Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 63

He longed, beyond all things on earth, to kneel down and comfort her.

He knew that three words from him would put an end to her distress, and cancel his own quixotic plan of action. But the words were not uttered; and he remained standing on the hearth-rug with his hands in his pockets. There was no sign in the quiet room that anything noteworthy had taken place. Yet on those two prosaic details the future of three lives depended--a man silent when he might have spoken; planted squarely on his feet when he might have been on his knees.

Rob got up and stretched himself elaborately, vented his boredom in a long musical yawn, then settled down to sleep again in a more expansive att.i.tude; and Evelyn's French clock struck six with cheerful unconcern.

The silence, which seemed interminable, might possibly have lasted three minutes, when Honor let fall her hands, and looked up at the man who had mastered her. He looked what he was--unconquerable; and if she had not loved him already, she must infallibly have loved him then.

"Please understand," she said, and her voice was not quite steady, "that I have not _given_ my consent to this. You have simply wrenched it from me by the sheer force of--your personality. You have not altered my conviction by a hair's-breadth. What you have set your heart on is a piece of unjustifiable quixotism; and I have only one thing to beg of you now. Do nothing decisive till you have spoken to Paul."

Desmond sighed.

"Very well. I will tackle him to-morrow."

"What a hurry you are in!" And she smiled faintly.

"I believe in striking while the iron's hot."

"And I believe in giving it time to cool. May I--first, say one word to Paul?"

"No, certainly not." The refusal came out short and sharp. "If you two combined forces against me I should be done for! Leave me to manage Paul alone."

With a sigh she rose to her feet.

Then, quite suddenly, her calmness fell away from her.

"Theo--Theo," she protested, "if you really persist in this, and carry it through, I don't think I shall ever forgive you."

The pain in her voice was more than he could bear.

"For G.o.d's sake spare me that!" he pleaded. "I am losing enough as it is."

And now his hands went out to her irresistibly, in the old impulsive fashion, that seemed an echo from a former life.

With superlative courage she turned and surrendered both her own. She wanted to prove herself, at all points, simply his friend; and he gave her no cause to repent of her courage, or to suspect the strong restraint he put upon himself during that brief contact, which, at a moment so charged with emotion, might well have proved fatal to them both.

"Thank you, Honor," he said quietly.

But for her, speech was impossible. She bowed her head, and left him standing alone, with the dregs of victory.

On reaching the blessed shelter of her own room she bolted the door; and for once in her life grief had its way with her unhindered.

She could not guess, while railing against Desmond's tenacity of purpose, that the same pa.s.sionate self-reproach which had urged her to go all lengths for Evelyn, was urging him now to a supreme act of self-devotion to his wife's happiness.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE ONE BIG THING.

"The sky that noticed all makes no disclosure; And earth keeps up her terrible composure."

--BROWNING.

His wife herself was, in the meanwhile, journeying hopefully back to the Kresneys' bungalow, on the shoulders of four long-suffering jhampanis, who murmured a little among themselves, without rancour or vexation, concerning the perplexing ways of Memsahibs in general. For the native of India the supreme riddle of creation is the English "Mem."

They had but just cast aside their liveries and, squatting on their heels in a patch of shadow, had embarked on leisurely preparations for the evening hookah and the evening meal. The scent of curry was in their nostrils; the regular "flip-flap" of the deftly turned chupattie was in their ears; when a flying order had come from the house--"The Memsahib goes forth in haste!" With resigned mutterings and head-shakings they had responded to the call of duty, and the _mate_,[30] who was a philosopher, had a word of comfort for them as they went. "Worse might have befallen, brothers, seeing that it hath pleased G.o.d to make our Memsahib light as a bird. Had it been the Miss Sahib, now----" A unanimous murmur testified that the Miss Sahib would have been a far weightier affair!

[30] Headman.

And on this occasion they must have found their mistress even lighter than a bird; for instead of lying back among her cushions, she sat upright, in strained antic.i.p.ation, pressing between her hands the miraculous envelope which was to buy back for her all that she had so lightly flung away.

