"Let's get the ponies, and jog over and look up Jermyn. Shall we,
Campian?" said Upward, during breakfast a few mornings later.
"I'm on. But--who's Jermyn when he's at home?"
"He isn't at home. He's out here now," cut in Lily.
"Smart young party, Lil," said Campian, with an approving nod. "And who
is he when he's out here now?"
"Why, Jermyn, of course."
"Thanks. That's precisely what I wanted to know. Thanks, fair Lilian.
Thine information is as terse as it is precise."
"_I_ should say _Colonel_ Jermyn if I were you, Lily," expostulated that
young person's mother; whereat Hazel crowed exultantly, and Campian
laughed. The latter went on:
"As I was saying, Upward, before we were interrupted, who is Jermyn?"
"Oh, he's a Punjab cavalry man up here on furlough. He's had fever bad,
and even Shalalai wasn't high enough for him, though he doesn't want to
go home, so he rented my forest bungalow for the summer. It's about
eight miles in the Gushki direction. You haven't been that way yet."
"So? And what does Jermyn consist of?"
"Eh? Ah, I see. Himself and a niece."
"What sort of a niece?"
"Hideous," cut in Hazel.
"Really, I can't allow that sort of libel to pass, even for a joke,"
said Mrs Upward. "She isn't hideous at all. Some people admire her
immensely."
"Pff!" ejaculated Lily, tip tilting her nose in withering scorn. "Too
black."
"Mr Campian likes them that way," cackled Hazel. "At least, he used
to," added this imp, with a meaning look across the table at Nesta. "I
was only humbugging. She isn't really hideous. We'll ride over too,
eh, Lil?"
"No, you won't--not much," retorted Upward decisively. "You two are a
precious deal too fond of running wild as it is, and you can just stay
at home for once. Besides, we don't want you at all. We may take on
some chikor on the way, or start after some from Jermyn's. Shall you be
ready in half an hour, Campian?"
The latter replied in the affirmative, and they rose from the table.
While they were preparing to start, he observed Nesta standing alone
under the trees.
"Well, Nessita, and of what art thou thinking?" he said, coming behind
her unnoticed. She started.
"Of nothing. I never think. It's too much trouble."
"Phew! Don't take it so much to heart. They'll soon be back."
"What a tease you are," she retorted petulantly. "I hope they won't.
If you only knew how sick I am of the pair of them."
"That so? I was going to say you'd have to make shift with me for the
next few days, but--There, it's a sin to tease her. What's the matter?
You're not looking up to your usual brilliancy of form and colouring,
little girl."
"Oh, I've got a most beastly headache. I'm going to try and go to sleep
all day, if those two wretched children will let me."
"Poor little girl! Shall I persuade Upward to let them come with us?"
"No, no. It doesn't matter. You'd better go now, or you'll start Mr
Upward fussing."
"And cussing?"
"Yes, that too. I'm going in now. Good-bye."
"Nesta looks very much below par this morning, Upward," said Campian, as
they rode along.
"Does she? Finds it dull, perhaps, now, without those two jokers.
She's never happy without a lot of them strung around her."
"_So_? These blue-eyed, fluffy headed girls usually are that way, I
have observed. They are wonderfully taking, but--lacking in depth."
"Thought at one time she was rather stringing _yours_ on to her
collection of scalps, old chap," said Upward, with a sly chuckle.
"Because we went out chikor shooting together once or twice?" replied
Campian tranquilly. "Talk of the devil--there _are_ some chikor." And
the next few minutes were spent in dismounting--a rapid fifty paces
through the sparse herbage--a whirr of wings--the triple crack of guns--
and a brace and a half of birds retrieved by the attendant forest guard;
while the remainder of the covey, having gained the mountain side, was
crawling up the rock slopes like spiders on a wall.
"See that hole, Campian?" said Upward, soon after they had resumed their
way. "That's the markhor cave. There's always a markhor there, the
people say."
"Let's go and see if he's at home now, except that we've only got shot
guns," replied Campian, looking up at the black fissure pointed out, and
which cleft the rock face some distance overhead, seeming to start from
a grassy ledge. It looked by no means an inaccessible sort of place.
"Bhallu Khan says he wouldn't be in now," said Upward, who had been
talking in Hindustani to the old Pathan. "He only sleeps there."
