MAINLY RETROSPECTIVE
Dinner that evening was neglected as neither could eat.
Tired and hungry though Meredith had been, his appetite for food
vanished under the lash of his wife's resentment. She once said: "If my
baby is taken from me, I shall cut this country forever. I shall hate it
with an undying hatred. Nothing will induce me to live in it again and
risk a repetition of tonight. It is not fit for Europeans--and yet, the
tragedy of it is, we can only know it by experience!"
"That is to say, if you had foreseen this, you would never have married
me?" he put in sulkily.
Silence gave consent.
"Why shouldn't you give up, and find something to do at home?" she asked
unreasonably.
"You don't know what you are talking about," he returned shortly. Give
up the "Indian Civil" and his splendid prospects, liberal future
pension, and the life of sport men loved? For what? A desk in a city
office; most likely a mercantile job on a third of the pay, and a life
to which he was as much suited as a square peg to a round hole. All
this, that the babe might be spared the illnesses that mortal flesh, in
infancy, is prone to, particularly in the East. It was utter nonsense!
For the first five years there would be need for special care and
intervals spent in a hill climate. In due time would come the change to
England and English environment necessary for the proper physical and
mental training of his child. This was the course usually followed by
English families in India of any social standing, and one which involved
submission on the part of the husband to short periods of separation
from the wife in the interests of the absent children. Thousands of
married couples faced these conditions; why not they?
He felt rebellious.
What was the matter with his luck that it threatened not to work? He had
no fortune on which to retire, only a modest return from savings
judiciously invested, while his wife would have nothing more than a
trifle till the death of her parents; and they were still young. To give
up the Service would, under the circumstances, be madness and folly.
Moreover, he loved the East. The climate had no grudge against his
English constitution, and had been kind to him. He enjoyed the freedom
of the life, India's great spaces; and the lurking risks made existence
a great and continued adventure. In England it would be monotonous and
flat. Though he loved the Motherland and was proud of her traditions, he
was of the stuff that made empires, and his tact and understanding of
the natives under his rule, made him an officer of exceptional ability
and service to the Executive Government. Then there was big game
shooting which he enjoyed, and all the happy freedom from narrow
conventions. Give up, indeed!
Time enough to think of retiring when past middle age with shaken nerves
and a growing appreciation of golf. Not while he could ride a
buck-jumper, handle a hog spear or a polo stick, and shoot straight. The
thrill of tracking a wild beast to its lair was something to live for,
and the hazards of his life made up its charm.
The greatest of all hazards, had he realised it, had been his marriage
with Joyce Wynthrop of Eagleton, Surrey.
She had put up her hair to attend the hunt ball the year he was home on
furlough and staying with his widowed sister, Lady Chayne, a neighbour
of the Wynthrops, and it was love at first sight, with him. He had been
forced to attend the ball against his will, only to meet his fate, it
would seem.
Thereafter, he had been obsessed with one ambition, and that was to win
Joyce for his wife, in spite of the fact that he was fifteen years her
senior and held an appointment in the East.
Touched by his devotion and influenced by the opinion of others, she had
yielded, feeling that Destiny was calling to her to fulfill her
obligations to Life. Marriage with a good man of irreproachable
antecedents, and children to rear in godliness and wisdom, was the
religion of her upbringing. It had been impressed upon her as the
natural vocation of woman so that the race might continue. She had
played with dolls as the proper playthings of her childhood, and was
prepared to exchange them for the children God should send her in some
mysterious way to which marriage was the true gateway. Raymond Meredith,
good-looking, kind, eligible, and full of love for herself was obviously
the "Mr. Right" of schoolgirl tradition; the man to whom it would be
correct to give herself in the bonds of holy matrimony, even as her
mother had long ago given herself to her father--an example of
unemotional attachment and tranquil orthodoxy.
At first it had been wofully embarrassing to be made love to; and she
wondered if her mother had been kissed so often and called all those
silly love-names by her father before they were married?
She also resisted the strange effect on herself of those ardent kisses,
and was afraid to encourage feelings she had never before experienced,
believing them immodest to indulge, and something she had to subdue with
a determined effort. She would die sooner than confess to them. Passion
might be all right for men with whom every initiative of life lay, but
unbecoming for women to acknowledge, even to themselves. In fact, Joyce
Wynthrop was a product of Early Victorian views on the subject of a
girl's training, and an anachronism in modern times. She had been reared
in rigid ignorance of life, her reading having been heavily restricted,
her associates selected, so that when the time came to hand her over to
a husband, he should find her beautifully unconscious and unique.
To Meredith, her shy submission to his caresses, and her passionless
response were the surest guarantee of her virginal past, and he was in
no hurry to awaken the sleeping beauty to a deeper knowledge of herself.
Joyce eventually decided for her peace of mind, that love-making
belonged mainly to the period of Engagement, when everything was so new.
Once having attained the object of his desire--that is, the possession
of a wife--her lover would settle down to normal life, and no longer
regard her eyelashes with wondering admiration, or exact kisses because
her mouth was shaped like Cupid's bow. Men were so disturbing, if they
were all like Ray Meredith!--delightfully disturbing,--only they must
not know it, or peace and tranquillity would be impossible! After
marriage there would be other things to think about, such as having a
home, and, if the Lord willed it, a baby all their own, presented to
them in some extraordinary and mysterious fashion.
She had always adored babies and could rarely pass one in a perambulator
without wanting to kiss it and know all its little history. To have a
baby of her very own was a prospect so full of allurement, that she
offered no coy objections when Meredith wanted the marriage fixed at the
earliest possible date. Indeed, her calm was the despair of her girl
friends who envied her openly. Wasn't she "terribly" in love with him?
Wasn't she just "thrilled to death" with excitement at the prospect of
having a husband and going all the way out to India?