Honor had spoken truth when she said that Desmond was the one big thing in Evelyn's life. Everything else about her was small as her person, and little more effectual. But this impetuous, large-hearted husband of hers--whose love she had been so proud to win, and had taken such small pains to keep--could by no means be chiselled into proportions with the rest of the picture. He took his stand, simply and naturally, on the heights; and if it was an effort to keep up with him, it was a real calamity to be left behind. Understand him she could not, and never would; but it sufficed that she saw him fearless, chivalrous, admired on all sides, and singularly good to look at. This last should perhaps have been set down first; for there is no denying that her remorse, her suffering, had been less overwhelming without that unexpected vision of his face.

But things were going to be all right soon. She would never hide anything from him again--never. And the resolve may be counted unto her for righteousness, even if there could be small hope of its fulfilment.

Such absorbing considerations crowded out all thought of Honor's generosity. It was just Honor. No one else would ever give you two hundred rupees, at a moment's notice, as if it were sixpence. But you might expect anything from Honor--that was how she was made. And the one important point was--Theo. Nothing else really mattered at all.

As Kresney's bungalow came in sight she found herself fervently hoping that he might have gone out; that she might have to encounter nothing more formidable than Miss Kresney, or, better still, the bearer.

But before the gate was reached, she caught sight of him in the verandah, taking his ease very completely in one of those ungainly chairs, with arms extending to long wooden leg-rests, which seem to belong to India and no other country in the world. He had exchanged his coat for a j.a.panese smoking jacket, whose collar and cuffs could ill afford to brave daylight; and his boots for slippers of Linda's making, whose conflicting colours might have set an oyster's teeth on edge! His own teeth were clenched upon a rank cigar; and he was reading a paper-bound novel that she would not have touched with a pair of tongs.

He had never appeared to worse advantage; and Evelyn, fresh from her husband's air of un.o.btrusive neatness and distinction, was conscious of a sudden recoil--a purely physical revulsion; to which was added the galling thought that she owed her recent suffering and humiliation to her intimacy with a man who could look like that!

As she turned in at the gate, he sprang up and ran down the steps. Her return astounded him. He was prepared for anything at that moment, except the thing that happened--a common human experience.

"Back again, Mrs Desmond!" he cried cheerfully. "This is a most unexpected pleasure. _Rukho jhampan._"[31]

[31] Set down the jhampan.

But Evelyn countermanded the order so promptly that Kresney's eyebrows went up. She handed him her note, clutching the wooden pole nervously with the other hand.

"I had to come out again--on business," she said, with that ready mingling of the false and true which had been her undoing. "And I thought I could leave this for Miss Kresney as I pa.s.sed. Will you please give it to her. I am sorry she is not in."

He took the envelope, and watched her while she spoke with narrowed eyes.

"You are in trouble?" The intimate note in his voice jarred for the first time. "Something has upset you since you left? You are quite knocked up with all this. You ought to have been in Murree two weeks ago."

And, presumably by accident, his hand came down upon her own. She drew it away with an involuntary shudder; and Kresney's sallow face darkened.

"You have no business to say that," she rebuked him with desperate courage; "I prefer to be with my husband till he is well enough to go too. You won't forget my note, will you? Good-night."

"Good-night, Mrs Desmond," he answered formally, without proffering his hand.

As he stood watching her depart, all that was worst in him rose to the surface and centred in his close-set eyes. "By G.o.d, you shall be sorry for that!" he muttered.

But in mounting the steps his curiosity was awakened by the bulkiness of Linda's letter. He turned it over once or twice; pressed it between his fingers and detected the crackle of new bank-notes.

"So that's it, is it? Well, I can forgive her. No doubt she had a jolly hot quarter of an hour; and I hope that fellow is enjoying himself now--_like h.e.l.l!_" Then, without a glimmer of hesitation, he opened his sister's letter.