Banked Fires Part 5

"Where is my husband?" she asked, wondering if Ray knew, and why he had not rushed to see her. She was so accustomed to being fussed over, that she missed the excitement. No doubt he was nursing injured feelings since her ill-treatment of him last night....

"Listen, and you will hear the voices of the mult.i.tude before the Court.

Mr. Meredith is trying cases and sentencing malefactors to various degrees of punishment," said the doctor.

"Won't you call him?"

"Are you sure he won't charge me with Contempt of Court?" he teased.

"If I am going to be ill, I must have him come at once. But first promise me something," she cried, clinging to his hand with feverish excitement; "I cannot bear to stay in camp after yesterday's experience.

Tell him that I must go back to Muktiarbad so as to have Baby near you.

He might be ill again, and what should I do then!"

"He might, certainly. Yes, I'll tell your husband, but not today. Today you will want to be taken care of, and we mustn't pile on the agony."

"On whom? It would be such a relief to me!"

"Not to your husband. I wouldn't mind betting he'd have a fit of the blues and be ill himself as a result."

"Oh, no! Ray never gets ill. He is so strong. That is why he can't understand us. Oh, Doctor, I cannot live in India!" she wailed.

"Are you very homesick?" he asked with the same grudging smile.

"I hate India! It will kill Baby--won't you explain that to my husband?"

"There is no reason why it should kill Baby."

"How can you tell?--everything is against him here!"

Dalton decided to humour her because of the deepening flush and starry eyes. The nervous fingers twined about his were hot with fever. "That's all right. Be happy, you'll go home in the spring if it depends on me."

"Oh, thank you, you are such a dear!"

Captain Dalton smiled less grudgingly. She was so perfectly ingenuous.

In his critical eyes was a look of dalliance with a new problem. They were eyes that must often have studied human problems and not always to good purpose.

"I suppose the kid is your first consideration?" he asked, amused.

"He's so helpless!"

"I see," he remarked oracularly. Before he left the tent he gave her a tablet from a phial which he carried in his vest-pocket.

"Do you know," she ventured in the hurried accents of feverishness, "I did not like you a bit when I first met you."

"And now?"

"You are so different from what I had imagined."

"What was that?"

"You seemed an animated iceberg--forbidding and--yes, almost disagreeable. You make most people afraid of you."

"It matters very little to me what people think of me," he returned indifferently.

"Don't you ever care for friends?"

"I have no use for friends--besides, who are one's friends? I have ceased to believe in friendship," he sneered.

She studied his face gravely. "I don't like to hear you speak like that.

We would be your friends if you would let us."

Dalton checked a laugh of genuine amus.e.m.e.nt, the first sound of mirth she had heard from his lips, and it was not pleasant hearing.

"You are very good," he said tolerantly, "but it wouldn't work. I wouldn't suggest the experiment, if I may advise you."

"I certainly shall not, if you are nasty," she pouted.

Dalton laughed again disagreeably and went out.

He was truly a conundrum, she decided, and difficult to know. Yet how kind he had been to her and careful of her child! for that she would always be grateful. But for him, anything might have happened! Strange fellow!--why was he so antagonistic to people when his profession made him a ministering angel to humanity? Joyce felt her head aching so violently at this stage that she abandoned the puzzle of Captain Dalton's nature and indulged in ecstasies over the thought of her baby's recovery. It made her so happy that, when her husband entered with the doctor, she flung her arms about his neck and apologised for her exhibition of bad temper. "I was horrible to you, Ray. Do forgive me,"

sounded very sweet in her husband's ears. What the doctor thought was of no importance to her.

Meredith mumbled transports of joy on her lips and was beside himself with anxiety that she should be feverish. He plied her with questions in his solicitude, and stood by in sulky jealousy while the doctor made his professional examination of her lungs and heart.

Joyce said "ninety-nine" many times obediently, and was like a child in her unconsciousness of self. One all-absorbing thought occupied her mind, and that was her baby's well-being.

"Isn't Captain Dalton an angel?" she cried when the examination was over and her lungs p.r.o.nounced in perfect order. "I shall love him for ever after his kindness to us; only, he won't let me. He has no use, he says, for friends!"

Dalton smiled grimly as he put away his stethoscope. "Have you ever heard of the qualities that go to make a good doctor?" he asked coolly.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"An unerring judgment, nerves of steel, and a heart of stone."

"And have you managed to acquire all three?" she asked playfully.

"The petrifaction of the last-named is quite an old story," he remarked, as he pa.s.sed out of the tent.

"You must not talk so much, sweetheart, with a rising temperature,"

Meredith cautioned, fussing over her, while, outside, the trial of a notorious criminal was suspended till the Magistrate should think fit to return. "How did Dalton find out that you had fever?" he questioned suspiciously. "Did you send for him?"

"Oh, no. He brought me news of Baby and gave me my tea. Isn't he queer?

Not half so bad as people make him out to be. Oh!--and I was so overjoyed and excited that I kissed his hand. I wonder what he thought of my foolishness?" and she laughed at the joke; but her husband seemed to have lost his sense of humour, for he retired from the bedside to pace the drugget in distinct annoyance.

"d.a.m.ned officious of him," he grumbled. "You were not his patient."

"I am _now_, so it's all right."

"You shouldn't have forgotten your dignity."