"Elfin and human, airy and true;
* * * * * *
Your flowers and thorns you bring with you."
--R.L.S.
But the stumbling-block reasserted itself, and prevailed.
The articles on Tibet were solid affairs, for a solid journal; twelve
of them, to be paid for on acceptance; and since Lenox needed the money
to clear off debts incurred when furnishing and pay for their trip to
Kashmir, he decided to get them written as soon as might be, before the
stealthy increase of heat made mental effort a burden. Thus, while the
Battery absorbed his mornings, Tibet made unlawful inroads upon his
afternoons and evenings; and the narrow margin of leisure thus left to
him did not by any means satisfy Quita's healthy appetite for
companionship. More than once she attempted remonstrance, pitched in
the wrong key, only to be routed by the unanswerable argument that the
work must be done, and that there was no other time in which to do it.
Finally, in a mood between pride and resignation, she shrugged her
shoulders and turned elsewhere for companionship; for interests to fill
the long hours which Eldred's devotion to work left empty on her hands.
And here, in a virtue pushed to the confines of vice, in the man's
blind unintentional neglect of the woman for whom he would wring the
last blood-drop out of his heart, you have the nucleus of more than
half the pitiful domestic tragedies of India. It is the crucial
moment, the genesis of a hundred unsuspected possibilities, this first
divergence of the man and woman, along separate paths of interest.
Love may be strong enough to stand the strain, but it will be love
debarred from that intimate fusion of heart and brain which alone
constitutes true marriage. The other kind is at best a permanent
'friendship recognised by the police':--a tacit confession of failure
which this high-hearted, if contrarious couple were by no means minded
to arrive at, now or ever. But there is no warning sign-post at the
turn of the road; and already their feet were nearing it, without
knowledge that its easy gradient slips into the Valley of Dry Bones.
Quita, however, was in a better case than many wives so circumstanced;
in that her art was no mere distraction for spare hours, but a living
reality; though, unhappily, a capricious one. And now when she would
have returned to it in earnest after months of philandering with brush
and pencil, it stood aloof, unmanageable as Eldred himself! She was
too genuinely an artist to attempt the completion of an imaginative
picture against the stream; and for fresh work, fresh mental stimulus
was needed. This was not readily to be found in the everyday
happenings--the riding, tennis, and gatherings at the Club
Gardens--that made up the cold-weather life at Dera Ishmael; and she
had little taste for small social or domestic amenities, in themselves.
The call of the wild was in her blood. One might as well hope to
domesticate a sea-gull as a woman of this type. She managed her
household on broad lines, ignoring minor details, and Zyarulla, to his
secret relief, found himself still the lynx-eyed custodian of the
Sahib's _Izzat_[1] in houses and compound, still the controller of his
petty cash. Quita received his monthly account--plus a minute
percentage on each item--in perfect good faith. His visions of
possible dismissal evaporated. He heartily commended his master's
choice of a wife; and, in moments of expansion over the evening hookah,
confided to the Khansamah--a friend and ally in the matter of
accounts--his conviction that Mem Sahibs who made pictures were of a
different _jat_ to those who played tennis, harried their ayahs, and
rode rough-shod over the sensibilities of honest bearers like himself!
[Transcriber's note: The "a" in "_jat_" is an a-macron, Unicode U+0101.]
And, in truth, the Bohemian and cosmopolitan elements in Quita made her
airily contemptuous of trifles, of the petty point of view, the 'local'
attitude of mind often found in isolated Indian stations, more
especially among the women. And setting aside Honor and Frank, the
half-dozen officers' wives belonging to the Infantry Regiments were for
the most part colourless average types of femininity such as Quita was
something too ready to despise.
