Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 22

"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 G.o.d 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?"

[24] Bad characters.

"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 rea.s.suring hand.

"Sorry Olliver couldn't see you before leaving," he said gently.

"Hullo, there's Paul; I must be off. G.o.d 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 rea.s.suring, for they were sounds of ma.s.sed movement, of an organised body under way: the m.u.f.fled 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 sh.e.l.ls on a lone sh.o.r.e; 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 s.n.a.t.c.h from a burlesque the Boy had played in during the winter:

"My name it is Abanazar If you want me you needn't go far; I'm sure to be found, if you'll only look round, Number Seventy, Suddar Bazaar."

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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 repet.i.tion of the same sounds in a steady crescendo that rang like music in her ears--a sound to lift the heart.

The ma.s.sed 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 appet.i.te 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.