Banked Fires Part 13

"It will have to go if you want immunity from sickness," said Dalton.

"If _they_ don't mind it, I don't know why _we_ should. It rages chiefly in Panipara village itself, and is nothing to us."

"It comes on here afterwards with the flies," said Tommy.

"A few natives, more or less, wiped off the face of the earth hereabouts would be a benefit to Muktiarbad," drawled young Smart of the Railway from his seat on Mrs. Fox's right, which, by an unwritten law was always accorded to him at Station dinners.

"How very unfeeling!" cried two or three ladies in unison.

A vigorous argument arose to which Honor listened, deeply interested.

Panipara Jhil lay a few miles outside the Station, with the village of the same name lying on its banks. It occupied an area of a square mile or two of marsh land, was overrun with water-weeds and lotus plants, and dotted about with islands full of jungle growth and date-palms--a picturesque but unhealthy spot, dear to lovers of sport.

"The natives haven't the foggiest idea of hygiene," said the doctor finally. "But they cannot be argued with. They will continue their filthy habits though twenty to thirty per cent. of them get wiped out by cholera annually. Drain the _jhil_ and give them wells, and there'll be little or no sickness afterwards. Incidentally, several hundred _bighas_ of ground will be reclaimed for agricultural purposes, which will be a benefit to the owner."

"The Government will take its own time to consider the proposition, and a few years hence, when it has exhausted all the red tape available, it will be put through," said Honor. "In the meantime, the cholera, like the poor, will be 'with us always!'"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised," said the doctor meeting her eyes in swift appreciation of her verdict.

He said no more to her, for others intervened and the conversation changed.

Captain Dalton looked a trifle more cynical and dissatisfied than usual, Honor thought. His strong jaw and irregular features hid his thoughts, but not their reflection which showed a mental unrest. He was clearly not a happy man, and was plainly a discordant element in light-hearted company. "A real wet blanket," Tommy whispered in her ear. "If one makes a joke he either doesn't hear it, or thinks it not worth laughing at.

Something has turned him sour, so he hates to see people happy."

But Honor was not in agreement with him. "I grant he is an embittered man--he looks it; but he is quite willing that you should enjoy yourself so long as you don't force your high spirits on him. If one's mind is not in accord with blithesomeness, one surely might be excused from taking part in it."

"I do believe you like the blighter?" Tommy cried reproachfully.

"I have every reason to," she answered stoutly.

"Because he cured you of snake-bite? Doctors get a pull over us poor laymen when it comes to matters of life and death. They do their duty, and you are grateful for all time," at which Honor laughed heartily, for Tommy was looking personally injured.

"There's Mrs. Meredith!" he continued. "She talks of him with tears in her eyes as though he were a saint--Old Nick, more likely!--He has been endowed with every virtue when he has none, simply because he put the Squawk to rights." Tommy had seen Joyce that afternoon and went on to describe his visit. "She was looking topping, so was the kid; which makes it all the more mysterious, her not turning up. But, my word, she is pretty! One might be excused for any indiscretion when she makes eyes at one!"

However, to his disappointment, Honor showed no symptoms of jealousy.

"I'll wager she neglected you for her baby!" She said. "Mrs. Meredith has no interest in young men."

"She had plenty in me. We grew quite intimate--talked of the weather and _anopheles_ mosquitoes, and improved the occasion by rubbing _eau de Cologne_ on the bites."

"How very thrilling! and she forgot all about you the moment you had left!"

"Everyone forgets all about Tommy the moment he has left," put in Jack, thinking it about time to remind them of his presence.

He was a handsome young athlete of twenty-five, with the reputation of having played in the Rugby International. He owned a complexion inconveniently given to blushing. He and Tommy chummed together in a three-roomed bungalow near the Police Court and were generally known as inseparables. Both played polo and tennis with skill and kept the Station entertained by their high spirits and resourcefulness.

Honor's attention was diverted by an animated discussion among her elders respecting the duties of a wife and mother in the East.

"A mother is perfectly justified in taking her child home if it cannot stand the climate," Mrs. Fox was saying.

"I suppose the question to be decided is, whom a woman cares most for, child or husband--whether she will live away from her husband for the sake of the child, or from the child for the sake of the husband, presuming that the climate is not suitable to children," said a guest.

