Banked Fires Part 25

Though they love me dearly, and I them, I don't feel as if I could leave my husband alone now that he is so broken and sad. We share the same bereavement, and need each other now more than ever before. Besides, he hardly realises how dependent he is upon me. I have done so much for him all these years that he will be utterly stranded without me. It would be cruel."

Honor smiled at her affectionately, thinking it was very sweet--this spirit of love and forgiveness springing to life after years of habitual submission. A truly feminine quality, upon which the masculine nature has never failed to draw, and which would continue as long as women remained womanly for the salvation of men.

While at Sombari, Honor heard news of Captain Dalton's doings in the District. His fame as a surgeon had spread far and wide with various results on the ignorant and enlightened. In the case of the former, he inspired more fear than respect, and Mr. Meek could tell of mischievous rumours afloat which he had done his best to dispel so far as his influence went. One of the tales in circulation was that Captain Dalton was an agent of the Government sent to cripple the youths of the District and otherwise render them helpless in the event of a revolution.

"And when is such an event likely to happen?" the Padre had asked.

Who can tell?--Weren't there mutterings and discontent in big towns?--All who travelled and went to the cities came back with news of great things to come if all that the people demanded was not granted by the _Sarcar_.

"What are the people demanding?" Mr. Meek persisted in knowing.

That was best known to the highly educated. What did the poor agriculturist know of what was good for the country? He was like sheep led to the pasture by those in authority. But when the _Sarcar_ sent among the sheep a butcher with no stomach for the suffering of the helpless ones, it was time to protest and to see to it that he was recalled or driven away. Some were for even more lawless methods of ridding the countryside of this monster who disembowelled the sick and suffering, severed limbs, and robbed people of their rights.

Mr. Meek's inquiries elicited that the doctor had performed certain surgical operations in some cases of accidental injury, which the neglect of sanitary precautions had rendered necessary. An operation for appendicitis had resulted in death through bad nursing and failure to carry out instructions. The women of a zemindar's household had fed his son on solids too soon after the removal of his appendix, which act of ignorance and disobedience had produced inflammation, agony, and death.

The doctor was regarded as his murderer, and evil looks followed him whenever he pa.s.sed that way.

"What butchery!" one had afterwards exclaimed at a council of five called to discuss the enormity of the doctor's conduct and his growing record of outrages upon humanity. "To extract a portion of the intestines was madness and murder, for who can exist without intestines as G.o.d made them?--and his effrontery to put the blame upon the women who in the tenderness of their hearts had fed the youth on _dhal_ and rice for the restoration of his strength--_ai Khodar_! What harm was there ever in plain _dhal_ and rice? It was but an excuse, and now there is Gunesh Prosad without a son to inherit his estate, and all because of this man who is sent among us to cut up human bodies while they are yet alive!"

"It is a great danger to us. Someone must teach this _Sarcari_ butcher of human flesh a lesson, or where might it not end?" another had remarked in complete sympathy.

"But," put in a third cautiously, fearful of making himself unpopular by repeating the tale with which he was fit to burst, "didst hear of that legend concerning the coolie of Panipara _busti_ who went forth as a beater for the hunt, the time the Collector Sahib and others took long spears and killed wild boars? He was gored, and lay on the gra.s.s disembowelled, and as one dead. Quickly on hearing of the accident came the doctor Sahib in his _hawa-ghari_, himself at the wheel, and leaping out he knelt on the gra.s.s, and in a twinkling with strange gloves, and water in a _gumla_[15], he washed the coolie's intestines and restored them where they belonged, after which with a needle, even as a _darzi_ sews garments, he st.i.tched up the wound! Those watching turned sick of stomach, but not so the doctor Sahib. Even the Collector Sahib turned his back and called for a gla.s.s of spirits. _Ai--Ma!_--how he did it was a miracle, but the man is at the hospital in the Station, recovering, and these are true words; on the head of my eldest born I swear I have repeated it just as it was told to me."

[Footnote 15: Earthen receptacle.]

"It is a fable; believe it not. More likely he is dead and his body already cremated."

"Not so. I was told I could see him, if I willed, with mine own eyes.

Many have journeyed to the Station so that they might with their own eyes behold him. The doctor Sahib may be unfeeling, even bloodthirsty, but he is devil-possessed with cunning to work magic."

"Even so, he is a danger and should be removed. Who knows what excuse he might take to use the knife on thee and me and the little ones of our households? _Tobah!_ he is a wolf, not a man. And this one the _Sarcar_ has sent among us to mutilate, kill, and rob us of our comforts and rights. Soon, he will take away the _jhil_ from Panipara _busti_ so that the people will be put to the labour of dragging water out of deep wells, and for the washing of their garments, they will have to walk many _kos_ to the river!"

