Captain Desmond, V.C.

CHAPTER XI.

YOU DON'T KNOW DESMOND

"Suffer with men, and like a man be strong."

Frank Olliver, looking remarkably fresh and cool in a holland gown of severe simplicity, greeted him from the verandah with a flour-covered hand. At the sound of hoofs, her ready brain had sprung to the right conclusion, and she hurried out to save him the necessity of dismounting. She had learned to know the value of minutes to a hard-worked man.

"Geoff told me," she said, a rare seriousness veiling the laughter of her eyes. "It's cruel bad news, but you mustn't dream of being anxious yet awhile, Theo, man. I'll be round by half-past eleven sharp; stay till you two are through with your work; rest this afternoon and come on again at seven, till morning. You'll just take one clear night in bed before I let you go shares in that part o' the work. You can trust him to me, can't you, though I am a mad Irishwoman? I'll promise not to be waking up the patient to take his sleeping draught, or any such cleverness!"

Her nonsense dispelled Desmond's gravity. "I can trust you as far as that, I think!" he answered with a laugh; "but I won't have you knocking yourself up again over this. The lad's my subaltern, and it's my business. You shall take to-night, though, if you've a mind to, and my best thanks into the bargain. God alone knows where we should all be without you."

"Just precisely where you are at present, no doubt!" But the softened tone betrayed her appreciation of his honest praise. "It's just a bad habit you've got into, that's the truth, and I've not the heart to break you of it either. But 'tis no time now for playing ball with compliments. I'm busy over a cake. My cook has a pain, an' swears 'tis cholera. An' what with dosing him, an' trying to convince him he's a fool, and seeing after Geoff's tiffin, I'll be melted to one tear-drop presently; but the good man'll have to dine at Mess to-night."

Desmond gathered up his reins, and she waved to him as he rode away.

Punctually at the half-hour she entered the sick-room – cool, practised, business-like, and took over her case as composedly as any trained nurse. For in those early days nursing was as persistent a feature of the hot weather as the punkah itself, and her skill had been acquired in a hard school.

The Boy had been installed, for greater comfort, in Desmond's own bed; and he greeted her with a faint smile of recognition.

"Poor, dear old fellow," she murmured tenderly, pushing the damp hair from his brow; "wait only till the ice comes, an' we'll pull you round finely, never fear."

His lids fell under her soothing touch, and sprinkling her fingers with lavender water she passed them across and across his forehead; a look in her eyes the while that none save her "brother officers" had ever seen there; a look such as her children might have seen, had she been so blest.

Among acquaintances Mrs Olliver passed for a masculine woman, boisterous and good-humoured, though somewhat lacking in the lesser proprieties and affectations which passed for delicacy of feeling. But with all her angularity and mannish ways, she was a fine mother wasted: and in her heart she knew it. There are too many such among us. A mystery of pain and unfulfilled hope which there seems no justifying, save that at times the world is the gainer by their individual loss; and Frank Olliver, being denied the blessedness of children, mothered all the men of her regiment, the formidable Colonel not excepted.

Having charmed her patient into a light sleep, she made a noiseless tour of the room, smiling at the revelation of Paul Wyndham's hand in the exquisite neatness wherewith all things had been set in order. A towel pinned to the punkah frill brought the faint relief of moving air nearer to Denvil's face. In the hasty manner of its pinning Theo's workmanship stood revealed, and the smile deepened in her eyes. She knew each least characteristic of these her grown children; knew, and loved them, with a strong unspoken love.

Her next move brought her to the thermometer. It registered 95°. A long while after sundown the mercury might drop three degrees, certainly not more. She cast an anxious glance at the sleeper, and her quick eye caught the lagging of the punkah, broken by fitful jerks, which denotes that the coolie – squatting on his heels in the verandah – is pulling the inexorable rope in his dreams.

Opening the outer door and letting in a blast as from the mouth of hell, she reasoned with that much-enduring human machine in a forcible Irish whisper, that set the towel flapping and billowing like a flag in a wind. The room was none the cooler for his exertions, but in such intensity of heat mere movement of the air serves to prevent suffocation.

Mrs Olliver sat down beside her patient and her mind reverted to her own domestic calamity. She wondered with a simple practical wonderment, devoid of fear, whether or no she had a case of cholera in her compound. To-morrow it would be well to ascertain the truth; and in the meantime she dismissed the matter from her mind.

