"Leave the what at the what's-its-name,
Leave the sheep without shelter;
Leave the corpse uninterred,
Leave the bride at the altar."
--Kipling.
Even in a land where danger and discomfort flourish like the ungodly,
that journey from the cedar-crowned Himalayas to the white hot flats of
the Derajat, with the Punjab furnace in full swing, was an experience not
readily forgotten by the three who set out upon it in the dripping grey
dawn of a July morning. Before them stretched two nights and three days
of pure martyrdom, aggravated by that prince of evils--a troubled mind:
for the Desmonds a haunting anxiety, and for Lenox the harassing
realisation that his own strength or weakness during the next few months
stood for no less than the happiness or misery of the only woman on
earth. It is this irrevocable fusion of two lives, and the network of
responsibilities arising from an act less simple than it seems, that
constitute the strength, the charm, the tragedy of marriage: and a dim
foreknowledge of its complexity dawned upon Lenox during his penitential
progress into a land of fire and death.
Throughout their fifty mile descent to the foot-hill terminus it rained
perseveringly. But toward evening the clouds parted, and an hour of
sunshine set the drenched earth steaming like a soup kettle when the lid
is lifted off. Desmond had ordained that Lenox and his wife should be
carried down in doolies; an indignity to which they submitted under
protest: and Honor, scrambling out of her prison through an opening level
with the ground, passed quite gratefully from its stuffy twilight,
redolent of sodden canvas and humanity, to the smell of hot wood and
leather that pervaded the sun-saturate railway carriage awaiting them in
Pathankot station.
With the unhurried deftness of an experienced pilgrim, she set about
making the place cooler, and more habitable; drew up all the
window-shutters; opened her bedding roll; and taking possession of Lenox,
established him, with tender imperiousness, in the least stifling corner,
a pillow set lengthways behind him. He leaned against it, and closed his
eyes.
"Head bad?" she asked a little anxiously. For the concussion headache is
no child's play, and ten hours in a doolie might breed neuralgia in a
cannon-ball.
"Pretty average. Nothing to trouble about." The assurance was not
convincing: and she gleaned the truth from two deep lines in his forehead.
"I'm going to make you some tea in a minute," she announced cheerfully,
opening her basket, and clamping a travelling spirit-lamp to the woodwork
above the seat. "Real tea. Not the stewed leaves and water we should
pay six annas for outside! There's half a dozen of soda, three pints of
champagne, a fowl, and an aspic in the icebox under your seat. But tea
would be best now. We'll keep the rest for your dinners."
He opened his eyes and smiled at her.
"You've a remarkable talent for spoiling a man!"
"It's one I'm very proud of," she answered simply: and leaning out of the
open doorway, caught sight of her husband striding down the platform,
closely followed by an army of coolies, two bearers, and two
pessimistic-looking dogs on chains. "Theo," she called, "do leave that
eternal luggage to Amar Singh, and come and be spoilt! We're going to
have tea."
Before the train jolted out of the station, she had served it to them in
large cups, an insubstantial biscuit in each saucer: for it is drink, not
food, that a man wants when the thermometer stands at 110 degrees in the
shade.
At Umritsur the train halted for half an hour. The thermometer had not
fallen with the sun; and when the faint breeze of their going died down,
there seemed to be no air left to breathe.
Lenox dined regally out of the ice-box: while Desmond and Honor,
silencing his protests by flight, carried off iced soda and a
whisky-flask to the frowsy, airless refreshment room, where they wrestled
undismayed with curried kid, the ubiquitous chicken cutlet, and two
plates of discoloured water,--flavoured with _jharron_,[1]--that
masqueraded as clear soup. Two quarrelsome Eurasians shared their table.
A punkah that may once have been white waggled officiously overhead. But
for all that the flies were lords of the meal; and enjoyed it far better
than those who paid for it.
