Chronicles of Dustypore Part 23

'Give me a bit too, Fenton,' said Desvoeux; 'I must eat some for sympathy, though it is not what I love best.'

Then the quiet valley shadows crept about them, and it grew sad and sombre; and while they sat and talked and laughed, the day was done and all steps were turned towards home.

So Maud and Desvoeux found themselves travelling home together in the moonlight and falling behind the crowd of riders, to enjoy, undisturbed, the pleasure of a _tete-a-tete_. One of the great dangers of the Hills is that the paths admit only of two people riding abreast; the _terzo incomodo_ must ride behind, and might, so far as prudence is concerned, just as well not be there at all. No such inconvenient intruder, however, threatened Desvoeux's enjoyment of the present occasion or aided the faltering monitions which Maud's half-silenced conscience whispered to her. Her nerves were overstrung, and the excessive loveliness of the scene seemed only to add to her excitement. Along the winding path which crept up the mountain-side, and through the dark green forest-trees towering sublimely over them and all ablaze in moonlit patches with silver floods of light, their journey took them.

Far away, miles below, a hundred tiny sparks showed where the villagers were cooking the evening meal; across the valley, on the opposite side, a great streak of woodland was blazing, scarcely seen by day, but now a ruddy lurid glow in the white light that lit up all the scene around. In the horizon was the great, cold, snowy range, standing out hard and clear in the moonlight--still, majestic, awful. How sweet, how bright, how exhilarating to a heart so prompt for enjoyment, senses so quickly impressible, nerves so alive to every surrounding influence as Maud's!

Again and again she burst into exclamations of pleasure as each turn in the road brought them to some new scene of enchantment.

'Let us stop,' she cried, 'I must get off and sit down here and enjoy this in peace.'

'Let us walk a little,' said Desvoeux, 'and send our ponies on to await us at the half-way point. Are you too tired?'

'I am not a bit tired,' Maud said, glowing with pleasure; 'it is too lovely to think of it. This is the best of all the day's pleasures.'

'It is lovely,' said her companion, 'but to me its greatest charm is that I have you to myself.'

'Well,' said Maud, who was accustomed to pulling up Desvoeux when he became inconveniently sentimental, 'we have had a delightful day and great fun. I wish we had had the forfeits all the same and made General Beau do something nice. You stopped it all, Mr. Desvoeux, by being so idle. Why did you blow your kiss into the air?'

'It was the only thing I could do with it,' said Desvoeux, 'and see--it has alighted on your cheek!'

'And _that_ on your arm,' cried Maud, wielding her whip with a sudden vehemence which made Desvoeux feel that his kiss had been, at any rate, well paid for; 'when I want to be kissed I will tell you; but no robberies!'

'You little spitfire!' said Desvoeux, rubbing his shoulder with a comic air.

'Well,' said Maud, suddenly repentant, and trying her whip across her knee, 'it _does_ hurt, I confess. I beg your pardon. You deserved it, however, and I was in a pa.s.sion at the moment. Do you forgive me?'

She gave him her hand--that little, delicate, exquisitely-fashioned piece of Nature's workmanship, which Desvoeux had often vowed was the most beautiful thing in India. Its very touch electrified him.

'Forgive you?' he said, with a sudden sadness in his voice; 'you hurt me once in good earnest, and I forgave you that, and do forgive it, but it hurts me still.'

Desvoeux's voice trembled with feeling. Something in his look struck Maud with a sudden pang of pity, sympathy, remorse. Was Desvoeux then really suffering, and his life darkened on account of her? A sudden rush of sentiment streamed across her soul, carrying everything before it. A pa.s.sionate, irresistible impulse possessed her. She stooped towards him, bent her cheek, flushed with excitement, to his, pressed to his the lips on which Desvoeux's thoughts had dwelt a hundred times in impa.s.sioned reverie, and kissed him with a long, sweet, earnest caress, the sudden outburst of grat.i.tude, tenderness, regret.

Desvoeux said not a word, but he still kept possession of her hand, and the two stood looking silently across the misty valley and the precipice that fell away at their feet into solemn gloom below. The tramp of a horse's feet was heard behind them and Boldero came trotting innocently up the path.

'We are walking home,' Maud said, 'the night is so delicious. You may get off and come with us, if you please.'

Boldero, who would have jumped over the mountain-side if Maud had bidden him, at once dismounted. Desvoeux fell behind, and said not one word during the rest of the homeward journey.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

ILL NEWS FLY APACE.

Never any more, while I live, Need I hope to see his face as before.

Maud reached her house over-tired, over-wrought, and somewhat sad at heart. She had gone much further than she meant, much further than her real feelings prompted. Even as she yielded to the sudden impulse she had repented, and while still doing it begun to wish the deed undone.

She had been vexed and teased and excited till she scarce knew what her actions meant. The man to whom she had committed herself by so compromising an indiscretion had no sooner reached the dangerous eminence in her regard than he began to fall away and make her doubly remorseful for the act. She resented his ascendency over her, the force of the liking with which he inspired her and the degree to which he led her where he would. His language, when he was not there to carry it off with fun and daring, seemed unreal, exaggerated, absurd. Even before they got home her taste had begun to turn against him. Boldero's almost reverential care of her set her upon disparaging the other's lawless, inconsiderate homage. The very way in which he stayed behind was, she knew, intended as a sulky protest against Boldero's intrusion. A man who really cared about her would, Maud felt, have acquiesced in what she chose, what it was obviously right for her to choose, without any such display of temper. Then there had been something in Desvoeux's manner, when he wished her good-night, which implied a private understanding and set her heart beating with indignation. A really fine nature would have been doubly deferential, doubly courteous, doubly watchful against seeming to take a liberty. Desvoeux's tone had something in it to Maud's ear, which was familiar, easy, only just not disrespectful. She had been defying public opinion for him all day; she had at last, in a sudden impulse of pity, put herself at his mercy: already she began to doubt whether he was a man who would use his advantage generously. Perhaps after all Felicia had been right about him.

