THE AFTERMATH
In the early morning, Joyce realised that she was both hungry and
thirsty. Her lips were parched, her throat dry, nothing having passed
them since early tea the previous afternoon, and she was at the lowest
ebb of despondency and depression. Her surroundings helped to increase
her misery, for the ground was a mixture of puddle and slush, and there
seemed no chance of help anywhere. She seemed to have fallen into a deep
crater, and but for a projection of roof that still held firm owing to a
network of pipal roots, she would have been as drenched as the bricks
and mortar with which she was surrounded.
To add to her alarm, she was all alone. Captain Dalton was nowhere to be
seen.
Though he had behaved horribly the evening before, he had not troubled
her since; the tramp of his feet as he paced up and down the
circumscribed space that was left to them of the chamber, being the only
evidence she had till she dropped off to sleep that she was not without
company. But with the daylight he was gone, and feeling almost
panic-stricken with ghostly fears and loneliness, she called aloud to
him.
"Captain Dalton!"
"I'm here," his voice cheerily announced as he emerged from the inner
room which had suffered an equal amount of damage. "See what the gods
have sent you!" and he handed her a pipal-leaf cup, full of water to
drink.
It was eagerly seized and gratefully drunk. "Where did you get it from?"
"That other room is full of branches torn from the roof when it fell
in," he returned. "I discovered them by the light of a match and amused
myself making cups out of the leaves by the light of a few more. They
don't hold much, but I managed to set a good few to catch the rain drops
as they fell, and that's better than nothing."
"Have you had any?" she asked politely.
"I was waiting for you, but I'll take a drink now." He retired and did
not return till she called him again.
"I wish you would take your coat. You must be so chilled," she ventured.
"The rug will do for me."
"Are you quite sure?" he asked and Joyce noticed that his hands were
blue with cold. After putting on his coat he was about to retire again
when she stopped him wistfully. "Please stay--I feel so frightened
alone."
"I thought you preferred not to have me around," he said dropping down
beside her.
For answer she wept into her arms as they rested on her knees.
"I was beastly, last night, wasn't I--poor little kid," he said in
gentler tones than she had ever heard from him. "Can't you have it in
your heart to forgive me?--just wipe it out as though it had never
happened?"
"I can forgive you, but--I--could never wipe it out. I feel so degraded.
It is like having an ugly stain on a page you had always wanted to keep
clean."
Dalton studied her as something entirely new to his experience. "I have
never in my life met anyone like you. It has been an eye-opener to a man
like me. I didn't understand you all this time. I am just beginning to,
now. Tell me frankly your idea."
"It is nothing extraordinary," she said drying her eyes. "It is only
that I did not believe a gentleman could treat a decent married girl as
you did me. I wanted to be like brother and sister, and I thought you
understood. Anything else never entered my head as possible to
self-respecting people."
"And I have spoilt all your pretty illusions!--let down my sex too,
rather badly! What don't I deserve! It would relieve my feelings if you
slanged me for all you are worth. Believe me, you have done no wrong. It
is only that I see things crookedly, and am just what you called me, an
'unspeakable cad.' I should have respected your helplessness. Truly, I
deserve to be shot."
"I _have_ been very silly, I don't care what you say. But I never can
remember I am grown up!" she said pathetically. "Honor told me that
people would talk, but I did not believe they had any cause. Now I
realise what they are thinking! and it breaks my heart. They will
believe I am like Mrs. Fox. She does things that look bad, and people
despise her. Now they will despise me."
"Never! they have only to look at you and hear you speak, to see what
you are."
"Honor said it was not enough to be good but to avoid doing the things
that make people think we are not. Now they are thinking perhaps that I
flirt with you and let you kiss me!" Her face was suffused with crimson
shame. Nothing was so horrible to contemplate as the fact that he had
kissed her! She was stripped of self-respect forever.
Dalton might have been tempted to smile at her self-accusing attitude
had it not been for her perfect sincerity. He felt overcome with
contrition and longed to atone.
"You make me infinitely ashamed," he said humbly. "Perhaps if you knew
what went towards making me such a brute-beast, you would feel just a
little sorry for me and understand--even bring yourself to like me a
little bit as you say you once did. I have never had a sister. It might
have made a difference if I had." After a pause--"Some years ago there
were two persons in whom I believed as--I believe--in God. One was a
woman and the other, my dearest pal. He and I were like brothers. I
would have trusted him with my life. I did more. I trusted him with my
honour." A pause. "And he whom I trusted and loved, robbed me of all
that made life dear to me, and of what I valued more than life. And the
woman I loved and believed pure and true, conspired with him to betray
my honour! I was their dupe. A blind confiding fool!"
