Miss Stuart's Legacy Part 16

List Of Officers Killed, Wounded, and Missing.--The telegram which reached Simla a few days ago reporting a severe skirmish in the Terwan has now been supplemented by details. It appears that a small force consisting of some companies of the 101st Sikhs, the 24th Goorkhas, the 207th British Infantry, and a mule battery, were sent by the old route over the Terwan Pa.s.s in order to report on its practical use. No opposition was expected, as the tribes in the vicinity had come in and were believed to be friendly. About the middle of the Pa.s.s, which proved to be far more difficult than was antic.i.p.ated, a halt had to be made for the purpose of repairing a bridge which spanned an almost impa.s.sable torrent. The road, which up to this point had followed the right bank of the river, now crossed by this bridge to the left in order to avoid some precipitous cliffs. Here it became evident that the little force had fallen into an ambuscade, for firing immediately commenced from the numerous points of vantage on either side. The Goorkhas, charging up the right bank, succeeded in dislodging most of the enemy and driving them to a safe distance. From the advantage thus gained they then opened fire on the left bank, managing to disperse some of the lower pickets. Owing, however, to the rocky and almost precipitous nature of the ground the upper ones were completely protected, and continued to pour a relentless fire on our troops, who were, for the most part, young soldiers. During the trying inaction necessary until the bridge could be repaired,--which was done with praiseworthy rapidity despite the heavy fire--Major Philip Marsden, of the 101st Sikhs, volunteered to attempt the pa.s.sage of the torrent with the object of doing for the left bank what the Goorkhas had done for the right.

Accordingly the Sikhs, led by this distinguished officer, rushed the river in grand style, how it is almost impossible to say, save by sheer pluck and determination, and after an incredibly short interval succeeded in charging up the hill-side and carrying picket after picket. A more brilliant affair could scarcely be conceived, and it is with the very deepest regret that we have to report the loss of its gallant leader. Major Marsden, who was among the first to find foothold on the opposite bank, was giving directions to his men when a bullet struck him in the chest. Staggering back almost to the edge of the river, he recovered himself against a boulder, and shouting that he was all right, bade them go on. Lost sight of in the ensuing skirmish, it is feared that he must have slipped from the place of comparative safety where they left him and fallen into the river, for his helmet and sword-belt were found afterwards a few hundred yards down the stream. None of the bodies, however, of those lost in the torrent have been recovered. Nor was it likely that they would be, as the stream here descends in a series of boiling cataracts and swirling pools. In addition to their leader, whose premature death is greatly to be deplored, the Sikhs lost two native officers, and thirty-one rank and file. The Goorkhas--

But here Belle's interest waned and she let the paper fall on her lap again. One trivial thought became almost pitifully insistent, "I wish, oh, how I wish I had not sent back that letter unopened!" As if a foolish girlish discourtesy more or less would have made any difference in the great tragedy and triumph of the man's death. For it was a triumph; she could read that between the lines of the bald conventional report.

"There's Belle crying, actually crying over Major Marsden," broke in Maud's cross voice from a rocking-chair. Now a rocking-chair is an article of furniture which requires a palatial apartment, where its obtrusive a.s.sertion of individual comfort can be softened by distance.

In the midst of a small room, and especially when surrounded by four women who have not rocking-chairs of their own, it conduces to nervous irritation on all sides. "You talk about disrespect, mamma," went on the same injured voice, "just because I didn't see why we shouldn't go to the Volunteer Ball in colours, when he was only our stepfather; but I call it really nasty of Belle to sit and whimper over a man who did his best to take away the only thing except debts that Colonel Stuart--"

"Oh, do hold your tongue, Maudie!" cried Mabel. "I'm getting sick of that old complaint. I don't see myself why we shouldn't wear our pink tulles. It would be economical to begin with, and, goodness knows, we have to think of the rupees, annas, and paisas nowadays."

Here Maud, who was not really an ill-tempered girl, became overwhelmed by the contemplation of her own wrongs, and began to sob. "I never--wore--a year-behind-fashion dress before, and--when I suggest it--just to save the expense--I'm told I'm heartless. As if it was my fault that mamma's settlement was so much waste paper, and that our money went to pay--"

"Really, Maud, you are too bad," flared up her youngest sister. "If it was any one's fault, it was Uncle Tom's, for not being more careful.

The governor was awfully good to us always. Ah, things were very different then!"

This remark turned on the widow's ready tears. "Very different indeed.

Three in the kitchen, and I wouldn't like to say how many in the stable. And though I don't wish to repine against Providence, yet caps are so expensive. I can't think why, for they are only muslin; but Miss Crowe says she can't supply me with one that is really respectful under five rupees."

"It is all very well for you to talk, Mabel," insisted Maud from the rocking-chair; "you have a settlement of your own in prospect."

"So might you," retorted the other, "if you were wise, instead of wasting your time over men who mean nothing, like that handsome Captain Stanley."

"Yes!" yawned Mildred. "It is the stubby Majors with half-a-dozen motherless children growing up at home who marry."