Mr. Meek had learned a great deal more from his converts of the sayings of the villagers and their feeling against Captain Dalton, all of which Mrs. Meek recounted to Honor in order that she might put the doctor on his guard. The latter, however, gave her no opportunity to speak to him, so she left it to Joyce to tell him of his growing unpopularity.

This Joyce did on one of their outings in the Rolls-Royce and only succeeded in bringing a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt to the doctor's lips. He had no apprehensions whatever for his safety and the subject, therefore, was speedily forgotten. Joyce learned how to drive, and one afternoon in December had the supreme satisfaction of motoring out to camp and back again in the doctor's car. Her pleasure in his surprise was so childlike and exuberant that Meredith had not the heart to show his disapproval of the means by which she had attained this end, and smothered his own feelings that they should not damp her spirits.

"It was very charming indeed of him to spare so much of his time to you," he said with reference to the doctor's tutelage. "But why should he take all that trouble, do you think?"

"Because he likes me, of course," she replied ingenuously. "People don't usually do things for those for whom they care nothing," she said perching on his knee and lighting his cigarette for him. Her engaging impulses of affection were most disarming to Meredith's suspicions.

"But--suppose I object to his liking you to such a remarkable extent?"

he said with admirable self-control.

"But why should you? Aren't you glad?"

"Devil a bit! I am wondering whether or not I should consider it an impertinence, the way he places his leisure at your disposal."

"But you yourself say I am the Bara Memsahib of the Station. Isn't it expected of the men to show me plenty of respect and heaps of attention?

You wouldn't like to see me left out in the cold?"

"So long as they remember the 'respect'----"

"Ah, now you're talking!" she said severely. "Have I ever done anything to make you doubt my right to the respect of everyone here?"

Meredith kissed away the frown, considerably lighter of heart than he had been for some time. No man looking into the sweet pure eyes could fail to respect her! A fellow would indeed be a rascal if he tried to lead such a perfect lamb astray!

So the drives continued even after the lessons were no longer necessary, Joyce often at the wheel with Captain Dalton beside her keeping strict watch over their safety and that of the car which he particularly valued, while listening idly to her prattle. The curve of her cheek and sweep of her eyelashes delighted his artistic love of beauty, so that though he had plumbed the shallow depths of her mind at the start, he was still entertained by such superficialities as artlessness and loveliness.

"When are you going to show me the ruins?" she asked once, when in full view of the tall minarets and crumbling dome of the ancient palace. "No one seems to have sufficient interest in them to show them to me."

"There is nothing much to see beyond jungle and brick-work," he said, bored at the bare idea of plodding over the ground he had already visited, which was interesting only to globe-trotters and lovers of antiquities.

"I am crazy to see some of the old enamel still to be found on the bricks if you look for it. They say it is a lost art. Are there any snakes and leopards?"

"Possibly snakes, but no leopards. They were gotten rid of long ago, I am told."

Joyce shuddered. "The thought of snakes gives me the creeps. Isn't it possible to see the place and yet avoid snakes?" she asked longingly.

She looked so pretty that he relented.

"If we are careful the snakes won't trouble us. I'll take you there some day when I have a long afternoon to spare."

At this Joyce was delighted and gave him her sweetest smiles. "If it were not for you, I don't know how I should exist in Muktiarbad!" she cooed.

"Your husband would not like to hear you say that!" he remarked studying her curiously.

"He has to be away so much that I might have died of _ennui_ if you hadn't taken pity on me!" she pouted.

Dalton was not ready with pretty speeches; it involved too much effort to make up insincerities, but he acknowledged that the drives had given him a great deal of pleasure. It was so difficult to rouse him to enthusiasm, and he was so complacently cynical, that Joyce took a delight in probing his silences and getting at his thoughts.

"Don't you ever really enjoy yourself?" she roguishly asked, her head on one side and arch mischief in her eyes.

"I've just said so, haven't I?"

"But you don't mean it. I wish I could understand you and all there is behind that grudging smile--what you think of people--me, for instance."

"I think if I were an artist I should like to paint a picture of you--you are so amazingly good to look at," he returned daringly.

Joyce coloured. She had asked for frankness and could not quarrel with him for having answered her bluntly. On the whole she was rather pleased, than otherwise, that he should admire her, for where was the use of being pretty if one's friends did not show that they appreciated the fact. So she beamed on him wholly unconscious of flirting and rallied him still further on his reserve.

"I don't want to be your model, but your friend. You treat me too much as a child and never give me any confidence. Today, after all these months, what do I know of you?"

"You know at least that I am very much at your service. Isn't that so?"

"You are very kind--and all that, but friends talk openly to each other.

I know nothing of you, and I _do_ know everything you could say would be so interesting," she sighed. "For instance, why are you never really happy?"

"I have forgotten the way," he said coolly. "Perhaps I have learned too much of life and have lost interest in it. You don't laugh when you can't see the joke, do you?"

"No."