"Thank God for my good dinner!" Desmond muttered with a wry face as he
put down his money. "_You_ must supplement it out of Lenox's rations,
old lady. _Hukm hai . . . sumja_?" [2]
She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. Having won the victory that
mattered, she could afford to be submissive over trifles.
An hour or so before midnight, they clanked into Lahore station--a
big-bastioned building, whose solid masonry breathed fire, as literally
as any dragon of romance. Within was a great darkness, partially
dispelled by hanging oil-lamps; and babel enough to wake the Seven
Sleepers. The uninitiated arriving at an Indian railway station are apt
to imagine that a riot of some sort must be in progress. But it is only
the third-class passenger, whose name is legion, fighting, tooth and
nail, for the foot of space due to every possessor of the precious morsel
of cardboard tucked into the folds of his belt: because he knows, from
harsh experience, that when the train moves on more than a few will be
left disconsolate, to watch its unwinking eye vanish out of their
ken:--bewildered adventurers, for many of whom the "fire-carriage" still
remains a new-fangled god, who feeds on coal and water, and can only be
propitiated by repeated offerings of that wonder-working hieroglyph--the
tikkut.
At Lahore passengers to Dera change into the night mail for Mooltan: and
almost before the train drew up Desmond was out on the platform, pushing
his way, purposefully, through a mass of jostling, shouting, perspiring
humanity:--Sikhs, Punjabi farmers, moneylenders, 'fat and scant of
breath,' women of all ages, with apathetic babies, in round cap and
necklet, astride upon their hips. In the station-master's office he
found the fateful red envelope awaiting him; and broke the seal with a
shaking hand.
"Crisis over. Condition more hopeful. Will wire Jhung."
"Thank God!" he muttered, choking down a lump that had risen in his
throat. Then, elbowing his way back to where Honor and Lenox stood guard
over a disordered pile of luggage, he thrust the paper into her hand.
"We'll bring him round between us, you and I," he said, as she looked up;
and she nodded contentedly, her eyes deep in his. He could no longer
regret having given way to her; and she knew it!
They were not the only English passengers in the Mooltan train. Two Dera
subalterns, who had fled posthaste from Simla, stood smoking outside
their carriage:--Hodson, the 'slacker' of the Battery, a small sallow
individual, with heavy-lidded eyes, and a disagreeable mouth; and Major
Olliver's 'sub,' Bobby Nixon, who answered indiscriminately to half a
dozen names, but was officially registered as The Chicken, a tribute to
his cheerful lack of wisdom, worldly or otherworldly, and to the sparse
crop of 'down' that surmounted an extensive freckled face, and shadowed a
mouth whose one beauty lay in its readiness to smile capaciously upon the
world at large.
As Honor and Lenox came towards him, the said mouth screwed itself into a
low whistle.
"Great Scott, Mrs Desmond, . . but this is flagrant heroism! Who'd have
dreamt of meeting _you_ here?"
"A pleasant surprise, I hope," she asked, smiling, as they shook hands.
"Why, of course it's always good to see you," the boy answered, looking
upon her with frank admiration. "And you bet we're proud to have our
ladies facing the music with us. But still . . cholera's cholera; and it
looks like a record year. They've got it hot and strong at Mian Mir.
Two of the Norfolks came down the hill with us, swearing like Billy O.
Been up less than a fortnight; and there's a masked ball on at the Club
to-morrow. Oh Lord, it's a lively country! Poor old Hodson only got a
week in Simla; and he has fever on him still."
Lenox glanced quizzically at the man he desired to weed out of his
beloved Battery by the simple means of making him work.
"Hard luck," he remarked; a suspicion of irony in his tone. And Hodson,
anathematising under his breath India in general, and the Frontier in
particular, strolled off down the platform, head in air. There was
little love lost between him and a commandant for whom work was the
backbone of life.
Just then, through the open windows of the next carriage, there came
forth a voice of thunder--articulate, unparliamentary thunder: and Lenox,
with a touch of friendly authority, drew Honor farther away.
