From One Generation to Another Part 7

"You don't seem to care!" he said gruffly--with his new voice.

"Oh, _don't!"_ she whispered imploringly.

And they walked on beneath the murmuring trees where the yellow moonlight stole in and out between the trunks. It was not cheerful. For when Nature joins her sadness to the sad libretto of life she usually breaks a heart or two. Fortunately for us we mostly act our tragedies in the wrong scenery--the scenery that was painted for a comedy.

"I don't understand it," said the girl at length.

"I suppose it is in order to save money for Arthur."

"If I don't, go," replied Jem, "it will be a question of letting Stagholme."

Dora knew of the ancient horror of such a necessity, handed down from one Agar to another, like a family tradition. Moreover, women seem to respect men who have some simple creed and hold to it simply. Are they not one of our creeds themselves, though by seeking for rights instead of contenting themselves with privileges, some of them try to make atheists of us?

"So," she said nevertheless, "you are being sacrificed to Arthur!"

He answered nothing, but he had forgotten for ever Miss Evelina Louisa Barmond.

"When do you go?" asked Dora suddenly, with something in her voice which no one had ever heard before. She was startled at it herself.

He waited until the soft old church bell finished striking ten, then he answered:

"To-morrow!"

They had reached the farthest limit of the wood and stood at the park railing.

"Then--," she paused, and seemed to collect herself as if for a leap; "then good-bye, Jem!"

He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.

"Good-bye!" he said.

He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving branches as he looked down at her in dumb distress.

Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering gra.s.s.

A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.

Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.

"Jem," she said quietly, "is absurdly proud of his new honours. It affects his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch."

Then she went to bed.

CHAPTER VII

ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.

"Here--hi!"

As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young man subsided into occupied silence.

He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him, was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the Jews, and has. .h.i.therto managed, like them, to retain a few of its characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.

It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the l.a.b.i.al adornment of a northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation top-boots and khaki breeches.

Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.

It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses'

feet, nor did he pa.s.s any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence of some person or persons unknown.

He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets, pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a camp-bed or possibly a canoe.

The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size) full of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which he was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder was of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof, there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man, Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.

It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must throw off his works. This is an age of "throwing off," and it is to be presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at one's bank.

J.E.M. Agar--or "Jem" as his friends call him to his face and his servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of the very plainest facts.

Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps, to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for a.s.sistance, the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in themselves fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too much to say or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid apportioned by Mr.

Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have thoughts when the diary is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts, because he could not be expected to know when there would be a sunset likely to stir up poetic reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the cold light cast by some unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's life.

For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The s.p.a.ce is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is still--thank Heaven--a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this diary and keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward--remembering the jewel drawer.

At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid, and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:

"_Seven_ A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the valley. Long shot--should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five yards. Hit him in the stom--abd--chest. Looked like rain until two o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles away."

This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote _in extenso_, and yet in its day this diary was cried over--before it was put away in the jewel drawer. Truly women are strange--one can never tell how a thing will present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all--that minute particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed by the exhausted blotting-paper.

"Sunday, egad!" he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue haze.

He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called "his people" walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread, as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.

Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which seemed to come and go among the fir trees.

Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the tent--exactly two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he took up, slowly c.o.c.king it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir trees across the valley.

Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.

The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the gra.s.s.

Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas, keen little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau, reloading.

This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition to the plain Major he had several other t.i.tles attached to his name at that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was "deputy a.s.sistant" several things and "acting" one or two; for in military t.i.tles one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something short.