Before tiffin was over at the station Mess, Wyndham made his appearance, and with a friendly nod of welcome took the reins out of her hands. But by seven o'clock she was back at her post; and one look at Harry's flushed face and unseeing eyes convinced her that the next twelve hours would make a high demand upon her energies, and her resolute hopefulness of heart.

Desmond came in before Mess. His eyes were grave and anxious, and for many minutes he stood looking down upon the boy in silence; the slim uprightness of his figure emphasised by the close-fitting white uniform, with its wide splash of scarlet at the waist. Then he crossed to the table and studied the chart, that strange hieroglyph, like a negative print of forked lightning, so full of dread meaning to those who can read it aright. The latest entry was 106°.

"You saw Mackay?" he asked, under his breath.

"I did."

"You're in for a hard night of it. I'd better stay up and help."

"I'll not have you at any price," she answered bluntly.

He frowned. But the fact that he did not insist spoke volumes to her understanding heart.

"Swear you'll send Amar Singh to wake me if it seems necessary."

"I will – no fear."

"He'll sit handy, just outside, all night and help you in any possible way. He's a jewel at times like this. I'll look in again when I get home."

"Come back early," she commanded with a sudden smile, "and have a solid night of sleep. It's plain your needing it badly."

"Thanks. I believe I am. I'll make a fresh start afterwards and take my fair share of the work. Jove! It's a furnace of a night. There goes the trumpet; I'll be back before long."

His words were truer than he knew.

Shortly after nine o'clock, while Mrs Olliver was persuading her semi-delirious patient to swallow two tablespoonfuls of chicken-broth, quick footsteps and the clink of spurs made her sit suddenly upright, with a listening look in her eyes. She knew the country of her service well enough to be prepared for anything at any hour of the day or night – and she was barely surprised when, two minutes later, Desmond stood before her in his forage cap, his sword buckled on over his mess-jacket and held high to prevent it from clanking.

"What is it?" she asked in a hurried whisper. "A beacon fire alight?"

He nodded, and passed a handkerchief across his forehead, for he had come at lightning speed.

"A raid of sorts – out Hangu way. Can't tell if it'll be a big thing or not. The whole garrison's ordered out."

It was a matter of seconds, and he spoke in a breathless rush.

"I dashed on ahead to give you a few instructions. Olliver is ordering Griselda to be saddled and brought across at once. If the affair looks serious we'll send an orderly back to fetch a doolie from the hospital, come on here for you and the Boy, and see you safely to the Fort, where you must stay till further orders. Get all possible necessaries together, and be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

"If we move him to-night, Theo, 'twill be – the end of it all."

A spasm of pain crossed his face.

"I hope to God it mayn't be necessary. But we must take our chance of that. It won't be safe for you to have a light in the house, with every door open, and the city full of budmashes.24 Can you manage with just a night-light carefully screened?"

"Sure I can. I'll manage to see with me fingers well enough!"

"Right! Amar Singh'll sit outside the door. He'll not sleep a wink, I promise you."

The suspicion of a tremor in her brave smile caught at his heart. He pressed her shoulder with a reassuring hand.

"Sorry Olliver couldn't see you before leaving," he said gently. "Hullo, there's Paul; I must be off. God bless you for a plucky woman, Frank. We'll all get back – sometime, never fear." And in an instant she was alone.

Nothing remained but to blow out the lamp and set the screened night-light on a table farthest from the outer doors. Its uncertain flicker served to make darkness visible and through the darkness she crept back to her station by the bed.

Denvil, who had fallen into an unrefreshing sleep, stirred and tossed with broken mutterings that threatened every moment to break out into the babble of delirium; and for a while she sat beside him in a stunned quietness, her ears strained to catch the sounds that came up from below – the hasty gathering of men and horses and mules; the jingle of harness; brisk words of command; the tramping of many feet. Comforting sounds, since they spoke of the protective presence of Englishmen.

But those that followed were less reassuring, for they were sounds of massed movement, of an organised body under way: the muffled tread of infantry, the cheerful clatter of cavalry at the trot. She knew the order of their going, to the minutest detail. A vision of it all was photographed upon her brain as she had witnessed it these many times within the past ten years; and perhaps owing to the mental vividness of her race, custom had not yet ground the edge off the poignant moment of departure.

