision _kilter_ on one of the coolies. Shall we have it

turned out, on the chance?"

"Good Lord, yes. Get it done at once, please." Then he turned to

Garth. "I say, Major, gallop on, will you, and catch up Dr O'Malley.

I saw him start with the last contingent. They can't be more than two

miles ahead."

And as Garth obeyed the peremptory request, the devil himself must have

whispered to his heart the despicable suggestion that possibly Fate had

struck a blow in his favour after all.

Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of the

_kilter_ with scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all

sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and

crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's

casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes

half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for

private ends best known to himself.

Desmond, who stood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager

hands on it.

"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered,

buttoning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a

side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among the

_debris_, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.

"Better leave you some for the women,--if you can get 'em to drink it

diluted with a trifle of rain!--There now, I'm off. For God's sake,

Colonel, look sharp after me."

Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the

first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he

sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him

in full the approval he craved; and, for the space of a few seconds,

their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any

communion of the lips.

Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.

Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let

himself down by his hands on to a tumbled mass of boulders, and began

his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,--who stood at the

_khud's_ edge peering into space, ears and tail dumbly demanding

explanation,--lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and

only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from

joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and

Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a _sais_; and after

much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.

Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher

from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,--drenched and

evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its

construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's

brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in

the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the

horse-play of lightning and thunder.

But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes

only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her

side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's

open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded,

and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took

convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and

this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of God's

universe.

"Don't upset yourself, girlie," he said kindly. "The damage may be

less than we think for. I must stay here and help; but you must be a

good child, and ride on at once. You'll see her safe home for me,

won't you, Maurice?"

Michael acquiesced eagerly. Unrelieved tragedy upset his nerves. He

longed to escape from the consciousness of Quita's dumb despair; and

when Elsie had been induced to swallow a drop of brandy that would not

have warmed a sparrow, they rode off briskly through the sullen

downpour.

With a breath of relief, Colonel Mayhew went up to Honor Desmond, who

had just dismounted.

"What's that for?" he asked anxiously. "You and Miss Maurice are going

on too, of course."

Honor shook her head.

"But you can do no earthly good by waiting. We may be an hour or more

before we get up here again. It will be slow work, if . . . if Lenox

is alive;--and you will be drenched to the skin."

"There are worse evils than that!" she answered with gentle immobility.

"Don't trouble about me, please. I _must_ stay here till I know what

has happened; and I think Miss Maurice will wish to stay too. We shall

come to no harm. We women have nine lives, you know!"

"And if you will--you will. . . . I know that also! But at least take

a nip to keep out the damp. Your husband gave me this at the last

moment for the three of you."

"How like him to think of it!" she murmured, smiling unsteadily.

"Yes--it _was_ like him,"--and in the expansion of the moment the

warm-hearted Resident put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "He's a

deuced fine fellow, my dear, and he has found a wife that's worthy of

him."

Honor blushed rose-red, and took the proffered stimulant.

"I'll give Miss Maurice some too," she said. "Don't lose a second on

our account, please."

Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to

Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart.

"Miss Maurice, here's brandy," she said softly. "Drink all of it,

before I help you down."

Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both

hands, lifted her out of the saddle.

"How strong you are," she said, in the toneless voice of a

sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely.

For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing

her, with passionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble:

and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it

might mean to possess a mother.

"Theo and I know about it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita

nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of

her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of

stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again.

"We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut--the worst

out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I

love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on

this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the

rest of the world."

Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her

side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her

brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at

her new-found friend.

"I don't deserve that you should be so good to me," she said, humour

flashing through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. "I

have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!"

At which confession Honor pressed her closer. "Bless you for telling

me!--I take it simply as the measure of--your love for him."

"_Mon Dieu_, no! Not now," she answered very low.

"I am glad of that too. For I want very much to be good friends with

Captain Lenox's wife."

On the last word a slow colour crept back into Quita's cheeks.

"You mustn't speak of it--yet, to any one else. There are

difficulties--big difficulties . . ."

"I know;--but you may trust him to conquer them. One feels in him the

sort of force that moves mountains."

Again Quita nodded. "You seem to know everything," she added, a last

spark flickering in the ashes of her jealousy. "And I suppose you

blame _me_ for it all."

"I am too ignorant of the facts to blame either of you. I only know

that even if he wronged you in any way, he has been more than

sufficiently punished."

At that Quita's lips quivered, and the storm of her grief broke out

afresh: while the greater storm overhead, having accomplished its evil

work, rolled rapidly northward, with the colossal unconcern of a giant

who crushes a beetle in his path; and the first stupendous downrush of

water subsided into a melancholy drizzle of rain.

In that endless hour of looking and waiting for those who seemed as if

they had been blotted out for all time, Quita learned once and for all

what manner of woman Honor Desmond was; learnt also something of the

loyalty and reserve that had marked Eldred's intercourse with her whom

he had spoken of as his best friend.

CHAPTER XIV.

"My undissuaded heart I hear

Whisper courage in my ear."

--R.L.S.

Down,--steadily, interminably down the face of that formidable ravine,

Theo Desmond slid, and scrambled, and climbed; holding his mind rigidly

on the practical necessities of the moment, which were many and

disconcerting. His stockinged feet showed dull-red streaks and blotches,

where sharp stones had cut them. His hands were grazed and torn by

futile clutchings at the surface of broken rocks: and the protruding neck

of the brandy bottle had a trick of digging him playfully in the ribs:

which made him swear. Impertinent raindrops chased each other down his

cheeks and forehead; trickling into his eyes, and blinding him at

critical moments when he dared not release a hand to brush them away.

The inch-by-inch progress to which he was condemned fretted the hasty

spirit of the man; anxiety consumed him, and conspired with impatience to

beget a nightmare illusion that he had been battling with naked rock and

dripping vegetation since the beginning of Time.

Once,--for all the caution with which he crept backward and

downward,--his foot slipped, on the wet surface of a boulder; and, in the

hope of avoiding a fall, he clutched at a small shrub, with one hand,

shielding the aggressive brandy bottle with the other. But the

treacherous sapling yielded under his weight; and wrenching its roots

from the moist earth, he rolled over and over, knocking his head and

chest violently against outlying peninsulars of rock.

Both hands were requisitioned now, in a vain effort to check a descent

that had become too rapid for comfort or dignity: and before long, a

musical clink, followed by a strong whiff of spirit, announced the fate

of the brandy bottle.

"Damn the thing!" he exclaimed in an access of helpless fury. Then a

fresh blow on his head whelmed anger and anxiety in sheer pain, and sent

him rolling like a log into a kindly patch of undergrowth, which had, so

far, blocked his downward view.

Here he lay awhile, half stunned, small runnels of water trickling from

his clothing. But his vitality--never long in abeyance--soon reasserted

itself. He sat up, and his hand went instinctively to his pocket.

Drawing out the beheaded bottle, he was relieved to find that it still

held a tablespoonful or more; and that his handkerchief was saturated

with the precious fluid. He sucked a mouthful from it with keen

satisfaction: then, using it for a wad, plugged up the bottle; and

undaunted by bruises, dizziness, torn hands, and smarting feet, lost no

time in starting afresh.

For the time being, progress was simpler, and less hazardous: and, once

through the undergrowth, he came with disconcerting abruptness upon that

which he sought.

Eight feet below him, on a merciful ledge of earth wide enough to check

the fatal rebound into space, Eldred Lenox lay face downward, his left

arm crumpled under him; the other flung outward as if in a last desperate

effort to ward off the inevitable. Shaitan was nowhere to be seen. The

sheer drop beyond told his fate.