"Oh!" was wrung sympathetically from Joyce.
"When I found out all I went mad, I think. I have been pretty mad--and
bad--ever since; but at the time, if I could have laid hands on both I
might have ended my career on the gallows. But Fate intervened. He was
killed in a railway accident shortly afterwards, and a year later, she
came whining to me for forgiveness."
"Did you forgive her?"
Dalton's eyes glowed with cruelty and an undying contempt. "Forgive her?
Not if she had been dying! There are things impossible to forgive. She
had killed my soul, destroyed my faith in human nature--which others,
since, have not helped to restore!--turned me into a very devil, and
without an incentive to live. Do you think I could forgive her? If I
hated her then, I loathe the very memory of her now."
"Yet you tried your best to make me one of the same sort?" Joyce asked
wonderingly.
"I did not believe, till you proved it to me, that women are of any
other sort," he replied.
"You forget Honor Bright?"
"I never forget Honor Bright," he replied unexpectedly. "I have looked
upon her as the exception that proves the rule."
"Your mother?" Joyce interposed gently.
"My father divorced her," he said harshly. "So you see I have had rather
a bad education!"
"I am very sorry for you."
"You are?--that's good. Then there is hope for me."
"I am sorry that you should have such a contempt for women, owing to
your unfortunate experience."
"I owe you an eternal debt of gratitude for teaching me what an
egotistical jackass I have been."
"Tell me," she asked, suddenly waking up to their dust-laden condition,
"am I covered with smuts and grime?"
Dalton surveyed her quizzically. "You are covered from head to foot,
like a miller, with fine white dust."
"So are you!" and they laughed together for the first time since the
calamity.
"Let's wash, there's a pool in the next room. Quite a respectable amount
of clean water is collected about the floor."
He showed her the pool and left her to make her toilet while he explored
their prison for some possibility of escape. Putting his hands to his
mouth he sent forth stentorian cries for help with no result. Without a
pick-axe to work with, he saw no chance of cutting a way through the
tons of material that lay around them.
It was midday, when Joyce was feeling weak with hunger, and Dalton
fighting a strong tendency to pessimism, that he heard Honor's
"_Coo-ee!_" and replied.
"Thank God!--at last here's someone to the rescue!" he exclaimed, and
Joyce burst into tears.
When Honor was able to locate the spot from which the answering voice
proceeded, she contrived with difficulty to get near enough to the
opening to hear what had happened. It was good to know, however terrible
had been the experience of the pair, that both were unhurt, and that
Joyce was bearing up wonderfully.
"I shall run back and get help at once, cheer up!" she called out.
"We don't, either of us, feel cheerful, I can assure you. It has been
ghastly here all night," the doctor shouted back.
"But it is great to have found you! I am so thankful," and she sped to
her bicycle and travelled at top speed to the Mission. Mr. Meek could
provide the labour at a moment's notice for the work of digging out the
imprisoned couple, and to him she went direct.
Immediately the Settlement hummed with activities; coolies swarmed to
the spot with pickaxes and spades, crowbars and ropes, and as news flies
from village to village with almost the rapidity of "wireless," hundreds
of natives gathered at the scene to view operations, the women with
infants astride one hip, and naked children swarming around. They camped
on the ground chewing _pan_ and parched rice, and chattered incessantly
of the mysterious workings of Providence, the folly of humanity, and the
decrees of Fate.
The bare-footed, semi-nude rescuers, climbed over the face of the ruins
with complete disregard of life and limb, and with wary tread and light
touch, began the work of removing the _debris_.
In due course, the rescue was effected, and Joyce was assisted to climb
out of the wrecked chamber to safety. Honor half-supported her to the
car which Captain Dalton drove in silence to the Bara Koti. His eyes
avoided Honor's and in manner he was quiet and constrained.
"So you never got the souvenir after all!" she said to Joyce when she
had heard a disjointed account of the catastrophe.
"I should have hated to look at it again, if I had," was the hysterical
reply. "I shan't want to pass this road again, or get a glimpse of that
terrible place as long as I live. I hate India more than ever, and Ray
must send me home at once. Otherwise, I shall live in dread of some
other calamity befalling either Baby or me. Oh, Honor, persuade him to
let me go!"
