Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 29

"Oh, Theo...!" A quick flush revealed her delight at the news, and she made a small movement towards him; but nothing came of it. Six months ago she would have nestled close to him, certain of the tender endearments which had grown strangely infrequent of late. Now an indefinable shyness checked the spontaneous caress, the eager words upon her lips. But her husband, who was looking thoughtfully into the fire, seemed serenely unaware of the fact.

"You're happy about it, aren't you?" he asked at length.

"Yes--of course--very happy."

"That's all right; and I'm glad I wasn't driven to disappoint you. Now get to bed; and sleep soundly on your rare bit of good luck. I have still a lot of work to get through."

She accepted his kindly dismissal with an altogether new docility; and on arriving in her own room gave conclusive proof of her happiness by flinging herself on the bed in a paroxysm of stifled sobbing.

"Oh, if only I had told him sooner!" she lamented through her tears.

"Now I don't believe he'll ever really forgive me, or love me properly again."

And, in a measure, she was right. Trust her he might, as in duty bound; but to be as he had been before eating the bitter fruit of knowledge was, for the present at all events, out of his power.

Since their momentous talk nearly a week ago, Evelyn had felt herself imperceptibly held at arms' length, and the vagueness of the sensation increased her discomfort tenfold. No word of reproach had pa.s.sed his lips, nor any further mention of Diamond or the bills; nothing so quickly breeds constraint between two people as conscious avoidance of a subject that is seldom absent from the minds of both. Yet Theo was scrupulously kind, forbearing, good-tempered--everything, in short, save the tender, lover-like husband he had been to her during the first eighteen months of marriage. And she had only herself to blame,--there lay the sharpest pang of all. Life holds no anodyne for the sorrows we bring upon ourselves.

As the days wore on she watched Theo's face anxiously, at post time, for any sign of an answer to that hateful advertis.e.m.e.nt; and before the week's end she knew that the punishment that should have been hers had fallen on her husband's shoulders.

Coming into breakfast one morning, she found him studying an open letter with a deep furrow between his brows. At sight of her he started and slipped it into his pocket.

The meal was a silent one. Evelyn found the pattern of her plate curiously engrossing. Desmond, after a few hurried mouthfuls, excused himself and went out. Then Evelyn looked up; and the tears that hung on her lashes overflowed.

"He--he's gone to the stables, Honor," she said brokenly. "He got an answer this morning;--I'm sure he did. But he--he won't tell me anything now. Where's the _use_ of being married to him if he's always going on like this? I wish--I wish he could sell--_me_ to that man, instead of Diamond. He wouldn't mind it _half_ as much----"

And with this tragic announcement--which, for at least five minutes, she implicitly believed--her head went down upon her hands.

Honor soothed her very tenderly, realising that she sorrowed with the despair of a child who sees the world's end in every broken toy.

"Hush--hush!" she remonstrated. "You mustn't think anything so foolish, so unjust. Theo is very magnanimous, Evelyn. He will see you are sorry, and then it will all go smoothly again."

"But there's the--the other thing," murmured the pretty sinner with a doleful shake of her head. "He won't forgive me that; and he _doesn't_ seem to see that I'm sorry. I wanted to tell him this morning, when I saw that letter. But he somehow makes me afraid to say a word about it."

"Better not try yet awhile, dear. When a man is in trouble, there is nothing he thanks one for so heartily as for letting him alone till it is well over."

Evelyn looked up again with a misty smile.

"I can't think why you know so much about men, Honor. How do you find out those sort of things?"

"I suppose it's because I've always cared very much for men,"--she made the statement quite unblushingly. "Loving people is the only sure way of understanding them in the long-run."

"_Is_ it?... You are clever, Honor. But it doesn't seem to help me much with Theo."

Such prompt, personal application of her philosophy of the heart was a little disconcerting. The girl could not well reply that in love there are a thousand shades, and very few are worthy of the name.

"It _will_ help you in time," she said rea.s.suringly. "It is one of the few things that cannot fail. And to-day, at least, you have learnt that when things are going hardly with Theo, it is kindest and wisest to leave him alone."

Evelyn understood this last, and registered a valiant resolve to that effect.

But the day's events gave her small chance of acting on her new-found knowledge. Desmond himself took the initiative: and save for a bare half-hour at tiffin, she saw him no more until the evening.

Perhaps only the man who has trained and loved a polo pony can estimate the pain and rebellion of spirit that he was combating, doggedly and in silence; or condone the pa.s.sing bitterness he felt towards his uncomprehending wife.

He spent more time than usual in the stables, where Diamond nuzzled into his breast-pocket for slices of apple and sugar; and Diamond's _sais_ lifted up his voice and wept, on receipt of an order to start for Pindi with his charge on the following day.

"There is no Sahib like my Sahib in all Hind," he protested, his turban within an inch of Desmond's riding-boot. "The Sahib is my father and my mother! How should we serve a stranger, Hazur,--the pony and I?"

"Nevertheless, it is an order," Desmond answered not unkindly, "that thou shouldst remain with the pony, sending word from time to time that all goeth well with him. Rise up. It is enough."

Returning to the house, he hardened his heart, and accepted the unwelcome offer from Pindi.

"What a confounded fool I am!" he muttered, as he stamped and sealed the envelope. "I'd sooner shoot the little chap than part with him in this way."

But the letter was posted, nevertheless.

He excused himself from polo, and rode over to Wyndham's bungalow, where he found Paul established in the verandah with his invariable companions--a pipe, and a volume of poetry or philosophy.

"Come along, and beat me at rackets, old man," he said without dismounting. "I'm 'off' polo to-day. We can go for a canter afterwards."

Wyndham needed no further explanation. A glance at Theo's face was enough. They spent four hours together; talked of all things in heaven and earth, except the one sore subject; and parted with a smile of amused understanding.

"Quite like old times!" Paul remarked, and Desmond nodded. For it was a habit, dating from early days, that whenever the pin-p.r.i.c.ks of life chafed Theo's impatient spirit, he would seek out his friend, spend an hour or two in his company, and tell him precisely nothing.

Thanks to Paul's good offices, dinner was a pleasanter meal than the earlier ones had been. But Evelyn looked white and woe-begone; and Honor wisely carried her off to bed, leaving Desmond to his pipe and his own discouraging thoughts.

These proved so engrossing that he failed to hear a step in the verandah, and started when two hands came quietly down upon his shoulders.

No need to ask whose they were. Desmond put up his own and caught them in a strong grip.

"Old times again, is it?" he asked, with a short satisfied laugh.

"Brought your pipe along?"

"Yes."

"Good business. There's your chair,--it always seems yours to me still. Have a 'peg'?"

Paul shook his head, and drew his chair up to the fire with deliberate satisfaction.

"Light up, then; and we'll make a night of it as we used to do in the days before we learned wisdom, and paid for it in hard cash."

"Talking of hard cash--what price d'you get?" the other asked abruptly.

"Seven-fifty."

"Will that cover everything?"

"Yes."

"Theo,--why, in Heaven's name, won't you cancel this wretched business, and take the money from me instead?"