Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 23

Having read it through twice, with a flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sing vexation to the burden of work and anxiety already resting on her friend's shoulders.

Her spoken comment was brief and characteristic.

"Oh, how I envy Mrs Olliver! We're just playing at life up here, you and I, like two dolls, while she is living the real thing down there."

Evelyn Desmond, in utter astonishment, flung annoyance to the winds.

"Really and truly, Honor," she declared, with conviction, "you are the most amazing person I've ever known!"

CHAPTER XII.

NOW IT'S DIFFERENT.

"A word! how it severeth!

O Power of Life and Death, In the tongue, as the preacher saith."

--BROWNING.

The great monsoon--a majestic onrush of cloud hurtling across the heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder--had long since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and valley and water-courses innumerable with the voice of melody.

On the cedar-crowned heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound--plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred fairy falls.

Theo Desmond drank in the cool green wonder of it all with a keenly perceptive enjoyment; drew into his lungs deep draughts of the strong, clean mountain air; watched the frail curtain of mist swaying, lifting, spreading to a pearl-white film, till, through a sudden rent, the red gold of sunset burned, deepening to a ma.s.s of velvet shadow the inexpressible blue of rain-washed hills.

His post of observation on this August evening was the saturated verandah of "The Deodars," where he had flung himself full length in Honor's canvas chair, a pipe between his teeth; hands locked behind his head; lavishly muddied boots and gaiters outstretched; the whole supple length of him eloquent of well-earned relaxation and repose.

Three days earlier he had ridden up through a world of driving mist and rain in the wake of Harry Denvil's doolie; having secured a blessed month of respite for himself and two months for the Boy, who, by the efforts of three tireless nurses and a redoubtable Scotch doctor, had been dragged back from death; and was but just beginning to take hold on life and health again.

From outset to close he had clung to the support of Desmond's presence with the tenacity of an exhausted body and a fevered brain;--a tenacity which could not fail to touch the older man's heart, and which had made it difficult for others to take their due share in the nursing. Thus the slow weeks of dependence on one side, and unwearied service on the other, together with the underlying bond between them, had wrought a closeness of friendship to which the Boy had long aspired; and which promised to add depth and stability to the warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after the wordless manner of men, gave him full a.s.surance of both. It is just this power to draw out the best and strongest by the simple habit of taking it for granted that marks the true leader; the man who compels because he never insists; whose influence is less a force than a subtle radiation.

And now, as Theo Desmond sat alone fronting a world compact of mist and fire, and the fragrance of moist earth, his mind was mainly concerned with the Boy's future, and with certain retrenchments of his own expenditure, whereby alone he could hope to cancel the debts that remained after the disposal of Roland. His sole trouble in respect of these retrenchments lay in the fact that they must, to some extent, affect his wife. If only she could be persuaded to see the necessity as clearly as he did himself, all would be well. She and Harry had been good friends from the outset. He hoped--he believed--she would understand.

Light footsteps on the boards behind him brought a smile to his lips; but he neither turned nor stirred. An instant later, hands cool and imponderable as snowflakes rested on his forehead, and silken strands of hair brushed it softly as his wife leaned over him, nestling her head against his own.

"Are you very happy sitting there?" she whispered.

"Supremely happy."

"Why? Because you're so nice and wet, and messy?"

"Yes; and a few other reasons as well."

"What other reasons? Me?"

"Naturally, you dear little goose! Come round and let me get a sight of you, instead of perching behind me like a bird."

She came round obediently, standing a little away from him,--a slim strip of colour that reflected the uncertain sea-tint of her eyes,--and looked down upon his disordered appearance with a small grimace.

"I'm not _sure_ that I love you properly, Theo, when you're _quite_ as muddy as that."

"Oh yes, you do; come on!"

And putting out an arm, he drew her down till she knelt beside him, her hands resting on his knee. He covered them quietly with one of his own.

"Ladybird, it's turning out a glorious evening! Come for a walk."

"Oh, Theo, _don't_ be so uncomfortably energetic! I hate going out in the wet. You only came in half an hour ago, and you've been walking all day."

He laughed--the glad laugh of a truant schoolboy--and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I'm capable of walking all night too! Only then you might imagine the hot weather had turned my brain. But indeed, little woman, if you had been sickened with sunlight and scorched earth as I have been for the last three months, you'd understand how a man may feel a bit lightheaded in the first few days that he's quit of it all."

"And was I very horrid to be playing up here in the cool all the time?" she asked, p.r.i.c.ked by the memory of Honor's words to one of her rare touches of compunction.

"My dear, what nonsense! It would have been double as bad if you had been there too."

Sincerity rang in his tone, and she noted the fact with a sigh of relief. She was not altogether heartless, this fragile slip of womanhood. She merely desired, like many of us, the comfort of being selfish without the unbecomingness of appearing so.

"We'll sit out here together and talk till it gets dark," she announced with a pretty air of decision, lest the invitation to walk should be renewed. "Stay where you are, and I'll fetch a stool. It's quite a treat to see you looking lazy for once in a way."

She brought a stool and established herself close to him. He acknowledged her presence without removing his eyes from the storm-tossed glory of the sky.

"Look, Ladybird--look!" he urged in a low tone. "We can talk afterwards."

But her attention was caught and riveted by the reflection of the glory in her husband's face.

"Does it please you so tremendously?" she asked in honest bewilderment. "Just a sunset! You've seen hundreds of them before."

He smiled and answered nothing. Speech and emotion inhabit different hemispheres of a man's brain; woman alone is rash enough to force them into unwilling union.