Joyce did not believe there was such a thing as being "terribly in
love," which was a phrase invented by cheap novelists, whose literature
she had never been allowed to read. She admitted she was growing very
fond of her Mr. Meredith, and preferred him to any other man. Not that
her experience of men was great--nevertheless, he was a "perfect dear."
Her sister Kitty of the schoolroom, a young woman of rather decided
opinions, reproached her severely for lack of enthusiasm over her very
presentable lover. In her eyes, Ray Meredith was the ideal of a Cinema
hero, with his clean-shaven, ascetic face, his muscular build, and
adorable smile. "You should be flattered, my dear, that he condescended
to choose you out of the millions of girls in the world," she remarked
sagely. "You may be pretty, but hosts of girls are that. One has to be
clever, and ... are _you_?... Why, you spelt vaccination with one 'c,'
and vicinity with two only yesterday, and but for me, reading over your
shoulder, you would have been disgraced for ever. I am not sure that he
would not have broken it off! Then you know nothing whatever of
politics--or football. Men are crazy about both, so you really are
rather stupid, darling, or cold-hearted. Surely you must feel all
squiggly down your back whenever Ray hugs and kisses you?"
"What do you know about it?"
"I'd be thrilled to my boots. Why, I feel like that every time they kiss
in the film--really I feel an intruder, and as if I shouldn't look."
"Silly penny stories untrue to life!" Joyce said as an echo of her
father's scorn, but blushing, nevertheless.
"Well, if you don't appreciate your lover, tell him to wait for me. I'll
put up my hair year after next and take him like a shot."
"Of course I appreciate him, or I should not be going to marry him,"
said Joyce with the dignity of eighteen. "But it's folly to make so much
fuss about marriage, seeing that it's the most ordinary thing in life,
like being born, or dying."
"The most incomprehensible thing in life, I should imagine," retorted
Kitty, wide-eyed with curiosity. "Especially when you come to think of
going away for good--or bad, maybe!--with a strange man you know next to
nothing of; and all at a blow, having to share the same apartments with
him. Merciful Providence! I am sure the Queen never did!"
"It's supposed to be the correct thing," said Joyce rather scared.
"Mother says, 'husbands and wives are one,' and 'to the pure, all things
are pure'--whatever that has to do with it--so it would be illogical in
the face of that to object to such a trifle as sharing a room. 'One has
to tune one's mind to accept whatever comes, and to follow in the
footsteps of one's parents,'" she quoted.
"How I wish you were not going right away with him, immediately," sighed
Kitty enviously. "You might so easily have told me all about it. Nobody
tells one anything worth knowing, just as though there was anything to
be ashamed about!"
Joyce made no response for the good reason that her mind was wrestling
with disquietude. However, in spite of so much that was mysterious, even
alarming, she decided, as a prospective bride, to assume the dignity and
reserve she had noticed in others and smile patronisingly on inquisitive
sixteen.
Shortly afterwards she was married, and she accompanied her "strange
man" on their journey to the Unknown, much as a confiding child trusts
itself to the guardianship of a loving nurse; prepared to accept as a
duty whatever path he might require her to tread.
In matters pertaining to sex, Meredith found her little more than a
child; the result of her narrow upbringing by which she had been reared
in ignorance of the primal facts of life and all that was common
knowledge to the flapper of the day. But to his fastidious nature her
unsophisticated innocence was the most captivating of any of the
qualities he had met with in girls, and it became his most earnest
desire to preserve it undefiled. The sweet simplicity of her mind he
regarded as even more precious than her beauty. Having spent a decade in
acquiring a disgust for a certain type of woman, he was inclined to
over-estimate his surprising good fortune, and was content in the hope
that time was on his side. Like a flower unfolding to the sun, the
treasures of her womanhood would be all his one day, drawn forth by the
warmth of his steady devotion.
The obstacles in his way, however, seemed to increase as circumstances
combined to fret and tantalise his hopes.
* * * * *
The night wore on--the Eastern night of cloudless moonlight with the
scents of the earth rising from harvested fields to mingle with the
pungency of smouldering fires. Somewhere an owl persistently hooted.
Joyce recalled the superstition that the owl was a bird of ill omen and
should not be allowed to perch in the neighbourhood of a sick room.
Immediately she was seized with foreboding and her husband was
dispatched to scare away the prophet of evil. On his return she was
trembling and hysterical.
"You must let me give you something, darling," he pleaded. "You'll
collapse for want of food, and how then can you look after Baby?" It was
inspiration which suggested the child's need of her, for she patiently
submitted and drank a glass of milk. She changed her gown for a silken
kimono, and sought rest among the pillows of her bed which adjoined the
crib. Then, in subdued tones, she reproached her husband for never
having studied the simple diseases of childhood,--so necessary in their
case, when for months together they were expected to live in camp, far
from the Station, and the reach of medical aid.
"It is criminal," she cried. "If it had been a dog you would have known
what to do. But your own child!" words failed her.
"The next time we come out we shall bring 'Good-eve.' I believe it gives
everything you want to know and a lot besides."
"There'll never be a 'next time,'" she moaned. "Please God, when my pet
is better he shall never again be taken so far from the doctor. This is
the end of all camping for him."
"So I am to be deserted?"
"You are a man and able to look after yourself. Baby needs me far more
than you do."
Meredith refrained from any argument, feeling the futility of words in
her distraught condition. In the darkened tent he brooded over his
difficulties while his eyes strayed with jealous yearning to the slim
form in the gaudy kimono. Instead of isolation in a canvas chair, he
might so easily have shared her pillows while comforting her lovingly in
his arms! but for the time being he was out of favour and unloved!
Shortly before sunrise, Captain Dalton motored in.