A strident voice was heard to remark that women had no business to marry men whose careers were in the East, if they meant to live away from them most of the time. "It's a tragedy for which doctors are mainly responsible," with a sniff and a challenging glance at Captain Dalton.

"Oh, you doctors!" laughed Mrs. Bright, shaking her finger at him. "See what mischief you are accountable for!--ruined lives, broken homes!"

"In many cases, it is a charity to part husbands and wives," said the doctor grimly.

"Hear, hear!" from Mrs. Fox, at which Mrs. Ironsides was shocked.

"I hope Mrs. Meredith will not go home so soon," she said. "It will be a pity, when she and her husband have been so lately married. Somebody should influence her to remain and give the hills a trial. They seem to suit children very well."

"If she goes home it will be nothing short of a calamity," said Honor quietly, thinking of Ray Meredith's devotion and his wife's unsophisticated and undeveloped mind. "It would never do unless she means to return immediately."

"A child of tender years needs its mother," said a lady whose heart yearned for her little one in England. "No stranger will give it the same sympathy or care."

"It is a difficult problem to which there is no solution," said Mrs.

Bright.

"I always feel, when I see a wife living for years at home while her husband remains out here, that there is no love lost between them. The children serve as an excellent excuse for the separation," said Honor, colouring at her own audacity in voicing an opinion so p.r.o.nounced. "No reason on earth should be strong enough to part those who care deeply for each other."

"Hear, hear!" murmured Tommy under his breath, while Mrs. Fox laughed disagreeably. "An excellent sentiment coming from you, Miss Bright, who have no experience. Long may you subscribe to it."

Honor blushed still deeper. "I have my ideals," she returned.

"I trust they will never be shattered!" the lady sneered.

Again Dalton's eyes met Honor's with strange intentness. Feeling out of her depth she had looked involuntarily to him for the subtle sympathy, instinct told her was in his att.i.tude to her, and she had received it abundantly in the slow smile which softened his expression to one of absolute kindness. It created a glow at her heart, to linger with her for the rest of the evening.

"Whenever I used to run home on short 'leave of absence' to see if Honor had not altogether forgotten me," said Mrs. Bright, smiling reminiscently, "and dared to hint at an extension, my husband would squander all his T.A. in cablegrams threatening to divorce me on the spot in favour of some mythical person if I did not return by the next mail. Wasn't that so, dear?"

"Gross exaggeration, my love. I could never get you to take a respectable holiday, for just as I was beginning to enjoy my liberty as a gra.s.s-widower, you would bob up serenely with 'No, you don't' on every line of your rosy face. It was worth anything, however, to see those English roses back again."

("The reason why Honor is such a nice girl," a lady once told Captain Dalton, "is because she has such a charming example of love in her home.

Love is in her bones; her parents are so perfectly united that it is impossible for Honor to be anything but a good wife. Parents are immensely responsible for their children's psychology.")

"I have never ceased to thank Providence that I have no children!" said the wife of a railway official, with a sigh of contentment, "so the tragedy of separation has never affected me. I can honestly say that I have never left my husband for more than a day since we married, fifteen years ago!" and she reared her thin neck out of her evening gown and looked about her for congratulations.

"Lord, how sick of her he must be!" whispered Tommy under his breath, to the delight of Jack and Honor. "Life would be stale and unprofitable if I could not repeat the honeymoon every autumn when my wife returned from the hills. So thrilling to fall in love with one's own wife every year!"

"Which proves that you will make a very bad husband," said Honor severely. "Out of sight out of mind."

"He won't talk so glibly of sending his wife to the hills when he has discovered that she has been carrying on with Snooks of the Convalescent Depot while he has been stewing in the plains," said Jack with a _blase_ air.

"Since when have you turned cynic, Mr. Darling?" Honor asked, astonished. "It doesn't become you in the least!"

"Jack had an enlightening holiday in Darjeeling last month when he had ten days during the _Pujas_," Tommy explained with reprisals in his eye.

"It accounts for his att.i.tude of mind. Having strict principles and a faint heart, no one had any use for him up there but Mrs. Meredith and the Y. M. C. A.----"

"Don't listen to him, Miss Bright," Jack interrupted.