"That's old Buckstick," Bobby explained genially. "Giving it to his poor
devil of a bearer, because he wants to hit out at some one. They say in
the regiment that some fool of a palmist told him to beware of cholera;
and I believe the old chap's in a blue funk. Queer thing, funk. Put
that man on an unbroken horse, or in the thick of a hand-to-hand
scrimmage, and he wouldn't know the meaning of fear. Yet now . . ."
His dissertation was interrupted by the appearance at the window of
Colonel Stanham Buckley of the Punjab Infantry, who mopped a moist bald
head, and inquired picturesquely of a passing official when the blank
this blankety blank train was supposed to start. Then catching sight of
a woman's figure, he vanished, with a final incoherent explosion,
slamming up the window-shutter behind him.
How the devil, he asked himself furiously, should a sane man expect
to find an Englishwoman hanging about Lahore station on a murderous
night of July? The idea that she might be travelling to Dera never
entered his head. His own wife, after five years of Frontier
vicissitudes,--aggravated by debt, and the tyranny of 'little drinks at
mess,'--had developed pronounced views on the duties of motherhood.
These had led to a house in Surrey, which, for one reason or another, it
had never yet seemed feasible to give up: and Buckley had consoled
himself after the fashion of his kind, with hard drinking, hard riding,
and hard swearing,--the only form of Trinity recognised by a certain type
of man.
And as he opened his ice-box, and helped himself to a stiff 'nightcap'
before turning in, Desmond joined the group outside.
"Come on, you two," he said, grasping an arm of each, "Dogs and luggage,
and carriage all square. We shall be off in a minute. Only half an hour
behind time! See you again at Chichawutni, Nick. Don't lie too flat,
and get apoplexy. We can't afford to lose willing men!"
They met again, all six of them, on the Chichawutni platform, in a dry
hot dawn; for they were nearing the desolation of the Sindh Sagar desert,
where the monsoon is a negligible quantity. Lenox, who had neither slept
nor smoked all night, looked rather more ragged than usual in the clear
light; but otherwise seemed to be bearing the journey well. 'Old
Buckstick,' as he had been christened by irreverent juniors, raised his
hat to Honor from a distance; and wondered what the hell women of that
sort were made of.
Early breakfast over, they set out upon a six hours' tonga drive to
Jhung; an isolated civil station fifty miles off the line of rail.
Tortured India was already awake and astir; and along an interminable
road of fine white dust, covered with straw, they sped at a hand-gallop
between converging lines of sheesham-trees, with clank and rattle and
incessant tooting of horns, scattering the unhurried traffic of the open
road:--a procession of five tongas loaded to the limit of allowance with
human beings, dogs, saddles, and battered boxes. In all directions the
unprofitable land rolled level to the sky-line. Every seven or eight
miles they stopped to change ponies. Every hour the heat and glare grew
fiercer; the clangour of wheels and tonga-bar more assertive, till it
seemed to beat on bared nerves; and the terrible thirst of the Frontier
took hold upon the dust-filled throats of dog and man alike.
It is possible to compress a good deal of discomfort into six hours: and
the Dak Bungalow, in its noonday quiet and comparative coolness, seemed
an Island of the Blest after the glare and riot of the road. Here the
Desmonds were cheered by a reassuring telegram; and here all rested till
after sundown, when the pitiless tongas claimed them again; and all night
long they fled across the open desert over a track of straw, through an
interminable darkness strewn with stars.
Now and again a handful of these, seemingly dropped to earth, heralded a
changing station, and a halt for fresh ponies. Here would be brief and
blessed respite; a moment to stretch cramped limbs: moving lights that
revealed shadowy shapes of men and horses: much apostrophising of the
Prophet, interspersed with questionable jokes and laughter: and the voice
of the pariah, roused from light sleep, or the absorbing pursuit of
fleas. Here also Colonel Buckley would wake up, and confound creation in
smothered expletives, mindful of Honor's presence; and on one occasion
Hodson was heard confiding to the Chicken his determination to 'get quit
of this blasted Frontier' on the first opportunity. Whereat Lenox lost
his apathy, and turned upon Desmond, who walked beside him.