Soldier as he was, and inured to the sight of death in its most barbarous

aspect, Desmond's heart stood still as he looked down upon that powerful

figure of manhood lying helpless and alone, pattered upon indifferently

by the dripping heavens.

Choosing a spot that promised a soft landing-place, Desmond dropped on to

the ledge; knelt beside the injured man; and speedily assured himself

that life was not extinct. Unconsciousness was due to a wound on the

back of his head, from which blood still trickled sluggishly through the

thick black hair. The arm crumpled under him was broken below the elbow.

Very gently, as though he were a child asleep, Desmond turned him on to

his back. His eyes showed fixed and glazed between half-open lids, and a

deep scratch disfigured his cheek. Pillowing the inert head on one arm,

Desmond applied the spirit to his lips again and again, a few drops at a

time: till the lids lifted heavily, and life returned with a slow

shuddering breath.

Desmond bent down to him eagerly.

"Not going out this journey, Lenox, old chap."

But no answering gleam rewarded him; no movement of limb or feature.

Only the lids fell again; and Desmond knew that this was no fainting fit,

but collapse from probable damage to the brain.

After applying more brandy to the lips and temples without result, he

removed his Norfolk coat--still warm and dry within--and with the help of

two fir boughs contrived to shelter Lenox's head and chest from the

chilling downpour. Then he set to work on the broken arm. The same

fir,--springing sturdily from a cleft in the rock below,--provided a

splint; and with two handkerchiefs (he had wrung the last drop of

rain-diluted brandy from his own) he tied the injured limb skilfully and

securely into place. That done, there remained nothing but to wait:--the

hardest task that can be assigned to a man of action.

And to wait sitting was beyond him. Steady pacing in the cramped space

available helped to deaden thought and promote warmth,--for by now his

soaked shirt-sleeves clung to his arms.

He kept it up doggedly till approaching footsteps brought his damp vigil

to an end; and Colonel Mayhew stepped on to the ledge.

"Alive?" he asked, glancing at the prostrate figure, and Desmond nodded.

"Can't get him round, though. Concussion, I'm afraid. A nasty wound on

his head, and one arm fractured. But for that strip of undergrowth, he

would have been done for. Hope to God that lazy beggar Garth hurried up

after O'Malley. We won't wait here, though.--Come on, _coolie-log_."

[Transcriber's note: The "o" in "_log_" is the Unicode "o-macron",

U+014D.]

Colonel Mayhew going forward to lend a hand, glanced over the precipitous

drop on his right, and turned hastily away again. That which had been

Shaitan was visible below; and it was not pleasant to look at.

"Lenox'll be cut up about that," he muttered as they lifted him

cautiously on to the reeking strip of blanket.

It was a dreary journey up that corkscrew footpath, inch-deep in running

water, that led to the ordinary levels of life. Desmond kept his post by

Lenox's head and shoulders, sheltering him still with the discarded coat,

and clinging to the track's edge with supple, stockinged feet. But there

was no preventing jars and jolts arising from broken ground, and the

difficulty of carrying a litter at an almost impossible angle. Half-way

up they caught sight of Dr O'Malley,--a Pickwickian figure of a man,

booted and spurred,--skipping, stumbling, and slithering towards them in

a fashion ludicrous enough to bring a flicker of mirth into Desmond's

eyes.

They drew up when, at length, he bore down upon them with a rush of

expletives by way of sympathy: for he was good-hearted and a ready man of

his tongue, if not a brilliant unit of his profession. His rapid

examination of Lenox ended in praise of Desmond's amateur bit of surgery,

and a confirmation of his verdict--concussion of the brain.

"An' there's no telling yet, of course, if it's slight or serious. But

begad be must have had a nasty tumble. Devilish lucky to get off with

his life,--that's a fact. What's the nearest bungalow we can get him

into? 'Tis a good eight miles to the hospital; and the sooner he's out

of this d--d watering-can business the better chance for him."

Desmond turned to Colonel Mayhew.

"How about the Forest bungalow, sir? Only a couple of miles on, isn't

it? Brodie must be there now; and he's the right sort, if he is a bit of

an anchorite."

"Why, of course. The very thing. He's something of an experimentalist

too. Keeps up a small pharmacy in one of his outhouses. He'll make room

for Lenox like a shot."

"And for me too, I hope. I'm game to sleep anywhere. But I won't leave

Lenox till he's fit to go into Dalhousie."

Colonel Mayhew nodded approval; and the dismal procession set out again;

O'Malley enlivening its progress with highly-coloured reminiscences of

_khud_ accidents he had known, and with incidental attempts at jocularity

that fizzled out like damp fireworks. It was all meant kindly enough.

But Desmond was thinking of both man and wife as he had seen them greet

one another that morning; and an atmosphere of pseudo-hilarity jarred his

nerves like a discord in music. For the man possessed that mingling of

fortitude and delicacy of feeling, which stands revealed in the lives of

so many famous fighters, and may well be termed the hall-mark of heroism.

In due time they came upon the two women, still sitting--drenched and

patient--on their bank of soaked fir-needles; and Desmond hurried forward

to get in a word or two with Quita unobserved. At sight of

him--coatless, mud-bespattered, with torn clothes, and blood-stained face

and hands--Honor could not repress a small sound of dismay. But Quita

saw in his eyes the one thing she wanted; and may surely be forgiven if

she paid small heed to his plight. Her face fell at the details of the

damage done.

"Mayn't I just have a sight of him as he passes us?" she pleaded.

"Better not," he answered kindly, "You have an artist's brain, remember;

and I want you to sleep a little to-night. Trust me to do every mortal

thing I can for him. Honor will see you home, and I'll send a runner in

with news this evening. We'll pull him through between us,--never fear."

She tried to speak her thanks; but failing, put out a hand impulsively to

speak for her; and his enfolding grasp made her feel less lonely, less

desperate than she had felt since the awful moment when her husband

vanished into space. The fact that he was in Desmond's hands seemed a

guarantee that all would go well with him. There was no logic in the

conclusion; and she knew it. But logic has little to do with conviction:

and many who came to know Desmond fell into this same trick of depending

on him to win through the thing to which he set his band. Yet his

optimism had no affinity with the cheap school of philosophy, that nurses

a pleasant mind without reference to disconcerting facts. It was the

outcome of that supreme faith in an Ultimate Best, working undismayed

through failure and pain, which lies at the root of all human

achievement: and it was, in consequence, singularly infectious and

convincing.

Quita's impressionable spirit readily caught a reflection from its rays:

and hope revived sent a glow through all her chilled body.

"Take a stiff whisky toddy the minute you get in," he commanded, while

lifting her into the saddle. "And try to remember that over-anxiety

won't mend matters. It will only exhaust your strength. I'll come in

and see you whenever I can. Ride on at once," he added hastily, for the

stretcher, with its pitiful burden, was close upon them. "We'll catch

you up."

She obeyed with a childlike docility that touched him to the heart, and

he turned quickly to his wife.

"Come on, you dear, drenched woman. You've no business to be here at

all; and we mustn't keep 'em waiting."

"But Theo, . . . your feet!" she murmured distressfully. "Are they quite

cut to bits?"

"No--not quite." He glanced whimsically down at his dishevelled figure.

"Lord, what a scarecrow I must be! Aren't you half-ashamed of owning me?"

"Well--naturally!" she answered, beaming upon him as she set her foot in

the hollow of his hand. "I shall see something of you,--shan't I?"

"Trust me for that. See all you can of her too. She's as plucky as they

make 'em: but she may need it all and more, before we're through with

this, poor little soul."