Rapidly, inexorably, the sounds retreated toward the hills; and as they drew farther away she listened the more intently. It was as if her spirit, freed from her body, followed the men she loved, till the unheeding night absorbed them – till hearing, stretched to its utmost limit, could catch no lightest echo of sound.

Then silence, intensified by stifling darkness, enveloped her, pressing in upon heart and brain like an invisible force that held her prisoner against her will.

The practical side of her fought squarely against this obsession of the intangible; but it persisted and prevailed. The mocking shadows crowded about her, compelled her to a discomfortable realisation of her solitude in a station needing the perpetual alertness of armed men to ensure peace and safety. For Kohat city boasted a creditable average of bad characters and murder cases – a corpse more or less on the Border being of no more consequence than the fall of a sparrow; and the Waziris had of late been unusually daring in regard to Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station itself; and for all her courage, Frank Olliver was by no means fearless. The two are a contradiction in terms. Only the unimaginative are fearless, and only the keenly imaginative, capable of feeling fear in every fibre, ever scale the heights of true courage.

Save for the wakeful vigilance of sentries, the huddled bungalows of the cantonment lay below her empty as a handful of shells on a lone shore; and in the overpowering stillness each least sound stood out crisp and clear-cut as twigs against a winter sunset; the fitful rustle of bedclothes; Rob breathing peacefully in a distant corner; the whisper of the punkah; the querulous creaking of the rope answered by a whine from the back verandah, where a resigned coolie swayed a basket of damp straw, packed with bottles of milk and soda-water for Denvil's consumption during the night.

The reiteration of these still small voices grew distracting as the whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing thought, and compelling her to note every change in their pitiless regularity.

Resolved to break the spell by the only definite action available, she decided to prepare for the emergency which her brain refused to face. But on rising she was arrested by a voice from the bed – a voice not of speech but of song, a snatch from a burlesque the Boy had played in during the winter:

Denvil's deep baritone, distorted to a guttural travesty of itself, rose to a shout on the ascending notes of the last line. Then, without pause for breath, came the voice of speech – hurried, expressionless, heartrending to hear.

"Safe for an encore, that – what? Should ha' been Desmond, though. See him in tights you'd think he could slip through a wedding-ring. Done it too, by Jove! Better than horses that, in the long-run. – How about Grey Dawn? – Confound your luck! Always a dead cert till I lay anything on. Hold hard, though… I'm done with all that now… Wouldn't go back on Desmond – not for a mine of gold. You don't know Desmond; – wait till you're in a hole! Eight hundred rupees, I tell you – more than his month's pay! Said I was to keep quiet about it too. Not mail-day to-morrow, is it? Where's the use of writing to her? She'd never understand. Look out – some one's coming, – there by the door. Great Scott! It's – it's mother!"

The voice broke into an unnatural sound between a laugh and a sob, and Frank, who was already praying for the lesser evil of silence, bent over the Boy, soothing him with tender words and tone, as though she were his mother in very deed.

The delusion was strong upon him. He clung to her fiercely when she would have risen to fetch milk, overwhelming her with a rush of disjointed questions varied by snatches of enthusiasm for Desmond, till exhaustion reduced him to incoherent mutterings; and she was free at last to grope for milk and brandy and a fresh packing of wet sheets.

He grew quieter after a space, and sank into a more restful sleep, leaving Frank Olliver to face another spell of whispering silence; her ears strained now to catch the dread sound of a single horseman returning from the hills.

The first white streak of dawn found her still at her post, with hands quietly folded and unclosed eyes; found Amar Singh wide-eyed also, his lean face and figure rigid as a stone image, a bared sword lying like a flash of light across his knees.

And with the dawn came also the far-off mutter of the footsteps that night had stolen from her; an inverted repetition of the same sounds in a steady crescendo that rang like music in her ears – a sound to lift the heart.

The massed tramping of men and horses broke up at length, scattered in all directions, and within five minutes she looked up to find her husband in the doorway – a thickset man, with more of force than perception in his blunt features and heavily-browed eyes.

She rose and went to him straightway, her face alight with satisfaction, and he took a friendly hold of her arm by way of greeting. They had always been more like good comrades than man and wife, these two.

"Well, old girl," he said, "there was no show after all, you see. It seems that the raid didn't quite come off; and we had our scamper for nothing, worse luck! The Boy going on all right?"