But the woman element had never played a large part in her life; and it
was to the men she turned instinctively for mental companionship; for
the larger outlook, the saner grasp of things big and small. She drew
them by a natural magnetism; and held them by a talent for comradeship
which never degenerated into familiarity or freedom. The four Battery
subalterns, headed by Richardson, surrendered at discretion. And there
were others also; notably George Rivers, Desmond's subaltern, a
promising Lothario with a profile, a tenor voice, and an unimpeachable
taste in ties and waistcoats. But Quita gave the preference to
Eldred's brother officers; and to their open delight made them free of
the house. One or more of them dined with her at least three nights
a-week; and her instantaneous gravitation to Max Richardson had already
resulted in an informal friendship equally delightful for both.
Lenox accepted these developments without comment, yet not without
inward regret. For he craved the restfulness of quiet evenings alone
with his wife, after a hard day's work: and indeed saw more than enough
of his subalterns--always excepting Dick--on the parade-ground and in
the orderly room every morning. Very soon he took to excusing himself
early, on these convivial evenings, with the result that before long
the old habit of working at night had him in its clutches once again,
the charm of it heightened by months of abstinence. For a while he
held out against it; but the quiet within and without, the certainty of
freedom from interruption, the lucidity of thought that brains of a
certain order seem only able to arrive at in the small hours, were
powerful advocates for surrender; and little by little habit conquered.
He smoked more and slept less; and the quality of his work improved in
great strides.
But Quita objected strongly to this barefaced revival of 'bachelor
habits' within six months of marriage; and more than once--waking in
the small hours to find herself alone--she had slipped on her
dressing-gown and boldly invaded his study; a disarming vision enough,
her face flushed with sleep, looking absurdly young in a halo of
tumbled hair, her eyes alight with tenderness and enjoyment of her own
daring. On each occasion she was reproved without severity;
established herself in the deck-lounge of old days; fell asleep
promptly, and was carried protesting back to bed; but not until she had
seen the lamp put out and the detestable litter of papers tidied up for
the night.
In this fashion the first half of March slipped uneventfully by, each
day bringing with it that imperceptible advance of heat which strikes
an undernote of dread through the rose-scented languor of a Punjab
March. For in the vast Northern Plains of India, it is autumn, not
spring, that bears the winged word of resurrection. But Quita was
still at that enviable stage in love's progress when times and seasons
and places shrink to mere pin-points beside the one supreme fact. A
Frontier hot weather in Eldred's company held no terrors for her.
Possibly two months' leave would be available later on, when they would
spend the honeymoon--of which they had been twice defrauded--in
Kashmir; and, in the meantime, so long as one roof covered them, all
was well; in spite of her secret wish that Tibet and the Pamirs could
be expunged from the map of Asia by means of a private deluge!
But if Quita were inclined to quarrel with her husband's industry, Max
Richardson was not. He was enjoying, for the first time in his life,
the mere pleasantness of a woman's intimate companionship;--in Quita's
case a companionship full of incident, of delicate reticences,
alternating with unexpected revelations of thought and feeling; and
through it all a frank interest in everything that concerned himself,
which is perhaps the subtlest form of coquetry. Not that Quita meant
it as such. In her entire devotion to her husband, she simply did not
consider her effect upon other men; to whom, in consequence, she showed
her true self almost with the freedom and spontaneity of a child.
Richardson's own simplicity of character, and the ease with which one
slips into a pleasant path, helped matters forward; and before long,
they had fallen quite naturally into the habit of riding or driving
together when Lenox happened to be very much engaged. Quita saw no
reason to conceal her pleasure in these outings. Lenox thanked his
friend once or twice, bluntly enough, yet with evident sincerity; and
Richardson accepted his own good fortune with an unquestioning
appreciation very characteristic of the man.