He mounted, and rode with them as far as the woodsheds, where the men

branched off to the Forest bungalow, leaving the two women to ride on

alone: and, in obedience to Desmond's parting injunction, they kept up a

steady canter most of the way.

CHAPTER XV.

"How the light light love, he has wings to fly

At suspicion of a bond."

--Browning.

The rugged peak of Bakrota was enveloped in a grey winding-sheet,

impenetrable, all-pervading; a dense mass of vapour ceaselessly rolling

onward, yet never rolling past. It was as if the mountain had become

entangled in the folds of a giant's robe.

The Banksia rose that climbed over the verandah of the Crow's Nest had

shed its first crop of blossoms. The border below was strewn with

bright petals of storm-scattered flowers; while above the dank pines

dripped and drooped beneath the dead weight of universal moisture. The

far-off glory of the mountains was blotted out, as though it had never

been; and the doll's house, with its subsidiary group of native huts,

had the aspect of a dwelling in Cloudland. From within came the plash

of water falling drop by drop, suggesting a vision of zinc tubs, pails,

and basins, set here, there, and everywhere, to check the too complete

invasion of the saturated outer world.

Just outside the drawing-room door, heedless of the mist that hung

dewdrops on her lashes, and on blown wisps of hair, Quita stood,

devouring with her eyes a damp note, handed to her a minute since by

one of Mrs Desmond's _jhampannis_.

"DEAR MISS MAURICE"--(it ran)--"At last I am allowed to write and

say--Come. Not this afternoon, because he had quite a long outing this

morning in that blessed spell of sunshine; and he is sound asleep after

it, has been for an hour and more; or of course he would send a line

with this himself. Come to dinner. Half-past seven. Then you can

have a long evening together without keeping him up too late. For Theo

is still high-handed with him about sleep and rest. But really he has

made astonishing progress since we got him over here. Dr O'Malley is

quite comically elated over his recuperative power. Says he has seldom

seen such a rapid and vigorous convalescence after concussion; and

takes more than half the credit to himself; but I am convinced that it

is you who are mainly responsible for it. He says little enough, even

to Theo. Yet one can see how impatient he is to be well again, because

of you; and that's half the battle. Though perhaps my prosaic zeal for

concentrated food of all kinds deserves to be taken into account!

Theo, who is reading every word of this over my shoulder--in spite of

my insistence on the privacy of _all_ correspondence!--wishes to point

out that his own genius for nursing is really at the bottom of it.

(_N.B._--This is simply because he wants you to be extra charming to

him to-night!) But apart from all my nonsense, the point remains that

among us all we have done great things in less than three weeks. Come

and see for yourself, and we can squabble over our laurels at leisure!

"Theo sends sympathy and _salaams_, and I think you know that I am very

really 'yours,'

"HONOR M. DESMOND."

Quita smiled as she folded up the note, though her lashes were wet with

more than mist. Tears came too readily to her eyes just now, a fact

that engendered occasional bickerings between herself and Michael.

"And to think that I was blind enough to hate that dear woman," she

thought. "I, who pride myself on my intuition!"

Then she scribbled a hasty note of acceptance, despatched the

_jhampanni_, and remained standing absently by the verandah rail,

looking out into nothingness; trying to grasp the fact that the

longest, hardest three weeks of her life were over; that in less than

four hours' time she would once more set eyes on the man who was, to

all intents and purposes, her newly accepted lover; would verify in the

flesh the remembrance of that wonderful night and morning.

The thought so unsteadied her, that she clenched her hands, and jerked

herself together. Having more of Diana than of Venus in her

composition, the intensity of her love--since avowal had levelled all

barriers--was a constant surprise to her; and now she was even a little

ashamed of her natural longing for the touch of hands and lips, that

she had at times been disposed to scorn. None the less, she hoped,

unblushingly, that she would be allowed to have him to herself for an

hour, or so; hoped also--nay, confidently expected--that she would end

in overruling this stern purpose of his, that irritated her, even while

it compelled her admiration.

To her, as to all eager natures, the appeal of the present was

all-powerful, the more so when that present offered her with both hands

the best that life has to give. To sacrifice it on the altar of a

problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps,

but, in the circumstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less

magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers

a strain of unpretentious heroism, which delighted her in the abstract.

But when the heroic puts on flesh and blood, and shoulders itself into

our narrow lives, it is apt to appear a little too big for the stage;

and Quita had an artist's eye for proportion, whether in pictures or in

the human comedy.

Moreover, a mingling of French and Irish blood rarely results in an

irksome development of the conscience, or of that moral bugbear, a

sense of responsibility; and deep down, Quita knew herself to be more

like her brother in both respects than she quite cared to acknowledge.

For all her husband's conscientious suggestion that marriage was a

"complicated affair," she persisted in regarding it simply as the crown

and completion of their great love, a happiness to which they were

entitled by every law human and divine. The generations still to be

had not yet laid their arresting hand upon her. In her esteem, such

shadowy probabilities had neither right nor power to stem the new

imperious forces at work within her.

It remains to add that Eldred's avowal had not shocked or repelled her

as much as he had feared. For, among Michael's promiscuous intimates

in Paris, Vienna, Rome, she had seen and heard more than Lenox was

likely to guess of that enslavement to drugs and absinthe to which the

artist's temperament seems peculiarly prone; though she was far from

realising in detail the full horror and degradation involved. She

merely felt certain that--heredity or no--Eldred was, by the nature of

him, incapable of travelling far down that awful road; that with her at

his side to hearten and help him, he could not fail to free himself

from "the accursed chain."

But they must fight the battle together. That was the Alpha and Omega

of her thoughts. He had not yet measured the height and depth of her

love. Let her only make this clear to him, and he must give in; if not

to-night, at least before his leave was up. Years of living with

Michael had accustomed her to getting her own way in all essentials.

But she had yet to try her strength against the bed-rock of Scottish

granite underlying her husband's surface quietness; against the

terrible singleness of mind that cannot--even for Love's dear

sake--view harsh facts through a medium of rosy mist.

While she stood thus, trying to see into the darkness that shrouds the

coming day, even the coming hour, from inquisitive eyes, the drifting

vapour all about her paled from grey to white, from white to a gossamer

film; and finally uprose from the valley, like a spotless scroll rolled

backward by an unseen Hand, giving gradually to view a multitude of

mountains, newly washed; mountains that glowed with richest tints of

purple and amethyst and rose, in the level light of afternoon. And

Quita, being in a fanciful mood, saw in this "good gigantic smile" of

the rain-soaked earth a happy omen; an assurance that so would the

mists rise from her own life, and the sunlight prevail. A sudden

recollection of the buffalo "_Mela_" set her smiling.

"How idiotic I am!" she reproved herself gently;--we are apt to be

gentle with our own foolishness; it never seems quite so egregious as

other people's--"I might be a girl of twenty, after my first proposal,

instead of nearly thirty, and a nominal wife of five years' standing."

She drew out her watch. Four o'clock. Three mortal hours before she

could even think of starting. There was nothing for it but to have

recourse to her easel, _faute de mieux_. The last words waked her

normal self. They were no less than heresy, treason to her art.

Michael would have disowned her, had she spoken them in his hearing!

Was Art, then, so small a thing when compared with this overwhelming

force of Love, which dwarfed all thoughts and acts that did not

minister to its needs? It was too early days as yet to answer so large

a question. She simply knew that since that first kiss had set her on

the threshold of an unexplored world, Art had lost its grip; that, for

the present, at all events, she did not want to paint, but to love and

live!

"Pity Michael isn't here to scold me," she thought, as she turned back

into the house.

