Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 65

"It is enough--go!" Desmond commanded in the peremptory vernacular; and mounted the steps with his burden.

Honor stood awaiting him in the drawing-room, white as her dress, tears glistening on her cheeks and lashes, yet very composed withal.

At sight of his face she started; it was grey-white and set like a rock. Only the eyes were alive--and ruthless, as she had never yet seen them, and prayed that she never might see them again.

"They've got the man," he said between his teeth. "I wish to G.o.d I could shoot him with my own hand."

Then he went forward to the sofa, and laid his wife upon it. His quick eye detected at once the nature of the wound. "Lung," he muttered mechanically. "No hope."

With the same unnatural calmness, he drew the long pins out of her hat--the poor, pretty hat which had so delighted her six hours ago; and as she moved, with a small sound of pain, he applied the spirit to her lips.

"What is it?" she murmured. "Don't touch me."

The faint note of distaste struck on her husband's heart; for he did not understand its meaning.

"Ladybird--look!" he entreated gently. "It is Theo." She opened her eyes, and gazed blankly up at him, where he leaned above her.

Then, as recognition dawned, he saw the shadow of fear darken them, and instantly dropped on one knee enclosing her with his arm.

"Ladybird, forgive me! You must never be frightened of me--never!"

The intensity of his low tone roused her half-awakened brain.

"But you were so angry, I was--afraid to come home."

"My G.o.d!" the man groaned under his breath. But before he could grasp the full horror of it all, she shrank closer to him, clutching at his arm, her eyes wide with terror.

"There's blood on me--look! It was--that man. Is it bad? Am I going--to die?"

"Not if human power can save you, my dear little woman. Mackay will soon be here."

But pain and fear clouded her senses, and she scarcely heard his words.

"Theo--I can't see you properly. Are you there?"

"Yes, yes. I am here."

The necessity for speech tortured him. But her one coherent longing was for the sound of his voice.

"_Don't_ let me die, please--not yet. I won't make you angry any more, I promise. And--it frightens me so. Keep tight hold of me; don't let me slip--away."

Desmond had a sensation as if a hand had gripped his throat, choking him, so that he could neither speak nor breathe. But with a supreme effort he mastered it; and leaning closer to her, spoke slowly, steadily, that she might lose no word of the small comfort he had power to give.

"I am holding you, my darling; and I will hold you to the very end.

Only try--try to be brave, and remember that--whatever happens, you are safe--in G.o.d's hands."

A pitiful sob broke from her.

"But I don't understand about G.o.d! I only want--you. I want _your_ hands--always. Where is the other one? Put it--underneath me--and hold me--ever so close."

He obeyed her, in silence, to the letter. She winced a little at the movement; then her head nestled into its resting-place on the wounded shoulder, with a sigh that had in it no shadow of pain; and bending down he kissed her, long and fervently.

"Theo--darling," she breathed ecstatically, when her lips were free for speech, "now I _know_ it isn't true--what you said about not--caring any more. And I am--ever so happy. G.o.d can't let me--die--now."

And on the word, a rush of blood from the damaged lung brought on the inevitable choking cough, that shattered the last remnant of her strength. Her fingers closed convulsively upon his; and at the utmost height of happiness--as it were, on the crest of a wave--her spirit slipped from its moorings;--and he was alone.

Still he knelt on, without movement, without thought, almost it seemed without breathing, like a man turned to stone; holding her, as he had promised, to the very end, and--beyond.

Honor, standing afar off, dazed and heart-broken, one hand clasping the back of a chair for support, heard at last the rattle of approaching hoofs, and nerved herself for the ordeal of speech. But when Mackay entered with Paul Wyndham, Desmond made no sign. The little doctor's keen eye took in the situation at a glance; and at the unlooked-for relief of Paul's presence, Honor's strained composure deserted her. She swayed a little, stretched out a hand blindly towards him, and would have fallen, but that he quietly put his arm round her, and with a strange mixture of feelings saw her head drop on to his shoulder. But it was only for a moment. Contact with the roughness of his coat roused her on the verge of unconsciousness. She drew herself up, a faint colour mantling in her cheeks, and tried to smile.

"Come away," Paul whispered, leading her to the door. "We can give him no help--or comfort--yet."

AFTERMATH.

"Had he not turned them in his hand, and thrust Their high things low and laid them in the dust, They had not been this splendour."

I.

Some two weeks after that day of tragedy--a tragedy that had stirred and enraged the whole station--Theo Desmond and Paul Wyndham left Kohat on furlough, long over-due to both. Such a wander-year, spent together, had, from early days, been one of their cherished dreams; but, as too often happens, there proved little family likeness between the dream and the reality. In the dream, Desmond was naturally to be the leading spirit of their grand tour. In the reality, all practical plans and considerations had devolved on Paul, and Theo it was who a.s.sented, unquestioning, uncaring, so long as he could put half the world between himself and Kohat.