"So? Well, I don't believe in his markhor then, Upward. If the brute
was so regular in his habits as all that, he'd have been shot long ago."
"Very likely. But Bhallu Khan says the people are afraid of him. They
don't believe he is a real markhor, but a spirit that takes the form of
one. He is guarding some buried treasure, and it's unlucky to go near
the place."
"It wouldn't be unlucky if they found the treasure, by Jove! What does
it consist of?"
Upward spoke again to the old forester, whose answer, translated to
Campian, caused the latter fairly to start in his saddle, his scepticism
dispersed.
"He says it is supposed to be old sword hilts and things, encrusted with
the most priceless jewels. Hallo! You seem to believe in it, old
chap?"
"Not I. Only it reminded me of something else. But I suppose they have
a yarn of the kind attached to pretty nearly every hole and corner of
the land, eh?"
"Yes. I have heard of others; but, curiously enough, now I think of it,
this jewelled sword hilt idea doesn't seem to come into them. It's
generally a case of tons of gold mohurs, and all that sort of thing."
"I suppose so," asserted Campian tranquilly. But his tranquillity was
all outward, for as they continued their way, his mind was very lively
indeed. Was there really something in the legend? Had he struck upon
the clue at last--not merely a clue, but the actual spot? How he wished
he had learned Hindustani, so as to be able to communicate, at first
hand, with those who might be able to furnish other clues. All save the
wild Baluchis of the more remote and nomad clans spoke that language,
and it was of primary importance to obtain information of this kind at
first hand, and unfiltered through a third party.
"Campian's very _chup_ to-day," thought Upward, peering furtively at his
companion, who, during the last couple of miles, had hardly spoken,
except in monosyllables. "I wonder if the sly old dog is really smashed
on Nesta, and is thinking it over--I wonder?"
He would have wondered more could he have read the thoughts of "the sly
old dog" aforesaid, for they ran not upon love but upon lucre.
"There's the bungalow," said Upward presently, pointing out a white
low-roofed dwelling high up on the hillside. "Not a bad little place
for a while, but most confoundedly out of the way."
The path wound around the spurs, ascending more abruptly, mostly in the
shade of the junipers, here growing to greater size, and more thickly.
Presently they came out upon a small plateau, and the bungalow.
"Hallo, Upward! Glad to see you. Don't get many visitors up here."
"How do, colonel? This is Mr Campian--stopping with me. Nearly got
shot by some Pathan budmashes, and then drowned by the _tangi_ coming
down, on the night he arrived. You may have heard about it."
"Not a word--not a word. Haven't seen a soul for weeks. Glad to meet
you, Mr Campian. Fine view from here, isn't there?"
"Splendid," assented Campian, who had been taking in both the speaker
and the view. The former was of the pleasant, genial type of soldier--
elderly, grizzled, upright, well-groomed. The latter--well, it was
fine--uncommonly so. From its eyrie-like position, the bungalow
commanded a vast sweep of mountain and valley. Embedded against a
background of juniper slope the front of the plateau looked out upon a
scene, the leading idea conveyed by which was that of altitude and
vastness. Opposite, a line of great mountains shot up in craggy heads
to the sky; their slopes alternating in slab-like cliffs and gloomy
chasms running up into lateral valleys. Juniper forest, more or less
sparse, straggled along the base; and but for the aridity of the all
prevailing stone and the scattered vegetation, the view would have been
lovely. As it stood, it was only immense. Circling kites, uttering
their plaintive whistle, floated in clouds against the blue of the sky,
or, gracefully steering themselves with their long forked tails, soared
out over the valley.
"Fine air, too," went on Colonel Jermyn. "After the awful heat of some
of those plains stations you can appreciate it, I can tell you. But I
daresay, you got a taste of that on your way up?"
"Rather. Coming through Sindh, for instance, if you leaned back
suddenly in the train against the back of the seat, it was like leaning
against a lot of fizzling Vesuvian heads."
"Ah, prickly heat. We know what that is down below--don't we, Upward?"
But the reply was lost in the soft rustle of draperies, and a softer
voice:
"How do you do, Mr Upward?" As the three rose, it needed not the
formal introduction. The colonel's words seemed to sound from far away
in Campian's ears. "My niece--Miss Wymer."