But Michael was away at Jundraghat, the Rajah's summer Residency. His

finished portrait had been sent off that afternoon; and he had followed

it, for the pleasure of hearing Elsie's thanks and praise in person.

The little room, robbed of the picture that had been its chief ornament

for many weeks, looked empty, desolate; and with a restless sigh she

went over to her easel. This also was empty. Her study of a hill

girl,--begun half jestingly, as a contrast to Michael's flower of

Western Maidenhood,--had so grown and beautified under her hands, that

it had been voted worthy of a Home Exhibition; and its case now stood

against the wall, awaiting mail day. Three or four unfinished pictures

leaned against the easel. Quita looked through them, aimlessly, in

search of a congenial subject. But they were chiefly landscape

studies; and in her present mood Nature seemed a little tame, and

bloodless. Her heart cried out for something human, and she wished

that Michael would come back.

Then, like a ray of light, came the required inspiration, satisfying at

once the counter-claims of Art and Love. She sought out a fresh

canvas, set it on the easel, and plunged, forthwith, into a rough

head-and-shoulder study of her husband.

Now time no longer stood still. Michael was forgotten. And, while her

brush sped hither and thither, she crooned low and clear, the song that

had proved the open sesame to her cave of enchantment.

And, in the meantime, Michael--the forgotten--was manipulating a new

and delicate complication in a fashion peculiarly his own.

On entering Mrs Mayhew's drawing-room, he had found, not his "moonlight

maiden," as it pleased him to call her, but the Button Quail herself,

who greeted him with a rather embarrassing effusion of thanks.

"And the best point about it is, that it's really _like_ Elsie," she

concluded, with an air of paying an exceptional tribute to his skill.

"Portraits so seldom _are_ like people. Haven't you noticed it?

That's why I generally prefer photographs. But your picture is

different. There are only two things about it that don't _quite_

please me." She paused, eyeing the canvas with her head on one side;

and Maurice, who was irresistibly reminded of a bird contemplating a

worm, wondered idly what was coming in the way of criticism. "I wish

you had allowed her to wear something _smarter_ than that limp white

silk; and I think she looks much too unpractical, day-dreaming on a

verandah railing at that hour of the morning! But then, Elsie _is_

rather unpractical; or would be," she added quickly, "if I didn't

insist on her helping me with the house. That's where moat

Anglo-Indian mothers make such a mistake. But _I_ always say it is a

mother's duty to have _some_ consideration for her girl's future

husband!"

And she smiled confidentially upon the aspirant at her side. But

Maurice, absorbed in critical appraisement of his own skill in

rendering the luminous quality of Elsie's eyes, missed the smile;

missed also most of the interesting disquisition on her education.

"Yes, yes,--no doubt," he agreed with vague politeness, and Mrs Mayhew

opened her round eyes.

But the direction of his gaze was excuse enough for any breach of

manners; and she returned to the charge undismayed, approaching her

subject this time from a less prosaic point of view.

"Really, Mr Maurice, I never knew till now that I _had_ such a pretty

daughter! The whole effect is so charming, that I begin to think you

must have flattered her!" she remarked archly; and Maurice fell

headlong into the trap.

"Flattered her? _Mon Dieu_, no! Nature has taken care to make that

impossible. For, although she falls short of true beauty, she has such

delicacy of outline, of colouring, an atmosphere so ethereal, that one

wants a brush of gossamer dipped in moonlight, not coarse canvas,

camel's hair, and oils, if one is even to do her justice. Some day I

must try water-colours, or pastels. _Sans doute ca ira mieux_." He

was off on his Pegasus now, far above Mrs Mayhew's bewildered head.

"She would make a divine Undine--moonlight, and overhanging trees. The

face and figure dimly seen through a veil of water weeds.--But where is

she, then?" he broke off, falling suddenly to earth like a rocket.

"May one see her this afternoon? I want to hear from herself that she

is satisfied."

Mrs Mayhew smiled and nodded, a world of comprehension in her eyes.

"Yes, yes, I can quite believe _that_. I will tell her you are here.

She looked rather a wisp after the dance last night, so I sent her up

to rest, for the sake of her complexion! But, of _course_, she must

come down now. You will find her more entertaining than '_la petite

mere_,' She has taken to calling me that lately!"

The complacent little lady took a step forward, then--a bubble with

maternal satisfaction--spoke the word too much that is responsible for

half the minor miseries of life.

"Do you know, Mr Maurice, it is quite charming of you to have shown me

your feelings so openly, and I think the least that I can do is to

assure you of my sympathy and approval. I don't feel _quite_ so

certain about her father. He is wrapped up in the child, and man-like,

wants to keep her for himself. But no doubt between us we shall

persuade him to listen to reason! Now, I will go to Elsie."

But Michael made haste to interpose;--a changed Michael, puzzled to the

verge of anger, yet punctiliously polite withal.

"One moment, Mrs Mayhew, please. It might be as well if you and I

understood one another first. It seems that I have been clumsy in

expressing myself, that I have given you a false impression. If so, I

ask your pardon. Believe me, I fully sympathise with Colonel Mayhew's

reluctance to part with such a daughter; and I am not arrogant enough

to dream of asking him to make such a sacrifice,--on my behalf."

It was very neatly done. Michael's detached self, looking on at the

little scene, applauded it as quite a masterpiece in its way. But Mrs

Mayhew stood petrified. Her brain worked slowly, and it took her an

appreciable time to realise that she had been something more than a

fool. Then, drawing herself up to her full height--barely five feet in

her heels,--she answered him with an attempt at hauteur that quite

missed fire.

"Since you are so _considerate_ of Colonel Mayhew's feelings, I only

wonder it has not occurred to you that your conduct during the past two

months has been little short of dishonourable?"

"Dishonourable?" His eyes flashed. "_Mais comment_?"

"You have given every one in Dalhousie the impression that you were--in

love with Miss Mayhew."

His relief was obvious.

"Naturally, my dear lady. For I _am_ in love with her. How could a

man, and an artist, be anything else? But marriage--no----" He shook

his head decisively. "That is another pair of sleeves. Women are

adorable. But they are terrible monopolists; and, frankly, I have no

talent for the domesticities. As a lover, I am well enough. But as a

husband--believe me, in six months I should drive a woman distracted!

Ask Quita. She knows. If I have given Miss Mayhew cause to regret her

kindness to me, I am inconsolable; though, in any case, I can never

regret the privilege of having known, and--loved her."

Throughout this ingenious jumble of egoism and gallantry, his listener

had been freezing visibly. On the last word she compressed her mouth

to a mere line, and stabbed the unrepentant sinner with her eyes; since

it was unhappily impossible to stab him with a hat-pin, which she would

infinitely have preferred.

"I have never in my _life_ heard any man express such improper ideas

upon a serious subject," she remarked with icy emphasis. "And I am

_quite_ thankful that your peculiar views prevent you from wishing to

marry my daughter."

"_Bien_! Then we are of one mind after all," Maurice answered

cheerfully. "And since we understand each other, may I at least be

permitted to see Miss Mayhew before I go?"

"See her? Certainly _not_. Really, Mr Maurice, your effrontery

astounds me! Understand, please, that from to-day there is an _end_ of

your free-and-easy French intimacies! Colonel Mayhew and I have to

consider her good name and her future happiness; and we cannot allow

you, or any man, to endanger either."

Michael shrugged his shoulders. His disappointment was keener than he

cared to show; but this hopeless little woman, with her bourgeois point

of view, was obviously blind and deaf to common-sense or reason.

"I would not for the world endanger Miss Mayhew's happiness, or her

good name," he said, not without dignity. "And as one may not see her,

there is no more to be said."