"Listen to that now! By Jove, he shall get his opportunity sooner than
he thinks for. We can't have young skrimshankers of his kidney
patronising the finest service in India."
"Get Richardson to give him a taste of the swimming-bath, in his mess
kit, when the cold weather comes!" Desmond suggested with a laugh. "I've
known that knock the nonsense out of some of 'em."
Lenox nodded thoughtfully.
"I'm not over-partial to that form of argument," said he. "But in this
case, I believe I should rather enjoy it."
Then the voice of the driver requested the Heaven-borne to return to
their seats: and they were off again, full clatter, half a dozen pariahs
speeding their progress. Honor, by her own choice, shared the back seat
with her husband in comparative comfort. His enclosing arm shielded her,
as far as might be, from the incessant jolting; and from time to time, in
utter weariness, her head sank upon his shoulder, and she slept, while
the two men smoked and talked fitfully in undertones.
Such primitive journeyings are fast becoming obsolete in the India of
to-day, where the railway stretches its antennae in all directions, and
the horn of the motor has been heard beyond Chaman. Yet, for all their
obvious discomforts, they possessed their own peculiar flavour of
interest and charm.
Dawn showed them the Indus at last: a sheet of tarnished silver, five
miles wide, sprawling over the colourless country, its normal banks
submerged by the rush of water from the hills: and behind them day sprang
out of the east, 'a tyrant with a flaming sword.'
Through eight blazing hours that sword hung bared above them. For their
ferry-boat was a native barge, persuaded rather than propelled in any
given direction by oars as long as punt poles; and set with one unwieldy
sail that could neither be tacked nor furled; but which provided them,
for a time, with a patch of burning shadow, by no means to be despised.
In it they smoked and picnicked, and made merry with cards and dogs, to
the best of their ability; while erratic currents bore them from sandbank
to sandbank; each collision involving an interlude of shouting, shoving,
coaxing, and upbraiding on the part of four assiduous boatmen; and when,
by the mercy of God and the river, they managed to run aground on the
farther side, it was nearing four o'clock in the afternoon.
Here were more tongas awaiting their prey: and this time the travellers
hailed them gratefully: for the swollen river had almost invaded the
gardens of outlying bungalows; and a short gallop brought them at last
into the straggling station, whose name literally signifies the Tents of
Ishmael. But the day of tents had long since given place to the day of
spacious, square-shouldered bungalows, with pillared verandahs, set in
the midst of rambling compounds, where the ferasch and banana flourished
in dusty luxuriance, while orange, pomegranate, hybiscus, and
poinsettia,--to say nothing of marigolds and roses,--blazed regally in
the blossoming season with scarlet, and crimson gold. A bird's-eye view
of the station itself might have suggested to the imaginative eye a game
of noughts and crosses scratched on a Titanic slate:--a network of wide
white roads, unrelieved by curve or undulation; their rigidity emphasised
by equidistant lines of trees, and whitewashed gate-posts, innocent of
gates.
Into one of these openings three out of the five tongas finally clattered
and stood still; and a familiar brogue gave them greeting from the
verandah.
"Praise the Powers, ye've got here at last! We'd begun to think you
might be setting up house on a sandbank for the night!"
"We've had our fill of 'em without that, Frank," Desmond answered as he
sprang from his seat.
For the voice was the voice of Mrs Olliver, a rough-cut Irishwoman, whose
short reddish curls, and masculinity of speech and manner, cloaked the
woman's heart that glowed deep down in her,--a jewel crusted with common
clay. Beside her stood Max Richardson, and Colonel Meredith--a big,
broad-shouldered man, extraordinarily like his sister in face and
temperament--who cleared the steps like any subaltern, lifted Honor out
of the tonga, and kissed her on both cheeks.