Mabel flushed through her sallow skin and in her turn became tearful; for in truth her _fiance_ was but too accurately described in these unflattering terms. "It is not your part to jeer at me for sacrificing myself to the interests of you girls. In our unfortunate position it is our duty to avail ourselves of the chances left us, and not to go hankering after penniless probationers in the Post-Office."

Yet one more recruit for pocket-handkerchief drill rushed to the front, though more in anger than sorrow. "If you are alluding to Willie Allsop," retorted Mildred fiercely, "I dare say he will be as well off as your Major some day. At any rate I'm not going to perjure myself for money, like some people."

"Oh, girls, girls!" whimpered the widow plaintively, "don't quarrel and wake Charlie, for the doctor said he was to be kept quiet and not excited. Really, misfortunes come so fast, and things are so dear,--to say nothing of Parrish's Chemical Food for Charlie--that I don't know where to turn. If poor d.i.c.k had but lived! It was too bad of those nasty Afghans to kill the dear boy just as he was getting on, and being so generous to me. I always stood up for d.i.c.k; he had a warm heart, and people don't make their own tempers, you know."

Belle, who had been sitting silent at the window, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously, felt as if she must stifle. "I wish,"

she said in a low voice, "you would let me go on teaching as I did in the winter. Why should we mind, even if there are old friends here now? I am not ashamed of working."

Her remark had one good effect. It healed minor differences by the counter irritation of a general grievance, and the upshot of a combined and vigorous attack was that there had been quite enough disgrace in the family already, without Belle adding to it. Of course, had she been able to give lessons in music or singing, the suggestion might have been considered, since the flavour of art subdued the degradation; but the idea of teaching the children of the middle cla.s.s to read and write was hopelessly vulgar. It was far more genteel to become a _zenana_-lady, since there the flavour of religion disguised the necessity. Belle, trying to possess her soul in patience by st.i.tching away as if her life depended on it, found the task beyond her powers. "I think I'll go out," she said in a choked voice. "Oh, yes! I know it's raining, but the air will do me good; the house is so stuffy."

"It's the best we can afford now," retorted Maud.

"And the position is good," suggested Mrs. Stuart feebly.

"Belle doesn't care a fig for position, mamma," snapped up her daughter. "She would have liked one of those barracks by the bazaar where n.o.body lives."

"We might have got up a scratch dance there," remarked Mildred in tones of regret. "Oh, not _now_, mamma, of course; but by and by when things got jollier."

"I don't believe they ever will get jollier," came in gloomy prophecy from the rocking-chair, as Belle escaped gladly into the mist and rain. Six weeks, she thought; was it only six weeks since the maddening, paralysing drip, drip, drip of ceaseless raindrops had been in her ears? And yet these experienced in hill-weather spoke cheerfully of another six weeks to come. Would she ever be able to endure being the fifth woman in that ridiculous little room for all those days? What irritated her most was the needlessness of half the petty worries which went to make up the dreary discomfort. The extravagant clinging to the habits of past opulence, the wastefulness, resulting in the want of many things which might have made life more pleasant; the apathy content to grumble and do nothing, while she felt her spirits rise and her cheeks brighten even from her rapid walk through the driving mist. The rain had lessened as she paused to lean over the railings which protected a turn of the road where it was hollowed out from the hill-side; sheer cliff on one side, sheer precipice on the other. Up to her very feet surged the vast grey sea of mist, making her feel as if one more step would set her afloat on its sh.o.r.eless waste. Yet below that dim mysterious pall lay, she well knew, one of the fairest scenes on G.o.d's earth, smiling doubtless in a sunshine in which she had no part. Then suddenly, causelessly, the words recurred to her--"_The world is before you yet; it holds life, and happiness, and love_." Who had said them? Even now it cost her an effort to remember clearly the events following on the shock of her father's death. The effort was so painful that she avoided it as a rule; but this time the memory of Philip Marsden's kindness came back sharply, and the trivial remorse about the letter rose up once more to take the front place in her regrets until driven thence by one vague, impotent desire to have the past back again. Looking down into the impalpable barrier of cloud through which a pale gleam of light drifted hither and thither, she could almost fancy herself a disembodied spirit striving after a glimpse of the world whence it had been driven by death; so far away did she feel herself from those careless days at Faizapore, from the kindly friends, the--

"Miss Stuart! surely it is Miss Stuart!" cried a man's voice behind her. She turned, to see John Raby, who, throwing the reins of his pony to the groom, advanced to greet her, his handsome face bright with pleasure. His left arm was in a sling, for he had been slightly wounded; to the girl's eyes he had a halo of heroism and happiness round him.

"I am so glad!" she said, "so glad!"

As they stood, hand in hand, a sunbeam struggling through the cloud parted the mist at their feet. Below them, like a jewelled mosaic, lay the Doon bathed in a flood of light; each hamlet and tree, each silver torrent-streak and emerald field, seemingly within touch, so clear and pellucid was the rain-washed air between. Further away, like fire-opals with their purple shadows, flashed the peaks of the Sewaliks, and beyond them shade upon shade, light upon light, the mother-of-pearl plain losing itself in the golden setting of the sky.