He held out his hand. But Mrs Mayhew's manners were not proof against

so severe a shock to her maternal vanity. She bowed as if the gesture

had escaped her notice.

"Good-bye, Mr Maurice," she said rigidly.

He returned her bow in silence, slipped the rejected hand into his

pocket, and went out.

In passing through the hall he was aware of a slim white figure coming

down the broad staircase; and without an instant's hesitation he stood

still. In spite of "the little she-dragon in there," he would see her

yet. For the knowledge that he had lost her increased her value

tenfold.

"You are really pleased with it--tell me?" he said eagerly as their

hands met, for he saw the question in her eyes.

"Pleased? You know I am. It is _much_ too good of you to give me such

a splendid present; and father is simply delighted. But why are you

going away? I thought you would stay to tea."

He still held her hand, in defiance of a gentle attempt to withdraw it,

and now he pressed it closer.

"Unhappily I must go," he said, without looking at her. "Your mother

will tell you why, better than I can do. Good-bye---_petite amis_.

Think well of me, if you can."

He bent over her hand, kissed it lingeringly, and was gone before she

could find words to express her bewilderment.

CHAPTER XVI.

"What we love we'll serve, aye, and suffer for too."

--W. Penn.

After sunset the mist came down again, thick as cotton-wool. Heaven

and earth were obliterated, and a quietly determined downpour set in

for the night.

Quita was still at her easel, trying bravely to disregard the collapse

of her happy omen; Michael lounging in a cane chair, with Shelley and a

cigarette. He had returned from Jundraghat in a mood of skin-deep

nonchalance, beneath which irritation smouldered, and Quita's news had

set the sparks flying. Behold him, therefore, doubly a martyr; ready,

as always, to make capital out of his crown of thorns. A renewed

pattering on the verandah slates roused him from the raptures of the

Epipsychidion.

"Well, at least you can't think of going _now_," he said, flinging the

book aside with a gesture of impatience. "That's one blessing, if the

rest's a blank."

Quita, who was washing out her brushes, looked round quickly.

"I'm sorry to leave you alone in a bad mood, Michael; but I mean to go,

whatever the weather chooses to say about it."

"_Parbleu_! But what has come to you, Quita? You are infatuated with

that granite-natured Scotchman!"

"And if I am . . . I have every right to be."

Her gaze had returned to the vigorous outline on the easel, and her

voice softened to an unconscious tenderness, peculiarly exasperating to

a man in Michael's mixed frame of mind.

"_Naturellement_!" he answered with a shrug. "Being a woman, you have

divine right to monopolise a man,--if the man is fool enough to submit

to it. Nature is determined that you women shall not escape your real

trade. That is why she takes care to make every one of you a bourgeois

at heart. And all these years I have cherished the delusion that you,

at least, were a genuine artist!"

"So I am. Every whit as much as yourself."

"And also--a genuine woman?"

"I hope so."

Michael smiled--a smile of superior knowledge.

"One cannot serve two masters, _ma chere_. That's where the

complication comes in, when an artist happens also to be a woman. The

creative force, mental or physical, is a master-force. Only a

superhuman vitality can accomplish both with any hope of success.

Succumb to your womanhood, and there's an end of your Art--_voila

tout_."

"But no, Michel. I won't believe that." She spoke stoutly, though

cold fear was upon her that a germ of truth lurked in his statement.

"Believe it or not, as you please. You are on the high-road to make

the discovery for yourself, and you will find it a case of no

compromise. One of the two must predominate. You will either become

an amateur artist or an amateur wife and mother. Which do you suppose

it will be?"

She shut her paint-box with an impatient snap.

"I really don't know. I am not in the mood for abstract speculation."

"No. You are in the mood for concrete love-making; and in pursuit of

it, you're ready to face a drenching, to leave me is the worst possible

company, without a sisterly qualm, and without even troubling to put my

razor in your pocket."

"Don't talk melodramatic nonsense," she rebuked him sharply. Then pity

and tenderness prevailed. "If it's really as bad as that, _mon cher_,

why on earth didn't you take yesterday's chance, and ask Elsie to be

your wife? I believe she would have said 'Yes.'"

"So do I. Therefore I preferred not to ask her. Still--it's none the

less maddening that because you women have this incurable mania for

marriage, one should be cut off from her sweet companionship, from the

inspiration that is to be found in that delectable borderland between

friendship and love; and insulted into the bargain by a chit of a

mother-woman, with no more brains and imagination than a sparrow! But

for me, at any rate, there can be no compromise. I do not choose to

profane the sanctuary of my soul, to corrupt my Art, by becoming a mere

breadwinner, a slave of the hearth-rug, and the tea-cup--in fact, the

property of a woman. That's what it amounts to. And I doubt if any of

us relish the position when it comes to the point. Even that devoted

husband of yours, after waiting five years upon your imperial pleasure,

seems in no hurry to tie himself up again; or you would hear less about

his conscientious scruples, I assure you. They would be swept aside,

like straws before a flood."

At that Quita's eyes flashed.

"Michel, you _shall_ not speak so of him," she cried imperiously.

"I've said already that I won't have the subject discussed. How should

_you_ understand a man like Eldred,--you, who hardly know the meaning

of the word 'conscience'?"

"_Dieu merci_; since its chief function seems to be to make oneself and

every one else uncomfortable.--Hark at the rain! I wish you joy of

your journey."

He spoke the last words to an empty room. Quita was already changing

her dress hurriedly, defiantly, shutting her ears to the discouraging

sounds without. Michael's half-jesting insinuation had hit her harder

than he guessed; had deepened her determination to extricate herself,

without loss of time, from a position that justified a suggestion so

galling to her pride.

But the mere getting down from the top of Bakrota, and climbing

half-way up the neighbouring hill, through a desolating world of mist

and rain, was, in itself, a prospect that would have daunted a less

headstrong woman. Michael returned her hasty "good-night" in a voice

of resigned martyrdom, and out in the verandah, four drenched

_jhampannis_ cowering round a hurricane-lantern, had passed beyond

martyrdom to the verge of open rebellion.

They were poor men, and the Miss Sahib's slaves, they protested in

chorus; but it was a very bad rain. Even with the lantern, it would be

impossible to keep the path; and if harm should come to the Protector

of the Poor, the Sahib would smite them without mercy. Also the "mate"

[1] was even now shivering with ague; in proof whereof he so vigorously

shook the lantern that it almost fell out of his hand.

But Quita was adamant. She bade them set out at once, or the Sahib

would smite them there and then. Awed by a threat that would never

have been executed, they hastened to assure her that she was,

collectively and individually, their "father and mother," that their

worthless lives were at her service, and that they would start

forthwith.

Three minutes later, they were swinging cautiously along the four-foot

track that corkscrews down to the level of the Mall, the foremost man

thrusting the lantern well ahead, with the sole result that a great

white circle showed weirdly upon the curtain of mist, through which

they journeyed by faith, and not by sight. With every step of the way

Quita's conviction grew that she had pushed persistence to the verge of

folly; and the thought of Michael, alone and dejected, tugged at her

heart. The rain formed miniature canals in the waterproof sheet that

covered her; and more than once a jerk of the dandy emptied these into

her lap; while the mist itself was so dense that she seemed to be

breathing water instead of air. There was no denying that to-morrow

would do as well as to-night. But her impatient spirit fretted against

delay; and this senseless obtrusion of inanimate things,--angering her,

as only the inanimate can,--drowned the still small voice of

common-sense.