The first utterance had been enough for Campian. There was no other
such voice in the world. And as he stood there, exchanging the formal
hand-clasp of ordinary every-day greeting with Vivien Wymer, small
wonder that his self-possession should be shaken to the core. For, five
years earlier, these two had parted--in anger and bitterness on the side
of one, a whole world of heart-consuming love on that of both. They had
parted, agreeing to be strangers thenceforward, and had been so, nor had
they set eyes on each other since. Now, by the merest of chances, and
totally unprepared, they met again amid the craggy mountain ranges of
wild Baluchistan.
"We were talking about the prickly heat, Vivien," went on the colonel.
"Mr Campian says it was like leaning against burning match-heads coming
up in the train--ha, ha! You look a trifle below par even now," turning
to Campian. "Won't you have a `peg'? Upward, excuse me--what a
forgetful ass I am. So seldom I see anyone up here I'm forgetting my
manners. After your long, hot ride, too!"
"Not feeling fit to-day. A new climate sometimes does knock me out at
first," replied Campian mendaciously, he being both by constitution and
practice as hard as nails. He was savage with himself for losing his
self-possession, even for a moment. "No lack of that article on the
other side, anyway," he thought bitterly.
Outwardly there was not. Vivien Wymer's manner in greeting him had been
so perfectly free and unconcerned that not one in ten thousand would
have dreamed she had ever set eyes on him before. Nor, as she sat there
talking to Upward, could the keenest ear have detected a trace of flurry
in her soft-voiced, flowing tones; and what ear could be keener than
that of the man who sat there, straining to catch every word--every
tone--while endeavouring to avoid replying at random to the conversation
of his host.
"That'll pick you up," said the latter, as the bearer appeared with a
tray containing very tall tumblers and a bottle and syphons. "Nothing
like a `peg' after a hot ride. We can't get ice up here, but I always
have the stuff kept in a cooler. Mix for yourself."
"You must come down to our camp for a day or two, Miss Wymer," Upward
was saying. "You'll come, too, won't you, colonel? There are still
some birds left. It's rotten shooting, but all there is here."
Thereupon the conversation turned on _shikar_ in general, and tiger in
particular, and Campian felt relieved, for now he could drop out of it.
Five years ago it was that he and Vivien had parted--yes, exactly five
years--and now, as he sat watching her, it seemed as though but five
days had passed over her, for all the change they had brought--
outwardly, at any rate. All was the same--the poise of the head--even
the arrangement of the rippling waves of soft dark hair had undergone
but slight alteration; the quick lifting of the eyelids, the glance,
straight and full, of the heavily fringed eyes. Yet, if taken feature
by feature, Vivien Wymer could not have been summed up as beautiful.
Was it a certain grace of movement inseparable from a perfect symmetry
of form--an irresistible, sensuous attractiveness side by side with a
rare refinement--that would have set her on the highest pinnacle, while
other women, beautiful as a dream, would have been passed by unnoticed?
He could not say. He only knew that she had appealed to him as no other
woman had ever done before or since; that the possession of her would
fill every physical and mental want--we desire to emphasise the latter
phase, in that it was a question of no wild whirlwind of infatuated
passion. She had drawn out in him--as regarded herself, at any rate--
all that was best; had even been the means of implanting within him
qualities wholly beneficial, and which he would have repudiated all
capacity for entertaining. In her he had recognised his destined
counterpart. He might live a thousand years and never again meet with
such. He was no longer young. He had known varied and eventful
experiences, including a sinister matrimonial one, mercifully for
himself, comparatively short. But Vivien Wymer had been the one love of
his life, and the same held good of him as regarded herself, yet they
met again now as strangers. One thing he decided. They were to keep up
the _role_. Since she wished it--and evidently she did wish it--he
would offer no enlightenment.
"Is your friend keen on sport, Upward?" the colonel was saying. "You
ought to take him to try for a markhor."
"Don't know that I care much for sport in that form," cut in Campian.
"It represents endless bother and clambering; all for the sake of one
shot, and that as likely as not a miss. The knowledge that it is going
to be your one and only chance is bound to make you shoot nervous. Now,
I like letting off the gun a great deal, not once only."