His thoughts were running definitely upon this pleasant state of
things, as he drove Quita Lenox homeward through the main street of the
native city, on a glowing evening, some two weeks after Honor's visit
to the studio. Behind them clattered a small guard of native police,
without whom it would not be advisable to explore a frontier city; and
on either hand stretched a narrowing vista of open shop fronts noisy
with vituperative buyers and sellers; brilliant with piled vessels of
brass and copper, with the rainbow tints of dyed silks and muslins,
piles of parched corn and spices, oranges, bananas, and pomegranates;
their upper storeys breaking out into quaintly carved windows and
balconies, strange splashes of colour, or rough childish pictures,
innocent of proportion. And, better than these, in Quita's esteem, was
the wide street itself, packed with the noisy, leisurely life of an
Indian city:--goats and cattle; women and children; open bullock-carts
that seemed to have all eternity to travel in; princely-looking Afghan
traders in long coats and peaked turbans; Waziris, with keen, Jewish
faces framed in greasy locks that fell upon their shoulders; the _sais_
from his tail-board shouting ineffectual commands to make way for the
Sahib; long-legged fowls, leaping and fluttering up under the pony's
nose; pariahs, lazily insolent, almost allowing the wheel to graze
thigh-bone or paw, before they condescended to loaf away to a fresh
resting-place; and over all an arch of blue, so deep and passionate as
to be almost vocal; and pervading all, the indefinable, unforgettable
smell of the East:--a smell compounded of musk, spices, open drains,
and humanity.
When at last they emerged into the open, and quickened their pace,
Quita drew a breath of satisfaction, and smiled up at her companion,
who allowed his eyes to linger in hers a moment longer than the
occasion required.
Their outing had been an unusually long one; for whenever she could
find her way into the city Quita was insatiable. Again and again
Richardson had sat waiting in the sun, while she made thumb-nail
sketches of street corners, bargained with curio-sellers for the
Alexander coins and relics which abound at Dera Ishmael, or extracted
information from shy, smiling women, whose faces happened to take her
fancy in passing.
"You have been a miracle of patience!" she assured him, as they neared
cantonments. "And I daresay you hated it half the time, and scorned my
globe-trotter behaviour! I've noticed how quickly most Anglo-Indians
get bored if one asks questions, or shows the smallest interest in the
country and the people."
"Probably they don't enjoy airing their own ignorance," he suggested,
with lazy amusement in his eyes. "_I'm_ not bored with you, though.
Shouldn't be, even if you were to pelt me with questions till midnight."
She laughed lightly.
"Don't dare me to put you to the test! It might make us enemies for
life. And it's really capital that we get on so well. Just think how
awkward for Eldred if I had taken one of my strong unreasoning dislikes
to you!"
"Still more awkward for me! I never thought you carried hidden weapons
of that sort about with you."
"Wait till you know me better. I am a hopeless creature of extremes!
You can't think how I hated my dear Honor Desmond last year,--though
I'd cut off a hand for her now; nor how I still hate . . . some one I
have never seen;--some one who wrote to Eldred--about me--years ago."
She broke off, remembering that in his eyes she had only been married
nine months; though if she had been looking at him instead of
contemplating the hands that lay clasped in her lap, she must have
noticed his start, the sudden tension of his face and figure. Lenox
had never told her, then. He might have guessed as much. And why
should she ever know, after all? His native honesty prompted him to
make a clean breast of it, and ask her forgiveness. But something
stronger,--a new imperative desire to stand well with her at any
price,--held him silent. Presently, she glanced up at him curiously;
but his straight-featured profile and steady hands upon the reins
revealed nothing beyond a momentary abstraction of thought.
"I forgot, when I spoke just now," she said in a changed voice--a voice
of closer intimacy--"that you don't know how long we have really been
married,--do you?"
"Yes, I do know," he answered, still intent upon the pony. Every
moment made him more exquisitely uncomfortable. But he could not lie
to her.
"Did my husband tell you?" she flashed out almost angrily.
"No, indeed. He's not that sort. I--found out by chance."
"How strange! Another man did the same. One can never keep a secret
in this world. Well--it was the letter I spoke of that did all the
harm; that broke up everything between us for five years. Can you
wonder that I've never forgiven the writer, and never shall? Not
because he wrote unfairly of me, but because of all that Eldred
suffered then, and afterwards."
"Did you never make allowance for the fact that he could not have known
how things were between you,--that he meant no harm?"