"You've no earthly business to be here, you know," he reprimanded her by
way of greeting. "I'll tell Theo what I think of him, when I get him
alone!"
"No, please, John, you mustn't," she entreated in a low tone. "He did
his best to prevent me. But I meant to come . . . and I came!"
"I thought as much, when I got his wire!" Then, still keeping hold of
her, he shook hands with Desmond. "Mighty glad to get you back, Theo:
and to see you looking so fit. You'll find your work cut out, I promise
you."
"So much the better. Any cases?"
"Not yet, thank God. We must steer clear of camp, if the thing can be
done. But the fever's bad enough. They're dropping like flies in the
city, poor devils. Our hospital's crammed; and two 'subs' on the
sick-list at well as Wyndham. He's going on all right now; but goodness
knows when he'll be fit for duty."
"I want to see Mackay about getting him over here as soon as possible.
May I borrow Suliman, and ride round at once?"
"When you've got outside a fair allowance of tea and sandwiches. Not a
minute sooner!"
"Tea? Rather not. But I'd sell my immortal soul for an iced peg!"
While they talked, Max Richardson had led his friend into the lofty
shadowed drawing-room, that, in spite of a thermometer at 96 degrees,
struck cool as a grotto after the furnace without: and Frank Olliver,
consigning Honor to the largest arm-chair, herself presided at the tray;
apologising, in characteristic fashion, for having temporarily 'taken
over charge.'
"But bossing the show's one of me few talents; an' I'm not for wrapping
it in a napkin. Geoff swears I took over charge of creation before I'd
cut me first tooth! Any way it struck me that perhaps in the hustle of
starting you'd not thought of sending full instructions; so I just came
over this morning, and made free with your linen cupboard, an' your
bazaar account. For I know how it feels to come back to a dead house at
this time of year.--Lord, there's that Theo man off again; incarnate
whirlwind that he is! He'll get Major Wyndham over here to-morrow, sure
as fate; though the good man refused _my_ pressing invitation a week ago.
And 'tis the first time one o' me own brother officers has denied me the
only kind o' Woman's Rights this child's ever likely to clamour for!"
"Hear, hear, Mrs Olliver!" Meredith and Richardson applauded her, as she
held out both hands for their tea-cups; and Lenox smiled amused approval
from the depths of his chair.
When Desmond returned an hour later, he found Lenox's luggage in the
verandah, awaiting removal, and Lenox himself sitting alone in the
drawing-room with Brutus and his pipe. It rested on his knee, held in
place by the finger-tips emerging from his sling; and as Desmond entered
he was scientifically pressing its contents into place with the ball of
his thumb.
Impulsively the other hurried forward, and laid an arresting hand on his
arm.
"Not that again, surely, old chap," he said, a note of anxiety in his
voice. "Do you quite realise how many times you have filled it in the
last thirty-six hours?"
Lenox's fingers closed like a vice upon his treasure.
"Can't say I've troubled to keep count," he answered in a hard voice.
"And I'm damned if I can see what right you have to take me to task about
it."
"Not a shadow of right," Desmond owned frankly, "Except that I care
immensely what comes to you, and to that plucky wife of yours who has
honoured me with her friendship; and whom I am hoping to welcome here--as
Mrs Lenox before many months are out."
The shot took affect. With a listless movement Lenox let his fingers
fall apart, and the pipe rolled on to the rug at his feet. Here Brutus
lazily investigated it as a possible treasure trove; and after a puzzled
sniff or two lifted inquiring ears to his master, who was looking
absently in another direction.
Then Desmond stooped, and picked it up.
"Will you let me empty it, and fill it from my own pouch?" he asked
quietly: and Lenox gave silent assent.