"Yes, it means a lot of hard work. Well, you've come to the wrong
country for sport."
"By the way, colonel," said Upward, "my head forester points out a cave
on the way here, where they say there's always a markhor. It doesn't
seem difficult to get at I don't believe in it myself, because there's a
legend attached." And thereupon he went into the whole story.
Vivien was listening with deepening interest.
"I should like to see that place," she said. "Anything to do with the
legends of the people and country is always interesting. Could we not
arrange to go and explore it? You say it is easy to get at?"
"I think so," answered Upward. "We might make a picnic of it. Two
fellows from Shalalai who joined camp with me are coming back to-morrow
or the next day, and we might all go together. What do you say,
colonel?"
"Oh, I don't mind. Getting rather old for clambering, though. Come
along in to tiffin; that's the second gong."
Throughout that repast, Vivien addressed most of her conversation to
Upward. Campian, however, who had pulled himself together effectually
by now, was observing her keenly. When she did have occasion to answer
some remark of his, it was as though she were talking to a perfect
stranger, beheld that morning for the first time. Very good. If that
were the line she desired to keep to, not in him was it to encroach upon
it. He had his share of pride, likewise of vindictiveness, and some of
the aggrieved bitterness of their parting was upon him now. But he
remembered also that the ornamental sex are consummate actors, and felt
savage with himself for having let down his own guard. And this
impassiveness he kept up throughout the ordeal of again saying good-bye.
"Well, and what did you think of Colonel Jermyn, Mr Campian?" queried
Mrs Upward, when they were seated at dinner that evening. The two men
had returned late, having fallen in with more chikor on the way, and she
had had no opportunity of catechising him before.
"He seems a pleasant sort of man," returned Campian. "There was some
scheme of cutting them into a kind of exploration picnic, wasn't there,
Upward?" he went on, with the idea of diverting an inevitable
cross-examination.
"_Them_! You saw the niece, then?" rapped out Hazel. "What did you
think of her?"
"Think? Why, that you are a shocking little libellist, Hazel,
remembering your pronouncement."
"It wasn't me who said she was too black; it was Lily."
"_He's_ mashed too," crowed that young person, grinning from ear to ear.
"Why `too,' Lilian? Is the name of those in that hapless plight
legion?"
"Rather. You haven't a ghost of a show. Down at Baghnagar she had
three regiments at her feet. But she wouldn't have anything to say to
any of them."
"That looks as if one _had_ a ghost of a show, Lil," replied Campian,
serenely bantering. In reality, he had two objects to serve--one to
cover the situation from all eyes, the other, haply to extract from the
chatter of this hapless child anything that might throw light on
Vivien's life since they parted.
"Pff! not you," came the reply, short and sharp. "There was _one_--
once. She chucked him. No show for anybody now."
"What a little scandalmonger it is," said Campian, going off into a
shout of laughter. He had to do it, if only to relieve his feelings.
The information thus tersely rapped out by Lily, and which drew down
upon the head of that young person a mild maternal rebuke for
slanginess, had sent his mind up at the rebound. "Where did she get
hold of that for a yarn, Mrs Upward?"
"Goodness knows. Things leak out. Even children like that get hold of
them in this country;" whereupon Lily sniffed scornfully, and Hazel
fired off a derisive cackle. "Do you think her good looking, Mr
Campian?"
"Decidedly; and thoroughbred at every point." The humour of the
situation came home to the speaker. Here he was, called upon to give a
verdict offhand as to the one woman who for years had filled all his
thoughts, who still--before that day to wit--had occupied a large
portion of them, and he did so as serenely and unconcernedly as though
he had never beheld her before that day. "Why did she chuck--the other
fellow?" he went on, moved by an irresistible impulse to keep them to
the subject.
"He turned out a rip, I believe," struck in Upward. "Lifted his elbows
too much, most likely. A lot of fellows out here do."
"You've got it all wrong, Ernest," said his wife. "You really shouldn't
spread such stories. It was for nothing of the sort, but for family
reasons, I believe; and the man was all right. And it wasn't out here
either."
"Oh, well, I don't know anything about it, and I'll be hanged if I
care," laughed Upward. "I asked them to come down here for a few days
soon, and they said they would. Then you can get it out of her
yourself."