"I'm afraid I made _no_ allowances; though I'm quite aware that,
speaking justly, one can't blame him. Probably Eldred never did. But
I told you my dislikes were unreasonable; and it makes me hate him to
think that he was quite happy away there in England all those five
years, while Eldred was half-killing himself with work and misery."
"Yes, I understand that. But it's all over now; and the harm's
repaired."
"I hope so, in a measure; though it's my belief that harm done can
never really be repaired; only patched up."
"That's a very terrible doctrine, Mrs Lenox."
"I'm afraid facts go to prove the truth of it."
Although she spoke quietly, a touch of hardness had invaded her voice;
and Richardson had no answer to give her. His cheerful, easy-going
nature had rarely been so deeply stirred. A new and delightful
experience seemed to be taking an unlooked-for turn, and his lame
attempts at self-defence in the third person struck him as bordering on
the grotesque. He set his teeth and flicked the pony viciously; then
hauled at his mouth because he broke into a canter. Yet he was a
tender-hearted man.
"Poor little beast! Don't treat him like that," she rebuked him,
between jest and earnest, "What's wrong? The city seems to have
disagreed with you."
Again he did not answer: and for a time they drove on without speaking,
each, if the truth be told, thinking of the other. Then she startled
him with one of her direct, inconsequent questions.
"Mr Richardson, how old are you?"
He laughed.
"Just thirty. Why?"
"I was only wondering. You're the sort of man who ought to marry.
Have you never thought of it yet?"
"No. Too little money. Besides, I'm a lazy beggar, and I shirk the
responsibility."
"That means you've never been in love!"
"I suppose not. Nothing more serious than a passing inclination. Mere
growing pains!" He smiled at the remembrance of a certain romantic
episode in his early twenties. "What's your notion? Have I been
overdosing you with my company that you are so keen to marry me off?"
"Don't talk nonsense. I was simply thinking of you. You've the right
stuff in you for a husband. But personally, I prefer you unattached.
I should probably quarrel with your wife; and she would break up our
friendship; which would be a thousand pities."
"Mrs Lenox--d'you mean that? Do you really value it one little bit?"
His repressed eagerness puzzled her, and she lifted her eyebrows. "But
yes, _mon ami_! Would I go about with you so much if I didn't? I have
failings enough, Heaven knows, but insincerity is not one of them. By
the way, am I to put you on my other side to-night? Wouldn't you
prefer Mrs Norton, or Mrs Lacy Smith for a change? I couldn't get the
Desmonds; and Eldred hates my poor little party in consequence."
"So shall I, if you banish me from your end of the table."
"Well, that settles it. Two conspicuously large men in open mutiny
would be more than the rest of us could stand!"
They swerved in between the gate-posts, and drew rein as she spoke.
The sound of their wheels had brought Lenox into the verandah.
"It's high time you were back again, you two," he said, with a touch of
decision, as he lifted his wife from the cart. "I was wondering what
had come to you. See you again at eight, Dick."
And Richardson, having quite recovered from his bad quarter of an hour,
drove off humming the refrain of a song Quita had sung to him a few
evenings back. After all, so long as she liked him, and valued his
friendship, she was welcome to hate the supposed unknown, whose
identity she must never be allowed to guess.
Meanwhile Lenox and his wife went on into the house, Quita disarming
reproof by instant apology. "It was delightful; but I'm sorry we were
away too long, dear."
He smiled contentedly down upon her. "Well--there are limits! Where
on earth did you go?"
"All through the city again, and I unearthed endless treasures. You'd
have loved it."
"Of course I should. Great fool that I was not to chuck the writing
and take you myself!"
"Oh, if you only would, a little oftener!"
Something in her tone smote him; and putting both hands on her
shoulders, he bent towards her, pain and passion in his eyes.
"Darling, tell me, have I been neglecting you lately?"