By the time she was put to bed she was suffering from nervous
prostration. Meredith, who had returned from his fruitless search,
looked like a man walking in his sleep. His wife had clung to his neck
in passionate relief, but she had avoided his lips as she had never done
before, and a sword seemed to have entered his heart.
"Oh, I am so glad to be back!" she kept repeating, with her babe pressed
to her bosom.
"Memsahib habbing one great fright!" commiserated the ayah.
Silent and stunned, Meredith hovered about the room. He had uttered no
word of reproach to his wife for her imprudence,--she had suffered
enough, mentally and physically; but resentment was fierce within him
towards the doctor. The impulse to walk round and horse-whip him for
having had the impudence to lead his foolish, but adored girl-wife into
such a scrape, was well-nigh unconquerable, and he refrained only for
fear that scandalous tongues would give the unhappy event a sinister
character.
"Kiss me, Sweet," he once whispered, leaning over her in passionate
anxiety. He wanted to look deep into her eyes; not to see them fall away
from his with a shrinking expression foreign to them.
Joyce offered her cheek.
"Your lips," he commanded.
But Joyce fell to weeping broken-heartedly. Meredith kissed her cheek
with a pain at his heart, and turned away.
"Won't you tell me everything?" he asked another time, studying her
intently. Normally, he imagined she would have babbled childishly of all
her experiences, and have been insatiable in her demands for petting.
Why did she seem crushed and silent as to details? Honor had said the
shock would account for her shaken and hysterical state; but it did not
explain her strange aloofness.
"You know it all," Joyce returned listlessly, the tears springing to her
eyes at his first question as to the experience she had undergone.
"I know the barest outline--and that from Honor Bright. You wanted a
particular stone for a souvenir, and in digging it out, the arch
collapsed, which brought down a large bit of the roof and a lot more
besides. What happened after that? How did you manage to spend the
night? It must have been horrible!"
"Some day I may be able to talk about it, but not now," she cried with
quivering lips. "It is cruel to question me now."
Meredith leaned back in despair. "I hope Dalton was properly careful of
you?" he asked, devoured with jealousy.
"He gave me his coat and his rug, and made cups out of pipal leaves to
catch the raindrops as they fell. We were so thirsty," she said
monotonously.
"Rather a brainy idea!"
"Please don't recall all that to me. I don't want to think of it!" she
cried; and that was all Meredith could learn of the events of that
night.
The following day it was discovered that the doctor was suffering from a
feverish chill and was confined to bed. By nightfall, it was reported by
Jack who had been to visit him, that he was in a high fever, and that
the Railway doctor had been called in by the Civil Hospital Assistant
for a consultation.
The next day it was known that Captain Dalton was seriously ill with
pneumonia; a _locum_ arrived from headquarters, nurses were telegraphed
for, and for some days his life hung in the balance.
Joyce, who still kept her bed with shaken nerves, incapable of
interesting herself in her usual pursuits, was startled out of her
lethargy at the news. "If he dies, it will be my fault," she cried. "Oh,
Honor! I was so cold that he gave me his coat as well as the rug, and
did without them himself till morning. He must have taken a chill, for
he looked so bad in the dawn."
"He did what any other decent man would have done in his place."
"It was rather surprising of him, considering how fiercely we
quarrelled!" and feeling the need of confession, she poured out the
whole story of her shame into her friend's ears. "Even now I grow hot
with humiliation when I think of it! I cannot understand why he did it,
for it was not as if he had fallen in love! Only because he thought I
was a--a--flirt, like others he had known."
Honor's face was very white as she listened, silent and stricken.
"I just had to tell you, dear, or the load of it on my mind would have
killed me. I feel as if I were guilty of a crime against Ray; and, poor
darling, he does not understand what is wrong!"
"Why don't you tell him and get it over? He loves you enough to make the
telling easy. And if you love him enough, why, it can only end happily,"
said Honor with an effort.
"There would be a tragedy!--I dare not. Ray would kill him for having
dared to insult me like that! You have no idea of what I have been
through! Captain Dalton said I was asleep and needed awakening! I have
awakened in right earnest and know that I have been a wicked fool. How I
long to be loved and forgiven! Oh, Honor! when Ray looks at me so
anxiously and lovingly, I just want to be allowed to cry my heart out in
his arms and confess everything; but I simply cannot, with this dread of
consequences. Nor can I make up to him with this wretched thing on my
conscience! Why didn't I listen to you!"
"There is not much use in crying over spilt milk, is there? The best
thing you can do is to bury it and be everything to your husband that he
wishes. You must try to atone. If you love him----"
"I do! There is no other man in the world so much to me. I did not
realise how much I cared till Captain Dalton made me, by his outrageous
behaviour! I am not fit for Ray's love after knowing how I have lowered
myself!"