"No doubt I seem to you a contemptible brute enough," he added bitterly,
while the transfer of tobaccos was in progress. "And no doubt you're not
far wrong either. But if you could get inside my head for a few hours,
you might possibly understand."
"My dear Lenox, it is just because I understand that I'm keen to do what
little I can for you, even at the risk of being damned for officiousness!
If your head's giving you trouble, why not take a genuine dose of the
stuff last thing; and get a night of solid rest before you start work?
That seems to me safer than trifling with poison in the form of tobacco.
You know yourself you'd make a square stand against the naked drug. It's
the little 'nips,' the small capitulations, that do the damage in the
long-run."
He held out the pipe: and Lenox, clenching his teeth upon it, proceeded
to set it alight.
"Say what you please about things in future, Desmond."
He spoke without removing his eyes from the match he was manipulating.
"I swear I won't take it amiss again." Then he rose abruptly. "But I
must be off now. I only waited to see you, and--thank you before
leaving. You've the knack of putting fresh heart into a fellow when he
feels played out."
Desmond eyed the man thoughtfully for a second before replying. Every
line of him proclaimed utter weariness of soul and body.
"Anything ready for you over there?" said he.
"Not that I know of. But Zyarulla will shake things down in no time."
"All the same, as your luggage is handy, why not stop on here? You'd be
uncommonly welcome; and I know Honor would be glad to keep an eye on you
for a while longer."
The invitation, given on the spur of the moment, took Lenox aback.
"But, my good chap, . . . you've got Wyndham coming over."
"Yes. Thank God. To-morrow or next day. No distaste for Paul's
company, have you?"
Lenox smiled, and shook his head.
"Hang it all, Desmond, you know what I mean. You and your wife have done
too much for me already. There _are_ limits to a man's capacity for
sponging on other folks' generosity."
"Well, if that's your only objection, we'll consider the matter settled!
Wyndham goes into my dressing-room; so the boy's nursery is at your
service. My wife is never so happy as when she has her hands full; and
it'll be less trying for you here, than in your own empty bungalow."
The last words flashed a suspicion into Lenox's mind.
"Look here, man," he broke out hotly, his eyes searching Desmond's face.
"Isn't it you yourself who would be glad to keep an eye on me? You're
half afraid I shall knock under to this infernal thing if I'm too much
alone. Is that it?"
Desmond met question and glance four-square.
"You gave me leave just now not to mince matters, and I take you at your
word," said he. "To acknowledge that living alone may make the fight
harder for you is no reflection on your powers of resistance. It is
simple fact; and no earthly good can come of disregarding it. In your
case discretion is the better part of valour.--Now, will you be
reasonable, and accept my suggestion in the spirit in which it was made?"
He held out his hand. Lenox grasped, and wrung it hard.
"Thanks, old chap," he said. "I'll stay for the present. There's no
withstanding you two."
That night he excused himself from mess: and long after the house and
compound had fallen asleep, he and Desmond sat together in the _dufta_,
with pipes and pegs, and softly snoring dogs at their feet, talking
intermittently of all things in earth and heaven, with the rare unreserve
bred of tobacco, and the communicative influence of midnight. Talk of
this kind draws men very close together; and in the course of it Lenox
discovered--as others had done before him--that this man who had become
so intimately linked with the vital issues of his life was no mere good
comrade, but a dynamic force, challenging and evoking the manhood of his
friends.
When they parted Lenox felt more hopeful than he had done since the
arrival of Quita's note; and honest sleep hung heavy on his eyelids.
"Don't believe you need the dose we spoke of after all," Desmond remarked
on a note of satisfaction.
"Not a bit of it. Thanks to you, I believe I shall sleep like a top."
Nor was he disappointed.
For the first time in fifty-six hours he took his fill of natural
dreamless sleep: and, on waking next morning, the first sight that
greeted him was a letter from Dalhousie, propped against the milk-jug on
his early tea tray.
[1] Duster.
[2] It is an order--you understand!