Captain Desmond, V.C.

CHAPTER XII.

NOW IT'S DIFFERENT

The great monsoon – a majestic onrush of cloud hurtling across the heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder – had long since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and valley and water-courses innumerable with the voice of melody.

On the cedar-crowned heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound – plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred fairy falls.

Theo Desmond drank in the cool green wonder of it all with a keenly perceptive enjoyment; drew into his lungs deep draughts of the strong, clean mountain air; watched the frail curtain of mist swaying, lifting, spreading to a pearl-white film, till, through a sudden rent, the red gold of sunset burned, deepening to a mass of velvet shadow the inexpressible blue of rain-washed hills.

His post of observation on this August evening was the saturated verandah of "The Deodars," where he had flung himself full length in Honor's canvas chair, a pipe between his teeth; hands locked behind his head; lavishly muddied boots and gaiters outstretched; the whole supple length of him eloquent of well-earned relaxation and repose.

Three days earlier he had ridden up through a world of driving mist and rain in the wake of Harry Denvil's doolie; having secured a blessed month of respite for himself and two months for the Boy, who, by the efforts of three tireless nurses and a redoubtable Scotch doctor, had been dragged back from death; and was but just beginning to take hold on life and health again.

From outset to close he had clung to the support of Desmond's presence with the tenacity of an exhausted body and a fevered brain; – a tenacity which could not fail to touch the older man's heart, and which had made it difficult for others to take their due share in the nursing. Thus the slow weeks of dependence on one side, and unwearied service on the other, together with the underlying bond between them, had wrought a closeness of friendship to which the Boy had long aspired; and which promised to add depth and stability to the warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after the wordless manner of men, gave him full assurance of both. It is just this power to draw out the best and strongest by the simple habit of taking it for granted that marks the true leader; the man who compels because he never insists; whose influence is less a force than a subtle radiation.

And now, as Theo Desmond sat alone fronting a world compact of mist and fire, and the fragrance of moist earth, his mind was mainly concerned with the Boy's future, and with certain retrenchments of his own expenditure, whereby alone he could hope to cancel the debts that remained after the disposal of Roland. His sole trouble in respect of these retrenchments lay in the fact that they must, to some extent, affect his wife. If only she could be persuaded to see the necessity as clearly as he did himself, all would be well. She and Harry had been good friends from the outset. He hoped – he believed – she would understand.

Light footsteps on the boards behind him brought a smile to his lips; but he neither turned nor stirred. An instant later, hands cool and imponderable as snowflakes rested on his forehead, and silken strands of hair brushed it softly as his wife leaned over him, nestling her head against his own.

"Are you very happy sitting there?" she whispered.

"Supremely happy."

"Why? Because you're so nice and wet, and messy?"

"Yes; and a few other reasons as well."

"What other reasons? Me?"

"Naturally, you dear little goose! Come round and let me get a sight of you, instead of perching behind me like a bird."

She came round obediently, standing a little away from him, – a slim strip of colour that reflected the uncertain sea-tint of her eyes, – and looked down upon his disordered appearance with a small grimace.

"I'm not sure that I love you properly, Theo, when you're quite as muddy as that."

"Oh yes, you do; come on!"

And putting out an arm, he drew her down till she knelt beside him, her hands resting on his knee. He covered them quietly with one of his own.

"Ladybird, it's turning out a glorious evening! Come for a walk."

"Oh, Theo, don't be so uncomfortably energetic! I hate going out in the wet. You only came in half an hour ago, and you've been walking all day."

He laughed – the glad laugh of a truant schoolboy – and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I'm capable of walking all night too! Only then you might imagine the hot weather had turned my brain. But indeed, little woman, if you had been sickened with sunlight and scorched earth as I have been for the last three months, you'd understand how a man may feel a bit lightheaded in the first few days that he's quit of it all."

"And was I very horrid to be playing up here in the cool all the time?" she asked, pricked by the memory of Honor's words to one of her rare touches of compunction.

"My dear, what nonsense! It would have been double as bad if you had been there too."

Sincerity rang in his tone, and she noted the fact with a sigh of relief. She was not altogether heartless, this fragile slip of womanhood. She merely desired, like many of us, the comfort of being selfish without the unbecomingness of appearing so.

"We'll sit out here together and talk till it gets dark," she announced with a pretty air of decision, lest the invitation to walk should be renewed. "Stay where you are, and I'll fetch a stool. It's quite a treat to see you looking lazy for once in a way."

She brought a stool and established herself close to him. He acknowledged her presence without removing his eyes from the storm-tossed glory of the sky.

"Look, Ladybird – look!" he urged in a low tone. "We can talk afterwards."

But her attention was caught and riveted by the reflection of the glory in her husband's face.