Then, when she got home, everything conspired to try her nerves. In the first place, no letter had come from her husband; there had been no letter for two days before, and this was a longer interval than had ever yet occurred. She tried in vain not to be frightened at the unaccustomed silence. Mrs. Vereker laughed her anxieties to scorn, but Maud knew better what such a long cessation implied. Her conscience was too ill at ease not to be apprehensive at the first occasion, however trivial, for alarm. Either something had happened or, dreadful possibility, her husband was displeased, and too displeased to write.

While she was taking off her things and hara.s.sing herself with all sorts of fancied troubles, Mrs. Vereker came in and completed her discomfiture.

'Maud,' she said, and Maud thought her tones sounded harsh and unsympathetic (how different from Felicia's gentle lectures! which always thawed her heart at once), 'I have been commissioned to give you a scolding and by whom, do you suppose?'

'I really don't know, and don't care,' said Maud, in a pet, 'I have had enough the last few days to last me for some time. Will it not keep till to-morrow or the day after?'

'No, it will not,' said Mrs. Vereker, who was herself sincerely provoked at the notoriety which Maud's indiscretion had attained; 'it is from the Viceroy. I have something to say to you from him. Now do you wish to hear?'

'No,' said Maud, 'unless it is an appointment for my husband.'

'No, but it is about your husband, or about things your husband would not like. He told me to scold you thoroughly.'

'Then,' said Maud, her heart beating so that she could scarcely speak, 'he took a great liberty. I know, however, that he did not.'

'Guilty conscience!' cried the other; 'how white you look! Well, it is not exactly the truth, but it is not far off it. He gave me a hint.'

'He gave you a fiddlestick!' cried Maud in a pa.s.sion; 'he meant to tell you not to flirt yourself.'

'Oh no! Lord Clare and I understand each other far too well for that. He said quite seriously, "When is Colonel Sutton coming up? Why don't he come? He ought to come; write to him and say so; say so from me." Now, what do you think that meant?'

Maud felt her colour gone and her heart beating violently, and could venture on no reply.

'You see,' said her monitress pitilessly, 'you will be injudicious. I am always telling you. You can't be content with fluttering round the candle, but must needs go into the flame and singe your wings, and then of course it hurts you. People should know when to stop.'

'And,' cried Maud, in a thorough pa.s.sion, 'people should not throw stones who live in gla.s.s houses. Why, Mrs. Vereker, if I am a flirt, I should like to know who taught me?'

'Now you are rude and cross. You should never throw stones, whether you live in a gla.s.s house or not. The best thing I can do is to leave you to recover your temper.'

Mrs. Vereker was gone and Maud's last friend seemed lost to her. She had offended every one; or rather every one had done something to offend her. She disliked them all. She flung herself upon her bed and wept in very bitterness of heart. She longed for a really friendly, loving hand to take her and get her right; she longed for her old mistress to confess to; she thought of Felicia, considerate, tender, sympathetic, and she seemed like an angel compared with those amongst whom she was living. If she could but have crept to her embrace and breathed her troubles in her ear! She thought of her husband--the pure and faithful heart beating with no thought but for her, where nothing coa.r.s.e or unchivalrous could ever find a place; where she knew that she alone was enshrined; of his perfect trust in her, his spotless faith, his transparent honour. She looked at his photograph standing on the table: how grave and sad it looked! She flung herself on the bed; the bitter tears of remorse and repentance began to flow, and while they flowed--for Maud was far more exhausted than she knew--she slept; and in her sleep of a few minutes pa.s.sed into dreamland; not the happy, silly, aimless dreamland of easy minds and tired frames, where Maud's nights were chiefly spent; but into a sad weird region, where everything seemed horribly real and connected and designed and to bear some frightful relation to actual life that makes it part of our being and haunts one's after-thoughts. She was with her husband once again, and yet it was not quite himself; an undefined something separated him from her and all the past. She was riding by him. How grieved and reproachful a mien he wore, as of a man with a hidden sorrow cankering his heart! And then he fell, and Maud saw him crushed and wounded and helpless as once before, and agonised in some frightful entanglement with his horse. She meanwhile was trying in vain to help or to approach him, for a hidden hand restrained her, and Sutton himself, sad and stern, was waving her away.

And then came a fierce struggle and blows and cries, and Maud found herself waking with a scream and her servant standing by her bed and saying that a 'Sahib' had come and wanted to see her directly.

She knew what it meant and went with a beating heart into the drawing-room, as fresh from the land of sorrow and ready for news of disaster.

She found Boldero in the drawing-room, looking ominously grave.

'Well, Mr. Boldero,' Maud said, with an unsuccessful attempt at gaiety and a dread of the answer which she would receive, 'why have you come back? Do you want me to give you some tea or to receive some advice?'

'Have you heard from Sutton to-day?' said the other, not heeding her inquiry.

'No,' said Maud, turning sick at heart and deadly white; 'why do you ask? Quick, quick!'

'Because I have bad accounts of him from Dustypore. You must not be alarmed.'

'But I _am_ alarmed,' cried Maud, by this time in thorough terror; 'don't you see that standing there and giving hints is just the way to frighten one? I know quite well you have brought me some bad news.'

'Yes,' said Boldero, 'I am sorry to say I have. Your husband is ill.'

Maud started up and looked him straight in the face, with a serious, eager look, that made Boldero, even at that moment, think how lovely she was.