Her low laughter reassured him. "Neglecting me? Dear stupid! D'you
suppose I'd sit down under it if you did? Now I'm going to change for
dinner; and do please make yourself agreeable to Mrs Norton this
evening."
For the Deputy Commissioner's wife was honouring her husband with a
flying visit, before going north to spend the season in Simla.
"The devil take Mrs Norton. Odious woman!"
"No,--it's _you_ that will have to take her!" she answered, laughing.
"And it's not my fault that you won't have your beautiful Honor on the
other side to keep the balance true."
Quita enjoyed her little dinner, and saw to it that others did
likewise. She was a natural-born hostess. Talk never flagged in her
neighbourhood, and her own lack of self-consciousness set the stiffest
and shyest at their ease. Besides, she always enjoyed talking to
Norton, whose cynicism and critical attitude she disarmed by the simple
means of ignoring them. She liked the man's plain, hard-featured face,
ploughed with deep lines of thought and effort, and only redeemed from
ugliness by his remarkable eyes.
"Stoking up!" he remarked grimly, sipping his soup with a keen
appreciation of its quality. "Punkahs and hell-fire again in no time.
One hardly has time to cool down before the winter slips away. Mrs
Norton's off to Simla in ten days; and I suppose you'll be bolting also
by the end of next month?"
She laughed, and shook her head. "If you're counting on getting my
husband to chum with you this hot weather, I'm afraid you'll be
disappointed."
He eyed her quizzically for a moment.
"Of course--I forgot. You're a new broom! If I meet you in March
three or four years hence, I shall hear another story."
"And enjoy the triumph of your own cynicism! Very well, I accept your
challenge. I shall write to you three years from now, just to tell you
how the land lies."
"Do. And if you forget, I shall hear of you from some one else. We
know all one another's little doings in this corner of the world. I
feel curious about you, and prophesy that Simla and amateur theatricals
will carry the day; though for Lenox's sake I hope all the triumph will
be on your side. But it's no light matter, I can tell you, to win your
spurs as a Frontier officer's wife of the right quality."
"Like Mrs Desmond, for instance?"
"Quite so. Like Mrs Desmond."
"I notice all the cynicism goes out of your voice when you speak of
her. Yet you can make insulting prophecies about _me_, at my own table
too! Am I so immeasurably inferior?"
"That remains to be seen! You have still to be tested in the furnace,
and no imaginary furnace either. Man or woman, staying power's the
great requisite for India, Mrs Lenox. To pull through for half a dozen
hot weathers is all very well,--mere getting one's hand in. But by the
time a man has completed his twentieth he begins to know something
about the weakness of the flesh. I seem to you, with your youth and
high courage, a cynical, disagreeable fellow enough. But perhaps when
you are middle-aged and disillusioned, and all the good blood in your
veins has been dried up by fever, you'll forgive my straight speaking
to-night; though by then I shall be a forgotten old fogey, eating my
heart out in England, or I shall have dropped in harness, which would
be the kinder fate of the two."
"Indeed I have forgiven you already," she answered in a softened tone;
and involuntarily her eyes sought the handsome heavy-featured woman
beside her husband, whose Paris dinner-dress was cut lower than need
be, and whose elaborate 'fringe' rather too obviously grew off her head.
"Thank you. It's more than I deserve; and I'm sorry I must repay you
by giving you your first taste of the pleasant little surprises that
are a main feature of Frontier life. I have to go off across the
Border early next week, to fix the position of a post we are going to
build for our Mahsud levies, and to collect a fine from some rascals
who have been raiding Tank."
"Where's that?"
"An unlucky village near the Gomal Pass,--the great trade route into
the hills. It gets burnt to the ground periodically by the Waziris,
probably much to its advantage; but one can't overlook the insult to
British authority. So I'm obliged to visit them in state and talk to
them like a father, after collecting their fine; and I'm afraid I must
take your husband and Richardson along with me, besides a handful of
cavalry and infantry by way of protection and prestige."
Quita's face fell. "For how long?" she asked, collecting her last
crumbs of pastry with a peculiar deliberation.