"'Tis hard to tell. He's in a quiet sleep just now, anyway."

"You may as well come out of this, then, and give us some breakfast. I'm going to the Major's room to tidy up."

As his wife stepped back into the sick-room, Theo Desmond came quickly towards her.

"Well done," he said heartily; "you didn't expect us quite so soon, did you? Not a shot fired, and I should have been swearing all the way home – but for the Boy. Looks peaceful enough now, doesn't he? Temperature any lower?"

"Just a little, these last few hours. But he's been talking a deal of madness, poor fellow."

"What about?" he asked sharply. "Money?"

She smiled, with an odd mixture of pride and tenderness in her eyes.

"Faith, I can see what's been happening, Theo, clear as daylight. But I'll say no word to a soul, not even Geoff; you know that sure enough."

"Yes, I know it. But I'll feel grateful when he stops airing the subject."

Her low laugh had a break in it, and he scanned her face keenly.

"You're played out, Frank. I was afraid you were hardly fit for this sort of thing yet. You don't do a stroke more till to-morrow morning. Come along now and have five grains of quinine and some food. Amar Singh can mount guard in case the Boy wakes up."

Paul Wyndham greeted her with his nod and smile, which were apt to convey more friendliness than other people's words. Desmond set her ceremoniously in the place of honour; and the 6.30 breakfast, prepared at ten minutes' notice, and eaten in Mess uniform, proved a remarkably cheerful affair; one of those simple, commonplace events which, for all their simplicity, go far to cement friendship and form refreshing cases along the dusty path of life.

The morning post-bag contained an envelope in Evelyn's handwriting; and, the Ollivers being gone, Theo retired to the study to enjoy it at his leisure. It proved to be short, and contained little beyond querulous upbraiding. Her husband could almost catch the tone of her voice as he read; and the light of satisfaction left his face. Evelyn had an insatiable appetite for long and detailed letters, though she by no means returned them in kind; and it appeared that Theo had not written for a week. In the fulness of his days he had not realised the fact which was now brought forcibly to his notice.

"It's just laziness and selfishness," she wrote in her sweeping fashion, "when you know how I look out for your letters, to leave me a whole week without a line. If it was me, there might be some excuse, because there's always something or another going on, and I never seem to get a minute to sit down and write. But you must have hours and hours of spare time in the long days down there. I expect you play chess with Major Wyndham all the while, and quite forget about writing to me. I suppose if you were ill some one would have the decency to write and tell me. But if you don't write yourself directly you get this, I shall think something dreadful has happened; and it's such a nuisance not to know if you are all right. I can't enjoy things properly a bit."

And so on, ad lib., da capo, until the end.

Having read it through twice, with a flicker of amusement in his tired eyes, he sat down straightway, wrote for a quarter of an hour at the top of his speed, and left the letter ready for the afternoon post. It contained a polite apology for remissness, followed by an account in bare outline of his doings during the past five days; a few details in regard to Harry's illness; and an intimation that if letters were short, she must remember that, for the present, every hour of spare time would be taken up with nursing the Boy or writing detailed accounts to his mother. And, in truth, before that wearisome illness was over Mrs[.] Denvil and her boy's Captain had struck up a lasting friendship across six thousand miles of sea.

On her return from a tennis party the following afternoon Evelyn Desmond found the letter awaiting her; and her face took such rueful lines as she read it, that Honor's anxiety was roused.

"Evelyn– what is it?" she asked, a slight catch in her breath.

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders in meek resignation.

"Oh, it's only rather more Kohatish than usual! Mr. Denvil seems to be quite bad with typhoid, and Theo has been galloping over half the Frontier after outposts – such rubbishy work for a man like that! And – oh, you'd better read it all for yourself. You needn't bother about it having been written for me. It might just as well be a paragraph out of a newspaper!"

With a childish grimace she tossed the letter across the table. But hid in her heart lay the rankling knowledge that she had been both hasty and unjust to her husband, who had emphasised the fact by ignoring it, – a method peculiarly his own.

Honor read every line of the closely-written pages with eager interest, read also the much that had not been written, that Evelyn had failed to discern; and a great thankfulness overwhelmed her that she had refrained from adding her own passing vexation to the burden of work and anxiety already resting on her friend's shoulders.

Her spoken comment was brief and characteristic.