"I am in for luck all round," cried John Raby in high delight. "That means a break in the rains, and a fortnight of heaven for me,--if fate is kind--"

But Belle heard nothing; one of those rare moments when individuality seems merged in a vast sympathy with all things visible and invisible was upon her, filling her, body and soul, with supreme content.

"Are you not coming in?" she asked, when, after walking slowly along the Mall, they reached the path which led downward to the little drawing-room and the four women.

"I will come to-morrow," he replied, looking at her with undisguised admiration in his eyes. "Today it is enough to have seen you. After all, you were always my great friend,--you and your father."

"Yes, he was very fond of you," she a.s.sented softly; and with her flushed cheeks and the little fluffy curls by her pretty ears all glistening with mist drops, showed an April face, half smiles, half tears.

CHAPTER XIV.

Two months later found Belle Raby sitting in the shade of a spreading deodar-tree, placidly knitting silk socks for her husband, who, stretched on the turf beside her, read a French novel.

Pages would not satisfactorily explain how this sequence of events came about, because pages would not suffice to get at the bottom of the amazing, unnatural ignorance of first principles which enables a nice girl to marry a man towards whom she entertains a rudimentary affection, and afterwards, with the same contented calm, to acquiesce in the disconcerting realities of life. Belle was not the first girl who chose a husband as she would have chosen a dress; that is to say, in the belief that it will prove becoming, and the hope that it will fit. Nor was she (and this is the oddest or the most tragic part in the business) the first or the last girl who, after solemnly perjuring herself before G.o.d and man to perform duties of which she knows nothing, and to have feelings of which she has not even dreamed, is on the whole perfectly content with herself and her world. In fact Belle, as she looked affectionately at her lounging spouse, felt no shadow of doubt as to the wisdom of her choice; so little has the mind or heart to do with the crude facts of marriage, so absolutely distinct are the latter from the spiritual or sentimental love with which ethical culture has overlaid the simplicity of nature to the general confusion of all concerned.

"Upon my life, Paul de k.o.c.k is infinitely amusing!" remarked John Raby, throwing the book aside and turning lazily to his young wife.

"Worth twice all your Zolas and Ohnets, who _will_ be serious over frivolity. Our friend here has an inexhaustible laugh."

"I'm sure I thought him dreadfully stupid," replied Belle simply. "I tried to read some last night."

"I wouldn't struggle to acquire the art of reading Paul de k.o.c.k, my dear," said John Raby with a queer smile. "It's not an accomplishment necessary to female salvation. The most iniquitous proverb in the language is that one about sauce for the goose and the gander. Say what you will, men and women are as different in their fixings as chalk from cheese. Now I,--though I am domestic enough in all conscience--would never be contented knitting socks as you are. By the way, those will be too big for me."

"Who said they were meant for you?" retorted Belle gaily. "Not I!"

"Perhaps not with your lips; but a good wife invariably knits socks for her husband, and you, my dear Belle, were foreordained from the beginning of time to be a good wife,--the very best of little wives a man ever had."

"I hope so," she replied after a pause. "John, it is all very well here in holiday time to be lazy as I am, but by and by I should like to be a little more useful; to help you in your work, if I could; at any rate to understand it, to know what the people we govern think, and say, and do."

Her husband sat up, dangling his hands idly between his knees. "I'm not sure about the wisdom of it. Personally I have no objection; besides, I hold that no one has a right to interfere with another person's harmless fancies; yet that sort of thing is invariably misunderstood in India. First by the natives; they think a woman's interest means a desire for power. Then by the men of one's own cla.s.s; they drag up 'grey mare the better horse,' &c. How I hate proverbs!

You see, women out here divide themselves, as a rule, betwixt b.a.l.l.s and babies, so the men get _clique_. I don't defend it, but it's very natural. Most of us come out just at the age when a contempt for woman's intellect seems to make our beards grow faster, and we have no clever mixed society to act as an antidote to our own conceit. Now a woman with a clear head like yours, Belle, you are much cleverer than I thought you were, by the way, is sure with unbia.s.sed eyes to see details that don't strike men who are in the game,--unpleasant, ridiculous details probably,--and that is always an offence. If you were stupid, it wouldn't matter; but being as you are, why, discretion is the better part of valour."

"But if I have brains, as you say I have, what am I to do with them?"

cried Belle, knitting very fast.

"There are the b.a.l.l.s,--and the babies; as Pendennis said to his wife, '_Tout vient a ceux qui savent attendre_.' By the way, I wonder where the d.i.c.kens the postman has gone to to-day? It's too bad to keep us waiting like this. I'll report him."

"_Tout vient--!_" retorted Belle, recovering from a fine blush. "Why are you always in such a hurry for the letters, John? I never am."

"No more am I," he cried gaily, rising to his feet and holding out his hand to help her. "I never was in a hurry, except--" and here he drew her towards him in easy proprietorship--"to marry you. I was in a hurry then, I confess."

"You were indeed," said the girl, who but a year before had felt outraged by the first pa.s.sionately pure kiss of a boy, as she submitted cheerfully to that of a man whose love was of the earth, earthy. "Why, you hardly left me time to get a wedding-garment! But it was much wiser for you to spend the rest of your leave here, than to begin work and the honeymoon together."