"Does it please you so tremendously?" she asked in honest bewilderment. "Just a sunset! You've seen hundreds of them before."

He smiled and answered nothing. Speech and emotion inhabit different hemispheres of a man's brain; woman alone is rash enough to force them into unwilling union.

The clinging garment of mist, driven and dispersed by day's last flash of self-assertion, lay heaped and tumbled in the valleys, and the mountains stood knee-deep in an opalescent sea of foam. It was as though Nature, in a mood of capricious kindliness, had rent the veil, that mortals might share in the triumphal passing of the sun, whose supremacy had been in eclipse these many days.

Above the deep-toned quiet of earth, blurred and ragged clouds showed every conceivable tone of umber and grey, from purest pearl-white to darkest depths of indigo. Only low down, where a blue-black mass ended with level abruptness, a flaming strip of day was splashed along the west – one broad brush-stroke, as it were, by some Titanic artist whose palette held liquid fire. Snows and mist alike caught and flung back the radiance in a maze of rainbow hues; while beyond the bank of cloud a vast pale fan of light shot outward and upward to the very zenith of heaven. Each passing minute wrought some imperceptible change of grouping, form, or colour; blurred masses melted to flakes and strata on a groundwork of frail blue; orange deepened to crimson; and anon earth and sky were on fire with tints of garnet and rose. Each several snow-peak blushed like an angel surprised in a good deed. Splashes of colour sprang from cloud-tip to cloud-tip with invisible speed, till even the chill east glowed with a faint hue of life.

And in the midst of the transient splendour, enveloped by the isolation of the falling day, husband and wife sat silent, absorbed in strangely opposite reflections. Verily they dwelt in different planets, these two who had willed to be one, but whom forces more potent held it inexorably apart.

Desmond had long since passed beyond the border-line of definite thought; while Evelyn's mind rapidly reverted to the more congenial atmosphere of things terrestrial. An unknown force was urging her to speak openly to her husband, to rid herself of the shadow that had begun to tarnish the bright surface of life. It would be easier to speak in dusk than in bald daylight – easier also before the bloom of reunion had been rubbed off by the prosaic trivialities of life. In her present position, too, it would be possible to avoid his gaze; and she found a singular difficulty in tampering with facts when Theo's eyes were on her face.

She watched him speculatively for a few moments, and wondered what change would come over him when her tale was told. Anger frightened and repelled her; and for all his hastiness she had seldom seen more than a mere spark of his inner fire.

He seemed to have forgotten her existence; and by way of gentle reminder she shifted her position.

"Theo," she said under her breath.

He felt the movement without catching the sound of his name, and turned to her quickly, impulsive speech upon his lips.

"By the way, Ladybird, there's something I want to tell you, and this is a good opportunity."

The coincidence so startled her that her own half-fledged impulse scurried back to its nest. Nor was she certain whether the sigh that escaped her expressed disappointment or relief.

"What is it?" she asked – "something nice?"

The characteristic question set him smiling.

"You must judge for yourself. It chiefly concerns the Boy. You're fond of him, aren't you?"

"Yes; he's nice enough. But why?"

"You wouldn't mind if we put ourselves out a little to get him out of a difficulty?"

"Well, that would rather depend on what we had to do." Her tone, though still pleasant, was guarded. "What kind of difficulty?"

"Money."

She turned her face away something suddenly, and felt very thankful that day was fading from the sky.

"Do you mean – lending him money?" she asked blankly.

"No – giving it. I prefer it that way. There's no need to tell you his troubles in detail; it would hardly be fair to him. They, are of a kind you can't know anything about; and I hope you never will."

In the fewest possible words he gave her an outline of Harry's story; of the parting with Roland, and the promise he had exacted in return for his help. He spoke throughout with such unfailing kindness that vexation pricked and stung her, like thorns under the skin. She might have told him after all. He would not have been angry. Now she had been forestalled. She failed to perceive that the backslidings of his wife must of necessity touch him more nearly than those of his subaltern, and that to her own extravagance was added a host of petty evasions and deceits such as a man of his type would be little able to condone or understand.

"You see," he was saying when her mind harked back from the excursion into her own point of view, "the poor fellow has done all he can towards putting matters straight, and I am thankful I can manage the rest myself, so as to give him a fair start for the future."

"But how much is —your share?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"Rather more than eight hundred rupees."

"And you have actually —done it, Theo?"

"Yes. You surely couldn't have wished otherwise?"

For a moment she hesitated, then her repressed bitterness brimmed over.

"Oh, I don't know. Only I think you might have considered me a little first. I've more right to your money than he has; and if you can afford to throw away eight hundred rupees on a careless, extravagant subaltern, you could quite well let me go to Simla; or at least add something to my dress allowance. It's not so very easy to manage on the little you give me."