Nevertheless, human will and endeavour have small chance in a duel with

that invisible Force, which men call Fate. In the language of the

East, "it was written" that she should not get down the hill that

night; and before they reached the Mall, Quita was compelled to own

herself beaten.

A jerk, a crash, followed by darkness, and a thud that brought her

half-overturned dandy into violent contact with the ground, fairly

settled the matter. The "mate" had missed the path; and, but for an

instantaneous counter-jerk on the part of the men behind, Quita would

have been shot down the _khud_, instead of on to the stony roadway. As

it was, she thrust out both hands to save herself, while the rain

pattered through the light lace scarf on to her head and neck. The

lantern glass was broken, and the "mate," lamenting volubly, declared

that his arm appeared to be broken also. Quita herself was

ignominiously damp and bedraggled; and vanity apart, going on was out

of the question. Even getting back, minus the lantern, would be a

difficult matter. With tears in her eyes, and fierce disappointment at

her heart, she submitted to the inevitable.

Michael greeted her with lifted eyebrows, and an exasperating chuckle.

"Thought ten minutes of it would be enough for you," he remarked

coolly; and her wrath against things in general vented itself on him.

"Really, Michel, you are _detestable_! It was not enough. The 'mate'

lost his footing, and the lantern broke. Oh, it's cruel . . . after

nearly three weeks . . ."

Her voice broke, and Michael, thankful to see her again, took one of

her hands and drew her towards him.

"_Pauvre cherie_," he said more gently. "Don't break your heart over

it. Send a note to say you'll come to-morrow, and cheer me up a bit

now, like the sweet sister you are."

There was nothing else to be done. Arming an adventurous _sais_ with

Maurice's lantern, an alpenstock, and two notes tied up in a scrap of

oiled silk, Quita choked down her misery, and did her utmost to comply

with his request. But the meal was only a partial success, for the

rebellious heart of her was out there in the rain, following the notes

to their destination.

They did not reach it till well after eight o'clock, when those who

awaited her had given up all hope, and were just sitting down to dinner.

Lenox still wore his arm in a sling, and the lines in his face looked

deeper than usual. Otherwise he was quite himself again. The anxiety

in his eyes gave place to dejection as Honor handed him Quita's note.

"Shall I open it for you?" she added gently.

He frowned, and thanked her. There are few things more galling to a

man than helplessness over trifles. He laid the open note beside his

plate, and its half-dozen lines of love took him an amazingly long

while to read: for Quita, like many spontaneous natures, had the gift

of making herself almost seen and heard by means of a few written

words. He tried to win comfort from the thought that it was only a

matter of getting through eighteen hours, after all, and roused himself

resolutely to a fair semblance of cheerfulness. But both husband and

wife were too keenly sympathetic to be quite successful in their

attempts to change the current of his thoughts; and their own hearts

were heavy with a great anxiety for Desmond's life-long friend, Paul

Wyndham. A phenomenal downpour at Dera Ishmael had produced a prolific

crop of fever cases, and Wyndham's had taken a serious turn. The last

two days had brought such disquieting news that Desmond was already

half-inclined to throw up the rest of his leave and go straight down to

Paul's bedside. The possibility of broaching the subject to his wife

that night so absorbed his mind that surface conversation was an

effort; and all three were thankful when the meal was over.

"Bring your coffee and cigars into the drawing-room, and we'll have

some music," Honor said, as they rose from the table, and Lenox looked

his gratitude. Intimate speech of any kind, even with Desmond, was

anathema to him just then, and his full heart went out to this woman,

whose genius for divining others' needs was so unerring, because her

sympathies were so deep and true.

He determined to put Quita out of his head for the evening, if she

would consent to stay there; and less than five minutes after this

triumph of common-sense, a slight stir in the verandah roused him to

unreasoning hope that it might be she after all. But it was only Amar

Singh, the bearer, with a telegram for Desmond.

His heart stood still as he tore it open; then a stifled sound of

dismay brought Honor instantly to his side.

"Dearest--what is it?" she asked under her breath.

For answer he handed her the flimsy scrap of paper, and went quickly

into the next room. Honor's eyes took in the curt statement at a

glance.

"Leave cancelled. Return at once. Infantry for cholera camp. None of

ours yet. Wyndham worse. High temperature persists. Condition

critical."

A low sound escaped her, and she passed the telegram to Lenox. It was

from her brother, Colonel Meredith, now in command of the regiment.

"A double blow," she murmured mechanically. "By this time it may

be--all over!"

Her lips quivered, but she did not follow her husband, knowing that in

the first bewilderment of grief he would prefer to be alone. And Lenox

had no answer for her; had, in fact, scarcely heard what she said.

Then, as his brain grasped the latter half of the telegram, he glanced

at her. He had never seen her look less like herself.

"I'm afraid this has hit you hard," he said, with more of feeling in

his eyes than he knew how to put into his tone. "But you mustn't take

the worst for granted. Desmond won't, if I know anything of him."

"I hope not. But this is . . . Paul; and you don't know what that

means to us both. Besides . . . the saints of the earth are always

taken too soon."

"No, not always. Fate does sometimes make mistakes on the right

side . . . by accident," he added grimly. "I suppose one of these has

gone to the Strawberry Bank. I must send Zyarulla off at once to get

my traps together. It means starting first thing."

She looked at him in surprise.

"Yes. But not you, surely. You're hardly fit for duty yet."

"Nonsense. Barring my arm, I'm fit for anything. And if we're in for

cholera, I don't see myself leaving Dick to handle the Battery without

me."

"You're bound to ask Dr O'Malley's permission, though."

"Yes, worse luck. But I fancy I shall square him. At the same

time--it's hard lines----"

He broke off short. The thing did not bear speaking of.

"It _is_ bitterly hard lines, for you both," Honor answered, looking

away from him. But she knew the best men of her service too well to

suggest that, without straining a point, he might honestly be declared

unfit for duty.

"At least it will be a comfort to her having _you_ here," he went on

mechanically, because the thing had to be said somehow. "I'll leave a

note, of course, but I'd be grateful if you'd take it for me some time

in the morning. She may not understand how impossible it is for a man

to hold back--on any pretext, at a time like this, and I know I can

trust _you_ to make things clear to her. You're more than half a

soldier yourself."

"So I ought to be!" Honor answered, inexpressibly touched by his

confidence in her. "And of course I would go to her if I were here.

But to-morrow I shall be on my way back to Dera with you both."

"Dera!--But that would be madness. Do you suppose Desmond would ever

hear of such a thing?"

"I haven't supposed anything about it yet," she answered, smiling. "I

only know that I can't let him go down into--all that, alone. Now I

must say good-night, and go to him. We'll make all arrangements for

the journey," she added, as they shook hands, "and Zyarulla will do the

packing for you. So be sure and get some sleep when you have seen Dr

O'Malley."

His face hardened.

"I only know one way to make sure of that," he said, avoiding her eyes.

"Oh, no, no; not that way, please."

"I imagine it'll be that or none," he answered almost roughly, as he

turned away, and with a sigh Honor followed her husband into the

dining-room.

He sat with his back to her, elbows planted on the writing-table, his

head between his hands. But at her approach he looked up, and with a

sharp contraction of heart she saw that tears stood in his eyes. A

woman takes small account of her own wet lashes, but a man's tears are

like drops of blood wrung from the heart.

Honor took his head between her hands, and kissed him, long and

tremulously. After that there seemed no need for words on the subject

nearest their hearts.

"You knew why I didn't come sooner?" was all she said, and Desmond

pressed the hand resting on his shoulder. Then, seating herself

opposite him on the edge of the table, she glanced at the telegraph

form lying before him.

"Are you wiring for more news?"