"We might be ten days coming and going. Not more."
"And--would there be fighting?"
"Probably not. It's a peaceful deputation. But peace armed to the
teeth is the only kind the Waziri understands; and he can't always
control his rifle when he finds the eternally aggressive white man
taking liberties with his sacred hills! We shan't be sorry for a whiff
of cool air any of us; and you won't be the only injured wife. Colonel
Montague, of the Sikhs, comes with us; and I'm going to rob Mrs Desmond
of her _preux chevalier_ also. I only want half a squadron, but I
shall make special request for Desmond. He's a capital man to have
handy in case of accidents. As for Lenox, he'll be delighted, if
that's any consolation to you."
"Well, naturally," she faced him now, eyes and lips under control.
"Besides, ten days is nothing. One has to make a beginning; and it
might have been ever so much worse."
"That's the plucky way to look at it," he said in evident approval, and
Quita rather abruptly changed the subject.
The evening that followed was a remarkably cheerful affair, imbued with
that spirit of friendly informality which makes the little dinners of
India live long in the memory. O'Flannagan had brought his banjo.
Rivers and Richardson both sang creditably; and Quita herself was in
one of her 'inspired' moods. Only Mrs Norton, having deposited her
grey satin magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what
she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess;
flirted--intellectually--with any one who had the hardihood to sit near
her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a
transparently insincere little speech about an enjoyable evening.
"Begad, but her works want oiling badly!" O'Flannagan confided to
Quita, as the last shimmering morsel of her train slid out of sight.
"She's one o' your immaculate Englishwomen who give me the blues. Come
on, Mrs Lenox. Thank Heaven for the dash of ould Ireland in you; and
let's begin to enjoy ourselves!"
From that moment the evening took a new lease of life. Two battery
subalterns came over from mess, and it was close on midnight when
Lenox, returning from his final duties in the verandah, found Quita
standing by the mantelpiece, her cheeks flushed, her eyes radiating
enjoyment.
"Thank the Lord that's over!" he ejaculated fervently, flinging himself
into a deep arm-chair; and she turned on him promptly, with a visible
ruffling of her feathers.
"Eldred, you're positively inhuman. When you talk like that you make
me want to hit you!"
She stood above him, threatening him with one slim hand; but Lenox,
reaching up lazily, grasped her arms below the elbow, and gently but
irresistibly forced her on to her knees.
"Hit out, lass, if you've a mind to," he said good-humouredly. "I
swear I won't retaliate!"
She struggled for freedom; but he held her in a vice.
"You great schoolboy,--let me go!" she commanded, between laughter and
vexation. "I don't care if you do hate dinner parties. I must have
them sometimes. I love to see people enjoying themselves as they all
did tonight, except that odious Mrs Norton, who doesn't count. You're
not pliable enough. That's what's the matter with you. But if I live
to a hundred and twenty you'd never make a hermit out of _me_!"
"And if you gave a party every night of your life you'd never make a
society man out of me. I should simply apply for a trans-frontier
billet, where wives are not admitted. But look here, little woman, did
Norton tell you about next week?"
"Of course he did. You'll be gone in three or four days. It's
hateful. Do let me have my arms back, darling."
And he surrendered this time.
"Are you sleepy?" she asked, her eyes, full of laughter, resting in his.
"Lord, no. I'm going to sit up and put in two hours work at least
before turning in."
"Indeed you'll do no such thing. You're going to sit up and talk to
me. I didn't like to bother Mr Norton; but I've a hundred questions to
ask you about it all."
"_Hazur ke kushi_! [2] Ask away. Only let me get at my pipe, and I'm
at your service."
He filled and lighted it with leisurely satisfaction; and Quita,
settling herself on the carpet beside him, her face looking into his,
her bright head laid against his knee, kept him talking of Border
politics and Border warfare till all thought of putting in two hours'
work was out of the question.
[1] Prestige.
[2] As your Honour's pleases.