She spoke with averted face in a tone of clear hardness, and each word smote her husband like a small sharp stone.

"I am sorry you see it that way," he said, a new restraint in his voice, "and that you don't find your allowance sufficient. I give you all I can, and you seem to have pretty frocks enough, anyhow. If I had eight hundred rupees to throw away, – as you choose to express it, – I should hardly have spoken of putting ourselves out; in fact, I shouldn't have spoken at all. But you have been such good friends with the Boy all along that I hoped you would be ready to help give him a hand up. I can only manage such a sum by knocking two hundred off my pay for the next four months. This means cutting down expenses a little; but we can easily do it, Ladybird —if we pull together."

At any other time such an appeal from Theo would have proved irresistible, would have drawn them into a closer union of thought and purpose than they had ever attained as yet. But the appeal came at the wrong moment, and Evelyn Desmond sat silent, her hands so fast interlocked that her rings bruised their delicate surface.

"I am thinking of the Boy's mother as well as himself, you see," her husband urged with increasing gentleness; "he is her only son, and she is wrapped up in him; and I know from experience what that means."

She lifted her head and faced him.

"You think a great deal too much about – those sort of stray people, Theo, and it's rather hard on me. Why am I to be made uncomfortable on account of Mrs Denvil, when I've never even met her in my life?"

"If you can't see that for yourself, Ladybird, I'm afraid I can't tell you. I've no taste for preaching sermons."

"It would be rather a mercy if you had no taste for acting them either," she retorted, with a little laugh that failed to take the edge off her words. "I don't much like them in any form. How are you going to cut down expenses?"

"Chiefly in ways that need not concern you. But to start with, I'm afraid I must take you and Honor down with me on the third of next month. I can do nothing while I am crippled by a double establishment. You'll barely miss four weeks up here, and the heat is over earlier in Kohat than in the Punjab. Paul gets his leave when mine is up, and he will spend it here with the Boy, so as to take the last month of rent off my hands."

"So you've settled it all without saying a word to me?"

"Yes. I had to fix things up before I left. It's a pity the difficulty includes Honor, but I don't think she'll mind when I tell her why."

"Oh dear, no; Honor won't mind. I believe she's happier in Kohat, – but – "

"But you are not?" he broke out abruptly, leaning forward and searching her face with anxious eyes.

The vehement question startled her.

"I never said that, Theo – and it isn't true. Only – I do hate the ugliness and the heat, and September's the loveliest month of all up here."

"Doesn't it make things any easier to feel you are helping the Boy by giving up these few weeks of enjoyment?"

"No – it doesn't. Not a bit."

Desmond frowned.

"Try and fancy yourself in a strait like that, Evelyn, and the thundering relief it would be to get out of it."

His words stabbed her unwittingly.

"I'm not good at fancying things, and I'm not good at cutting down expenses either – I was never taught. I hope you don't do these uncomfortable sort of things often, Theo. It seems to me you're too much inclined to rush in and help people without stopping to think of – of other people at all! It would have been much better for the Boy if you'd left him to get clear of his muddle, instead of upsetting every one by spending money on him that you can't really spare."

Her husband leaned farther back into the shadow, his mouth hardened to a rigid line. All that he chose to say on the subject had been said.

Emboldened by his silence, and the fact that his face was hidden from her, she continued her small flow of remonstrance, undermining herself more completely with each fresh word.

"It was all very well while you were a bachelor for you to go throwing your life and your money about so foolishly. But now it's different; and I don't think you have a right to do it any more. Where's the good of us trying so hard to live on our pay, if it's only to be flung about to help subalterns who don't try at all? You can't cure Mr Denvil of being casual; and for all your generosity, you'll probably find him in just as bad a hole again by this time next year."

The words stung him to sharp retort.

"I never asked for your opinion of the Boy, Evelyn; and you seem to forget that he has given me his word."

"Oh, no doubt he has! It's easy enough to make promises when one's unhappy; but it isn't so easy to keep them when things get smooth again." And she nodded her head wisely, for her conviction sprang from the depths of personal experience.

Her husband rose and walked to the verandah's edge. Here he remained standing, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his Norfolk coat, his eyes fixed absently on the last gleam of light in the west, where all that now remained of the sunset's stormy splendour was a handful of filmy fragments, like rose petals dropped from some Olympian rose-bush, and the sickle of a young moon, outrivalled by the mellow radiance of the evening star. The snows lay dead and cold, awaiting the resurrection of dawn. Their chill pallor struck at his heart in a manner new to him.

Evelyn studied his eloquent outline with a mild surprise. She was not a little proud of her valiant protest against his mistaken ideas; and he was surely not foolish enough to be annoyed because she had talked practical commonsense.

She went to him at last, and lightly touched his arm.