"Yes. I want an 'urgent,' care of the Station-master, to catch me at

Lahore to-morrow night, and another at Thung dak bungalow next day;

unless . . . of course . . ."

"Hush, hush. You _must_ not think of that."

He frowned, and was silent. The two men loved one another as men

linked by half a lifetime of toil and ambition learn to love,--or hate;

and in the face of a calamity so unthinkable, even Desmond's incurable

hopefulness was shaken.

"Captain Lenox believes he will be allowed to go," Honor went on after

a pause. "But he's hardly fit for it, is he?"

"Not quite, perhaps, though he's made of iron under it all, and if he's

set on going, I don't fancy O'Malley will stand in his way."

"I told him we would make all travelling arrangements, and you'll be

sending Dunni out with this, I suppose?"

"Yes. At once. Why?"

"Because I want him to take a note to Mrs Rivers at the same time."

"Mrs Rivers? Would you sooner go to her than stay on here?"

Honor smiled.

"Do you really imagine I shall stay on here?"

"Why not? It would save the trouble of moving; and you wouldn't feel

lonely with the little chap for company."

"But, you dear, foolish man, can't you see that it's you I want?" And

she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't

make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my

mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know

she gladly will. As for me, of course I go down to Dera to-morrow, and

do what I can for you all."

At that Desmond straightened himself; and Honor foresaw one of those

pitched battles, which, between natures equally imperious and

hot-headed, were unavoidable from time to time; while Desmond, because

he meant to have his own way, dared not let her see how profoundly he

was moved by this culminating proof of her devotion.

"My dear Honor, the thing is out of the question," he said decisively.

"It's splendid of you even to think of coming down. But it would be

unpardonable in me to allow it, so be a sensible woman and put the

notion out of your head, once for all. You know you could never bear

to leave little Paul when it came to the point."

"I could . . . I could. Oh, Theo, don't be unreasonable over this."

"The unreasonableness is yours, my dear. If this is going to be bad,

we may all be off into camp before the week's out."

"Well, then, Frank would take me in . . . and at least I should be on

the spot--in case . . . Oh, Theo, I _must_ come! Why on earth

shouldn't I be there just as much as Frank, and that little missionary

woman, Mrs Peters?"

"Frank" Olliver, a Major's wife, was the only other woman in the

regiment, and hill stations were not (as she would have expressed it)

"in her line." But Desmond was immovable.

"That's quite another matter. Being there already, they naturally

wouldn't desert their post. But you are here, thank God, safe out of

it all; and I must insist on your remaining here, if it's only for my

sake." A half smile dispelled the gravity of his face. "I've a notion

that when you married me you promised, among other things, to obey me!"

"Well, I was driven to. It was the only way to get you. But I'm sure

most of us make that promise with mental reservations. In certain

cases I should not dream of obeying you, Theo, and this is one!"

"But if I flatly refuse to take you with me?"

"I suppose I should have to follow on alone."

He looked at her straightly for a moment. Then: "I don't think you

would deliberately defy me, Honor," he said in a level tone. "I

couldn't put up with that, even from you."

There was a short silence. She saw that in direct opposition to his

will she could go no further. But the woman who loves, and knows

herself beloved, has subtler weapons at command. Setting her two hands

upon his shoulders, and bringing her beautiful face very close to his,

Honor returned her husband's look with a smile so mutely beseeching,

that his fortitude, already undermined by the news from Dera, began to

waver, and she saw it.

"My very dearest," she said, on a low note of tenderness, "of course I

would never defy you. But don't break my heart by pushing me on one

side, and leaving me up here alone, idle, anxious, when there is real

work--woman's work--waiting to be done down there. I'm as strong as a

church, you know that. And I could help with Paul when he is

convalescent. We could have him in the bungalow. I know separation is

bound to come some day. But not in this terrible fashion, and not yet.

_Please_, Theo, not yet."

Then, because tears threatened, she leaned down till her forehead

rested against his shoulder, and furtively dried her lashes with the

back of her hand. When a strong woman lays aside her strength, and

relies on the inherent power of her womanhood, no man on earth is a

match for her. Desmond could only surrender at discretion, and take

her altogether to himself.

"And you began by saying you would never defy me!" he whispered into

her ear. "What else do you call this, I wonder? You incurable woman!

Is it really because you are so keen to help, or chiefly because you

want to be in my pocket? Which?"

"Chiefly because I want to be in your pocket," she answered without

shame, and he kissed her bowed head.

"But mind you," his tone changed abruptly, "I have no business to give

in to you; and if any harm should come of it, I could never forgive

myself. I believe I should blow my brains out on the spot."

At that she lifted her head and stood up beside him.

"Theo, you _shall_ not say such dreadful things."

"It's no more than the truth," he answered, with a touch of defiance.

"Lord, how you women, and the children you give us, complicate life for

a man! Yet it's not worth a brass farthing without you both."

"Thank you for owning that much!--Now I must write my note, and see

about packing. Come up soon, dear. There's an endless deal to do

before we can think of going to bed."

On his way up to join her twenty minutes later, Desmond looked into

Lenox's small room. Zyarulla had strewn the floor with books, boots,

clothes, and a couple of boxes, preparatory to going into action. His

master, enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke, sat afar off directing the

plan of campaign. A great peace pervaded his aspect, and the

unmistakable fragrance that filled the room brought two deep lines into

Desmond's forehead.

"Just looked in to find out how you were getting on," said he. "Not

seen O'Malley already, have you?"

"No. But his verdict is a foregone conclusion, so we're going ahead

with things. Your wife's not really coming, is she?"

"Yes. I did my best to prevent it; but there's no gainsaying her."

"Great Scott, she's a plucky woman! You must have plenty to see to

both of you. Don't let me keep you, old chap, I'm all right."

"Glad to hear it. You'll sleep. That's certain. But I wish to

goodness you'd given Nature a chance."

"Nature wouldn't have given _me_ a chance," the other answered with

sudden heat. "And there's a limit to what a man can stand. By the

way," he added in an altered tone, "I can't tell you how sorry I am

about Wyndham. But you must hope for the best."

"Thanks," Desmond answered quietly. "Good-night."

The door of his wife's room stood ajar, and in passing it to go to his

dressing-room, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a muffled

sob. Treading softly, he pushed the door open, and looked in.

A night-light in the basin, and one candle on the dressing-table showed

him a tall white figure bending over the rail of the cot where his son

lay asleep. Honor had discarded her dinner dress for a light wrapper,

and her loosened hair fell in a dusky mass almost to her knees.

For a few seconds Desmond stood watching her, uncertain whether to

intrude upon her grief or no. He knew her peculiar dread of separation

from those she loved, knew that throughout the sixteen mouths of her

child's life she had never left him for more than a few hours except to

go to Chumba, and then not without remonstrance. Yet she was leaving

him now of her own free will, for an indefinite time, and in the full

knowledge of the grim possibilities ahead. It is in such rare moments

of revelation that a man realises dimly what it may mean for a woman

dowered with the real courage and dignity of self-surrender to give

herself to him; that he is vouch-safed a glimpse into that mystery of

love, which cynics of the decadent school dismiss as "amoristic

sentiment," a fictitious glorification of mere natural instinct. But

Desmond took a simpler, more reverential view of a quality which he

believed to be the most direct touch of the Divine in man, and which he

had proved to be the corner-stone of his wife's character.

He went forward at length, but so noiselessly that Honor had no idea of

his presence till his arms came round her from behind, and drew her up

so close against him that her wet cheek touched his own.

"Theo . . . that wasn't fair!" she protested with a little broken laugh.