His long illness, the fear of losing his sight, the double shock of self-revelation and loss had affected him mentally as blow on blow affects a man physically. Since the night of his wife's death none had seen him strongly moved, either by sorrow, pleasure, or anger. He had said and done all that was required of him with a strained unnatural precision. Even to the few who had drawn nearest to him in former times of trouble, he seemed now like a house whose every door is locked and every shutter drawn.

Outwardly unmoved, he had endured the ordeal of Evelyn's funeral, the storm of public surprise and indignation aroused by her murder. Though British officers, not a few, have been victims to fanaticism in India, no Englishwoman had ever been shot at before, and the strong feeling aroused by so dastardly a crime had been long in subsiding. The news had been wired to Peshawur. The Commissioner had galloped across thirty miles of desert next morning; and before Evelyn's funeral, at sundown, her death had been openly avenged by the hanging of her murderer and the burning of his body.

On that day Honor had gone over to Mrs Conolly's bungalow, there to remain till Meredith's arrival; and in the two weeks that followed, Desmond had seen little of her--or of any one save Paul. She had helped him in disposing of Evelyn's personal belongings; and at his earnest request, had accepted one or two of her trinkets, the remainder being sent home to her mother. At his request also, Honor had taken over charge of his piano while he was away; and if a touch of constraint marked their parting, neither was aware of it in the other.

By one sole distinction he had set her apart from the rest. To her, and her only, he could and did speak of his wife; for the simple reason that in her he recognised a love and a sorrow that matched his own--a sorrow untainted by the lurking after thought, "Better so"; and that tacit recognition had been for Honor the single ray of light in her dark hour. Once, before parting, she had spoken of it to Paul, who thenceforward knew his friend's aloofness for what it was--not the mere reserve of the strong man in pain, but the old incurable loyalty to his wife that had kept them all at arm's length in respect of her while she lived.

So they two went forth together on their sorrowful pilgrimage; and, once gone, there fell a curtain of silence between Desmond and those he had left behind. Week after week, month after month, that silence remained unbroken, though Olliver and his wife wrote and John Meredith wrote also on his return; though they plied him with questions, with news of the Regiment and Border politics, never a sight of his handwriting came to cheer them. But for Paul's unfailing, if discouraging bulletins, no word of him would have reached them at all.

Honor herself wrote twice, without avail; and thereafter accepted the fiat of silence, gleaning what comfort she might from a steady correspondence with Paul. It was not in her to guess how those fortnightly letters, so frank in expression, so reserved in essence, had upheld him through the darkest and most difficult months of his life; months in which he could only stand aside and wait till the man he loved, as Jonathan loved David, should come forth out of the house of sorrow and take up the broken threads of life once more.

Meantime, with inexhaustible patience, he continued to try one place after another, one distraction after another, with small result. It was a costly prescription, and though Desmond imagined he contributed his share, the chief of it was paid by his friend. During those first months he read little, talked little, and rarely expressed a definite wish. He would go anywhere, do anything in reason, so long as no mental effort was required of him; but music--to Paul's utter mystification--he decisively refused to hear. For the time being the man's whole nature seemed awry, and there were moments when Paul's heart contracted with dread of the worst.

Christmas found them at Le Trayas, on the Esterelles coast, an isolated paradise unprofaned by sight or sound of the noisy, restless life of the French Riviera. Here Theo Desmond had spent whole hours at a stretch, basking in the temperate December sunshine, under feathery mimosa bushes, that glorify the foothills,--silent as ever, yet seemingly content.

Still he wrote no line to the Regiment, that for thirteen years had stood second only to his G.o.d, and very rarely asked for news of it or his friends. By now their letters betrayed hints and more than hints of increasing anxiety. The men wrote tentatively; but Frank Olliver, nothing if not direct, poured forth her loving, unreasoning Irish heart on closely-written sheets of foreign paper, to Wyndham's alternate distraction and delight.

"Is there no manner of wild tale you could invent now to rouse the blessed man?" she wrote about this time. "Sure it's past believing that his pretty doll of a wife--who went near to ruin him living--should stand between him and us that love him, worse than ever now she's dead. The fear of it haunts me like a bogey and makes me go red hot inside."

The selfsame fear made Paul Wyndham go cold in the small hours; but he could not bring himself to write of it, even to Frank.

At last, in the second week of the New Year, there came news that wrought a change in Desmond; news from John Meredith of his father's broken health and his sister's immediate departure for England. She would sail in a week, he wrote, and would travel overland.

Paul, reading the letter to his friend, had a sudden inspiration.