"You look as solemn as a funeral, Theo! Why don't you speak?"

"Because I have no more to say. Too much has been said already. I am sorry I mentioned the matter at all."

With that he turned from her and entered the house.

Honor met him on the threshold, and her eyes were quick to catch the lurking shadow in his. But she merely said what she had come to say.

"Mr Denvil is longing for you. I have done my small best to amuse him; only there comes a stage when nothing will satisfy him but you. Where's Evelyn?"

"Outside there. It's time she came in."

Honor found her by the verandah rails, standing like a pensive ghost in the dying light.

"Studying the sunset, Evelyn?" she remarked cheerfully. "That's a new departure for you!"

Whereat Evelyn flung out both hands – a pretty appealing gesture all her own.

"Oh, Honor, Theo's been so troublesome! And he wants to take us down on the third of next month. He will explain to you the why of it all; perhaps you'll understand better than I could. Such high-flown notions don't appeal to me a bit. I think Theo is rather like that silly man in the Middle Ages who was always trying to fight windmills, or sheep, or something; and there really ought to be a law to prevent people who want to go about being unselfish to everybody from ever having wives at all!"

CHAPTER XIII.

IT ISN'T FAIR

The measure of a man's worth is not to be found in a heroic impulse or a fine idea, but in the steadfast working out of either through weeks and months – when the glow has faded from the heights, when the inspiration of an illumined moment has passed into the unrecognised chivalry of daily life; and the three months following upon that crucial August evening put no light tax upon Desmond's staying power, – the power that is the corner-stone of all achievement.

Border life is, in every respect, more costly than life in "down country" cantonments. To keep within the narrow bounds of his pay was already a difficult matter; and such minor retrenchments as could be achieved were inadequate to meet his present need. He saw that he would be called upon to part with one or two cherished possessions, acquired in days of young extravagance; and possibly to break into the few hundred rupees laid aside for emergencies shortly after his marriage.

Wine, cigars, and cigarettes must be banished outright; and he limited himself to one pipe and one "peg" a-day. Stores of all kinds were ruthlessly cut down; and only the Anglo-Indian housewife knows what it means to be flung almost entirely upon the tender mercies of the Bazaar. Informal dinner-parties, for which the Desmonds were famous, became rare events; and nights at Mess – a favourite and justifiable luxury – were reduced in number as far as might be without eliciting remonstrance from his brother officers. For in India, and more especially in the Army of India, it is profoundly true that "no man liveth unto himself." In the Land of the Open Door the second of the two great commandments is apt to be set before the first; and nowhere, perhaps, is the bond of union stronger, more compelling, than in the isolated regiments of the Frontier Force. But, with due regard for this unwritten law, Desmond accomplished much in those few months of unremitting self-denial; and if his friends noted certain changes in his way of life, they accepted these in the true spirit of comradeship, without question or comment.

Even Wyndham kept silence, though he had fuller knowledge of his friend's abstemiousness, and was disturbed by a great longing to remove the hidden cause. But intimate speech played a minor part in the friendship of these two men. The very depth and strength of their feeling for each other constrained them to a particular reticence in the matter of self-expression.

On the first occasion of Paul's dining at the blue bungalow, after his return from Murree, Desmond spoke a few words of apology for the absence of wine and cigars.

"Sorry to treat you shabbily, old man," he said, when they were alone. "Just a little necessary economy. It won't last long."

Paul nodded, smiling, and quietly proffered his own cigar-case.

"At least you'll not refuse one of mine, Theo," he said; and their talk drifted into the fertile channel of "shop," and the prospect of serious collision with Russia, which at that time loomed on the political horizon.

Paul was thus left to draw his own conclusions, which were not complimentary to his friend's wife. For reserve has its drawbacks, like every other virtue; and those who practise it often, forget that if there is a time for silence, there is also a time for speech.

Evelyn clung tenaciously to her disapproval of the whole proceeding. The scarcity of stores, and of pleasant little dinners, were the only retrenchments that directly disturbed her comfort, and she made the most of them, though the problems of housekeeping fell mainly upon Honor's shoulders. The girl's readiness to accept Evelyn's burden, as a matter of course, could not fail to rouse Desmond's admiration: and these three months of friction and stress, of working bravely together for one end, went far to strengthen the bond of their friendship.

Evelyn contented herself with a thinly veiled air of martyrdom, and with raising objections whenever opportunity offered. Only after Denvil's first dinner did she venture a direct attack. For on this occasion economy was not. Wine and cigars appeared with the dessert; and the two men sat an inordinately long while over both. But the inner significance of her husband's acts being a sealed book to Evelyn Desmond, she spent the evening in a state of suppressed irritation, which, on the Boy's departure, overflowed in petulant reproof.