"Not quite. But I couldn't resist it."

Then they stood silent, looking down at the sleeping child.

He lay on his back, one half-opened hand flung high above his head, and

the fair soft face, in its halo of red-gold hair, bore the impress of

the angelic, that only comes with sleep, and vanishes like magic at the

lifting of the eyelids.

Suddenly Desmond tightened his hold of her, and by a mutual impulse

their lips met.

[1] Headman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; and the battle goes

sore against us to the going down of the sun."--R.L.S.

The rain, which had set in with such quiet determination at sunset,

fulfilled its promise of continuing through the night: and the

pattering on the slates that had mingled with Quita's latest thoughts

greeted her, with derisive iteration, when she opened her eyes next

morning. But its power to thwart her was at an end. Now that daylight

was come, nothing short of a landslip could withhold her from the thing

she craved. The thought leaped in her brain before she was fully

awake. "And after all, why should I wait till the afternoon," was her

practical conclusion. "I'll go down at eleven."

With that she sprang out of bed, and slipping on a dull blue

dressing-gown, hurried into the dining-room, where she and Michael

always met for _chota hazri_.

Here she found him, in Japanese smoking suit and slippers, smiling

contentedly over an item of his early post.

"What's pleasing you, _mon cher_?" she asked absently, depositing a

light kiss on his hair. For a woman in love--and a man no less--is as

royally indifferent to the joys and sorrows of all creation as

childhood itself.

"A letter from my pretty Puritan. It is not for nothing that she has

those straight brows, and that small resolute chin. She will not be

thrust down any man's throat for all the hen-sparrows in Christendom!"

"Why--what does she say?" Quita asked, peering critically into the

teapot, and wondering how it would feel to pour out Eldred's early tea!

"Listen then; and judge for yourself:

"'DEAR MR MAURICE,---There seems to have been an unlucky

misunderstanding between you and mother yesterday. But I hope this

need not make any real difference in our friendship. Because I think

we have always understood each other, haven't we? Of course if my

parents prefer that we should not be about together quite so much,

there is no help for it. But at least I would like you to know that I

am still, as I always have been, your friend (if you wish it)

"'ELSIE MAYHEW.'"

"_Tiens_! How is that for your 'child of twenty'? It is the letter of

a woman; and a woman with an exquisite sense of her own dignity into

the bargain."

Quita smiled thoughtfully as she buttered her toast.

"I am wondering how she would have answered if you had asked her," was

all she said. "I don't feel quite so certain as I did last night."

"_Ni moi non plus_. Which makes the situation just twice as

interesting. For all the Button Quail's beak and claws, I fancy I

shall see more of my Undine yet!"

With a chuckle of satisfaction, he fell to re-reading Elsie's note: and

Quita, immersed in her own affairs, promptly forgot them both.

An hour later she reappeared--her whole face and form radiating the

light within; went straight to her easel, flung aside its draperies,

and surveying her work of the previous day, found it very good. But

there were certain lines and shadows that displeased her critical eye.

She would study his face afresh this morning, with the twofold

appreciation of heart and brain, and surprise him with the picture when

it was nearer completion.

Just then the bearer, entering, handed her a note. She opened it

eagerly--recognising Eldred's handwriting--and read, with a

bewilderment bordering on despair, the stoical statement of facts set

down by Lenox in the first bitterness of disappointment, ten hours ago.

The shock staggered her like a blow between the eyes. Her lips parted

and closed on a soundless exclamation. The abrupt change in her face

was as if a light had been suddenly blown out.

"_Mon Dieu_, . . . cholera!" she murmured helplessly, putting one hand

over her eyes as if to shut out the horror of it. "This is my

punishment for ever having let him go."

Then, as if in hope of discovering some mitigation of her sentence, she

re-read the short letter, lingering on the last paragraph, which alone

contained some ray of comfort, some assurance of the strong love that

was at once the cause and the anodyne of their mutual pain.

"And now, my dearest" (Lenox wrote), "what more can I say, except--be

of good courage, and write to me often. The rest, and there's a good

deal of it, can't be put upon paper. That's the curse of separation.

Start a picture, and throw your heart into your work, as I must into

mine. God knows when I shall see you again. But trust me, Quita, as

soon as ever I can, and dare, to put an end to this intolerable state

of things.--Till then, and always, your devoted husband,----E. L."

It was the first time he had signed himself thus: and the envelope was

addressed 'Miss Maurice'! The irony of it cut her to the quick. Tears

of self-pity, flooding her eyes, startled her back to reality; and sent

her stumbling towards her own room. But before she could reach it,

Michael's voice arrested her.

"Come on, Quita," he shouted good-humouredly. "Where _are_ you off to?

I want my breakfast."

She turned upon him a face distorted with grief.

"_Parbleu, cherie, qu'y-a-t'il a maintenant_?" he demanded, with an odd

mingling of irritation and concern.

"Cholera at Dera Ishmael--Eldred's gone down this morning. . . ." Then

tears overwhelmed her, and he turned sharply away. "Oh go, . . . go,

and have your breakfast, Michel; and let me be. I want nothing,

nothing, but to be left alone."

And vanishing into her room, she bolted the door behind her.

Maurice frowned, and sighed. In all his knowledge of her, Quita had

never so completely lost her self-control. It was quite upsetting: and

he disliked being upset the first thing in the morning. It put him out

of tune for the rest of the day. But after all . . one must eat. And

he retraced his steps to the dining-room.

"I wish to heaven she had never discovered this uncomfortable husband

of hers!" he reflected as he went "Since he will neither marry her, nor

leave her alone; and it is we who have to suffer for his heroics!"

For all that, he found speedy consolation in the thought that at ten

o'clock a new 'subject' was coming to sit to him:--a wrinkled hag, whom

he had met on his way back from Jundraghat, bent half double under a

towering load of grass, her neutral-tinted tunic and draped trousers

relieved by the scarlet of betel-nut on her lips and gums, and by a

goat's-hair necklet strung with raw lumps of amber and turquoise,

interset with three plaques of beaten silver;--the only form of savings

bank known to these simple children of the hills.

While hastily demolishing his breakfast, Maurice visualised his picture

in every detail: and with the arrival of his model all thought of Quita

and her woes was crowded out of his mind. Yet the man was not

heartless, by any means. He was simply an artist of the extreme type,

endowed by temperament with the capacity for subordinating all

things,--his own griefs no less than the griefs of others,--to one

dominant, insatiable purpose. And according to his lights he must be

judged.

Quita remained invisible till lunch-time, lying inert, where she had

flung herself, upon her unmade bed.

The first tempest of misery, and rebellion, and self-castigation had

given place to sheer exhaustion. For even suffering has its

limitations; which is perhaps the reason why grief rarely kills. All

the springs of life seemed suddenly to have run down. Her spirit felt

crushed and broken by the obstructiveness of all about her. The strain

of the past three weeks, following upon a severe shock, had told upon

her more than she knew; and this morning's sharp revulsion of feeling

brought her near to purely physical collapse.

And while she lay alone through two endless hours, tracing designs from

the cracks in the whitewashed wall, one conviction haunted her with

morbid persistence. Because she had not valued him in the beginning,

because she had repudiated him in a moment of wounded pride, he would

be taken from her, now that heart and soul were set upon him, and she

would never see him again. It was useless to argue that the idea was

childish; a mere nightmare of overwrought nerves. It persisted and

prevailed, till she felt herself crushed in the grip of a relentless,

impersonal Force, against which neither penitence nor tears would avail.

Finally, worn out with pain and rebellion, she fell asleep.

BOOK III.-THE TENTS OF ISHMAEL.