"You will not mend matters by creating a misunderstanding between
yourself and your husband. What is he to think if you continue to shrink
from his caresses?"
"He will think I don't care at all, and that is so untrue!"
"Can't you see that, with your own hand, you are building up a barrier
between you which will be difficult to pull down at will?"
"When I am able to tell him all about it, he will understand. At present
I feel shamed and degraded. I feel myself a cheat! I, whom he believes a
good and virtuous wife, have actually been kissed by a man who thought I
was the sort to permit an intrigue! Don't you see, that if I behaved as
though nothing wrong had happened, I would be putting myself on a par
with Judas?"
Having wrought herself up to the point of hysteria, she was not to be
reasoned with.
"How I wish I had never set foot in that dreadful place! It seems, after
all, that the devil is really in possession of it, and that disaster
overtakes people who enter there."
"Disaster invariably overtakes people who give the devil his chance,"
said Honor unable to resist a smile.
"I dare say you are right. I have been very foolish, for I had no idea
of the sort of man I was growing so intimate with. But he was truly
sorry, and tried afterwards in a hundred ways to show how he regretted
his behaviour. Indeed, I think, on the whole, he received quite a good
moral lesson for thinking most women are without any conscience," and
Joyce proceeded to relate the sequel of her story, which involved that
of the doctor's past.
"It is a most painful history," said Honor gravely.
"And he has never known home-life; his mother was a wicked woman, and
was divorced!"
"How pitiful!"
"It quite accounts,--doesn't it?--for his badness?"
"I don't think he is at all bad," Honor said unexpectedly. "He's been
badly hit and wants to hit back; that's about what it is. To him women
are all alike"--
"Not you!--he said you were, to his mind, the 'exception that proves the
rule.'" Joyce interrupted.
Honor coloured as she continued,--"And he has very little respect for
the sex. He requires to meet with some good, wholesome examples to set
him right, poor fellow!"
"He thinks the world of you, Honey!"
"Does he?" with an embarrassed laugh. "Then he takes a queer way of
showing it."
"That was your fault. You turned him down over Elsie Meek's case, and he
was too proud to plead for himself. But I have watched him, Honey, and
there isn't a thing you say or do he misses, when you and he are in the
same room."
"Your imagination!" Honor said uncomfortably. "You forget he has just
been trying to make love to you!"
"True. But he has never been _in love_ with me. It was sheer devilment.
Even I could tell that. Love is such a different thing. Ray loves me.
There is no mistaking it, for it is in his eyes all the time, and proved
in a thousand ways."
"Did Captain Dalton say much more about that girl who jilted him?" Honor
asked with embarrassment. Joyce had failed to grasp the full
significance of Dalton's unhappy experience, and Honor had accordingly
derived a wrong impression.
"Only that he loathes her now. That she killed his soul!--which is
absurd, seeing that the soul is immortal."
"It can therefore be resurrected."
How, and in which way, Honor had not the slightest idea, but her heart
instead of recoiling from the sinner after all she had heard, warmed
with sympathy towards him. She could not help a feeling of pity and
tolerance for the unfortunate victim of deception who through
disillusionment and wounded pride, had gone astray.
When Honor returned home, it was to hear that her mother had gone over
to the doctor's bungalow to nurse the patient till professional nurses
should arrive; and had left word that her daughter should follow her.
"We have to do our 'duty to our neighbour' no matter how much we may
disapprove of him and as no one in the Station is capable of tending the
sick with patience and intelligence, I must do it with your help."
So Honor superintended the making of beef-tea for the sick-room, fetched
and carried, ran messages, and made herself generally useful, much to
Tommy's disgust. It was hateful to him that a man so generally disliked
as the Civil Surgeon, should be tenderly cared for by the women he had
systematically slighted.
"I don't see it at all," he grumbled to Honor when he caught her on the
road on her way home for dinner. "Surely his servants could do what is
necessary till the nurses arrive?"
"The least little neglect might cost him his life, Tommy."
"It wouldn't be your fault. For weeks the fellow has not gone near your
people."
"Would you have us punish him for that by letting him die of neglect?"
"It is no business of mine, of course."
Honor quite agreed with him, but softened her reproof with a demand for
his help. "At any rate, it is everyone's duty to lend a helping hand in
times of trouble. We want a message sent to the doctor-_babu_ at the
government dispensary, and it is a mercy I have met you." She gave him a
list of the things required by the local Railway doctor who was in
charge of the case, and Tommy cycled away, obliged to content himself
with the joy of serving her whenever and wherever possible.
That evening, while Honor was left on guard at Dalton's bedside to see
that he made no attempt in his delirium to rise, she experienced a
sudden sinking of the heart in the thought that he might die.
He was very ill.... Pneumonia was one of the most deadly diseases. As
yet there was no means of knowing how it would go with him. With gnawing
anxiety she watched his flushed face and closed eyes and the rapid rise
and fall of his chest. How strong and well-built he was! and yet he lay
as weak and helpless as a child.
The thought that he might die was intolerable. It gave her a sense of
wild protest, a desire to fight with all power of her mind and will
against such a dire possibility. He must not die till he had recovered
his faith in human nature, his belief in womanhood. If there were any
truth in the New Philosophy he would not die if her determination could
sustain him, and help him over the crisis.
"Honey...?" the sick man muttered. His eyes had unclosed and were
looking full at her.
"Yes?" she replied, trembling from head to foot with startled surprise
at hearing him speak her name.
"Have they let you come at last?" he asked in weak tones.
"They sent for me to help," she returned gently.
"Was it because I wanted you so much? My soul has been crying out for
you. There is only one face I see in my dreams, and it is yours. You
will not leave me?" he asked breathlessly.
"I will stay as long as they let me," she said kneeling at the bedside
that she might not miss a syllable that fell from his lips.
"How did you know that I loved you all the time?"
"I did not know." Surely it was wrong for him to speak when he was so
ill? yet she longed to hear more. Every word thrilled her through and
through.
"Ever since that day--you remember?--when you came to me for help in
your danger and suspense; when I saw into that brave, staunch heart of
yours, and, for the first time, knew a true woman!" His face was alight
with emotion. It was transformed.
"Oh, hush!--you must not talk."
"Yes. I am horribly ill," he panted. "It is ghastly being tucked up like
this, unable to get up. But it is worth while if you will stay with me."
A pause while he frowned, chasing a thought. "What was I saying? My mind
is so confused."
"It does not matter, I understand."
He caught her hand and pressed it to his burning lips, then laid the
cool palm against his rough, unshaven cheek.
"If I have longed for anything it is for this--to hold your hand--so--to
feel that you'd care just a little bit whether I lived or died--nobody
else does on this wide earth!"
"I care a very great deal," she said brokenly. "So much, that I beg of
you not to talk. It must hurt."
"Every breath is pain. If I give a shout you must not mind. It is a
relief sometimes. Pleurisy is devilish. They told you, I suppose, I have
that as well? If I don't pull through----"
"Stop! You shall not say that. You _will_ get well. I know it. I am sure
of it," she said. "Try to rest and sleep."
"I shall try, if you say you love me."
"I _love_ you," Honor said with fervour. It did not matter to her that
he might presently be rambling and forget all about her and his fevered
dreams of her. It was the truth that she loved him, and she spoke from
her heart.
He did not seem to hear her, for, already his thoughts wandered. "I keep
thinking and dreaming the wildest things and get horribly mixed," he
said frowning and puzzled. "Was I buried for days and nights in the
ruins--with someone? then how is it I am here?"
"You were buried for one night with Mrs. Meredith, and you were both
rescued in the morning."
His eyes contracted suddenly. "A pretty little creature--dear little
thing!--brainless, but beautiful. One could be almost fond of her if she
did not bore one to tears!" He turned painfully on his side and Honor
placed a pillow under his shoulders. "Ah, that's easier!--thanks,
nurse," he said mechanically. "Tears?... What about tears? Ah, Mrs.
Meredith's tears. She cried almost as much as the rain, poor kid! and we
were nearly washed out--like 'Alice,'" and he laughed huskily, forgetful
that he was again in possession of Honor's hand which he held in a vice.
"I am a damned fool to have tried it on with her. Beastly low-down
trick," he muttered almost inaudibly. "'You unspeakable cad!' she said,
and, by God! I deserved it. I should have known that she was not the
sort to play that rotten game. Ah, well! it is only another item on the
debit side of the ledger!" His eyes closed and he drifted into
unconsciousness. Honor's hand slipped from his hold and she rose to her
knees, choked with grief and longing. Oh, for the right to nurse him
tenderly! "Oh, God! give him to me!" she cried in frenzied prayer.
Dalton did not recognise her again after that, and the next morning Mrs.
Bright handed over the case to the nurses from Calcutta.