The Great Amulet Part 11

"You're amazingly good to me, Mrs Desmond; and I'm an ungrateful brute.

Will you overlook that, and play me something warranted to soothe jarred nerves, till your husband comes?"

"Of course I will, gladly. Only you mustn't expect real music from a hireling!"

She chose one of Beethoven's most tenderly gracious Allegrettos, and the soul of the hireling responded creditably to the magic of her touch.

But before she had played many bars a clatter of hoofs announced Desmond's return. He flung himself from the saddle, cleared the verandah steps at a bound, and entered the room:--a man of magnetic vitality, with a temperament like a clear flame; a typical officer of that isolated force to whose gallantry and unwearied devotion to duty India owes more than she is apt to acknowledge, or, possibly, to perceive. He nodded a welcome to Lenox, signed to him to remain seated, and going straight to the piano laid a hand on his wife's shoulder.

"Don't stop. Finish your piece," he said, as she smiled up at him; and he did not remove his hand, but remained standing there, in simple satisfaction at having got back to her.

Now and again, at very rare intervals, Nature seems to select a favoured man and woman to uphold the torch of the ideal, lest it be reduced to sparks and smoke, to refute the cynic and the pessimist; to hearten a world nauseated and discouraged by the eternal tragi-comedy of marriage, with the spectacle of a human relationship of unsullied beauty: a relationship that pa.s.ses, by imperceptible degrees, from the first antiphony of pa.s.sionate hearts to a deep deliberate bliss, "durable from the daily dust of life."

Desmond's first marriage had brought him no such revelation of the hidden mysteries of union; no companionship worthy of the name; and the happiness that comes late, on the heels of conflict and pain, takes a more conscious grip on the heart, is more firmly held to, more jealously guarded, than that which meets us on the threshold, and is accepted as part of the natural order of things. Blest with vivacity, courage, and an ardent zest for Frontier soldiering, Desmond had rarely found life other than very good; but he had only proven the full measure of its goodness since his marriage with Honor Meredith. And the mouths brought increasing reliance on her comradeship; increasing insight into the depths and delicacies of a pa.s.sion that was almost genius. His need of her was deeper now than it had been two years ago, when he had believed himself at the summit of desire. For a great love is like a great mountain-range. Each height scaled reveals farther heights beyond. Attainment is no part of our programme here; and there may well be truth in the axiom that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive."

But Eldred Lenox, tangled in the twofold cords of temperament and circ.u.mstance, was denied even the privilege of travelling hopefully, and at moments like the present he suffered the additional torment of looking into happiness through another man's eyes. It was futile to reiterate the obvious drawbacks of marriage for an ambitious man, standing on the threshold of a coveted career. These distracting Desmonds cheerfully and unconsciously refuted them all! But he accepted the thorns of the situation as toll paid for the privilege of an intimacy he would on no account have forgone, and endured them with the grim stoicism that was his.

The Allegretto ended, Honour swung round on her stool, and set forth her Chumba project without reference to Eldred's threatened departure.

Desmond laughingly professed himself ready to obey orders, within reasonable limits; and it was finally decided that he should write at once to Colonel Mayhew, Resident of the native State in which Dalhousie's hills are situated, and whose capital lies in a cup-shaped valley eighteen miles below the English station.

Thereupon Lenox rose to take his leave; but on the threshold he paused, as though an afterthought had occurred to him.

"Next time you happen to go out calling, Mrs Desmond," he said, with studied carelessness, "you might like to look up a Miss Maurice and her brother. They've been here all the winter; and are living on the top of Bakrotas. I met them--some years ago, in Switzerland. Artists, out here for painting purposes--and rather out of the common run. You might find them interesting."

"They sound as if they would be! Thank you for letting me know of their existence. I'll amuse myself by exploiting them while you two are away."

But Lenox had no wish to expatiate upon the subject, and with a muttered disclaimer he was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

"I will but say what mere friends say-- Or only a thought stronger.

I will hold your hand as long as all may-- Or--no very little longer."

--Browning.

"No, I don't like her, and I don't believe I ever shall. One cannot deny that she is beautiful, charming, complete; too complete for my taste. _Cela me gene_. I know no other way to express it."

Quita Maurice balanced herself on the railing of her matchbox verandah, and gazed critically at the corner where the last of Honor Desmond's _jhampannis_ had not long since disappeared from view. Garth, the inevitable, stood close beside her, faultlessly equipped as always, even to the gold-tipped cigarette, and the violets that blossomed perennially in his coat. He grew them in pots expressly for the purpose; and his bearer set them in a wine-gla.s.s on his breakfast-table every morning.

Quita's verdict on her visitor moved him to a smile of half-cynical amus.e.m.e.nt. He enjoyed her occasional unabashed lapses into the eternal feminine.

"I'm with you there," he answered, heartily. "The worst fault a human being can commit is to be faultless. Poor Mrs Desmond! She will have to subsist without our admiration."

"No need to waste pity on her, _mon ami_. I am convinced that she gets far more admiration than is good for her as it is. She has only been married a little over two years, I believe, and it is safe to presume that her husband idolises her shadow. She is the sort of woman men put on a pedestal, and worship kneeling; and women mostly detest, because, in their secret hearts, they would like to be up there too! Personally I have no use for pedestals. I am content to be _bon camarade_! As for that sublime Desmond woman, I feel morally certain that she never commits an indiscretion, or has a knot in her shoe-lace, or loses her scissors!"

"Are you peculiarly lenient towards those three failings?"

"I am quite culpably lenient towards the whole tribe of human failings.

They are the salt of life. I have never really understood that incessant harping on the mystery of pain and sin. The question, Why should they be allowed to exist? seems to me simply fatuous. No world worth living in could have been created without them. They are the backbone of all drama; and I love drama inordinately. They put the iron into men's souls, and the grit into their characters. Think what a nauseating crew of sentimentalists we should be,

'If all had love, as every nest hath eggs, And every head of maize her feathery cap.'

I, for one, should beg to be excused from spending three-score years and ten on a planet full of sugar-plums and kisses!"

She left her perch on the railings, and stood erect, in an unconscious att.i.tude of defiance; and Garth watched her speculatively through narrowed lids. He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that she had persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond Chumba, instead of deserting Dalhousie for the interior, might not be accountable for this unusual burst of eloquence.

"I had no notion that you went in for studying big questions of that kind," he remarked, with an amused air of interest.

"Studying them! But no! What call is there to study them? I have my ears and eyes, and my priceless intuitions. It is enough. An artist will learn more about life and character with the help of those three, than all the _savants_ in creation could imbibe from a hecatomb of books. Michel--where are you? What has been keeping you so quiet since Mrs Desmond's departure?"

Michael, who promptly appeared on the threshold, held up a large drawing-block for his sister's inspection.

"_Voila donc_! _Que dis-tu_? Is it not to the life?"

The picture was a rapid, delicate pastel study of Honor Desmond, presenting her, as Michael had said, "to the life." The broad brow, the short straight nose, the strength and tenderness of the mouth and chin, the smile that hovered like a light in her serious eyes; every detail was faultlessly rendered. But Quita's cry of surprise expressed annoyance rather than admiration.

"What possessed you to do _that_?" she asked, sharply. "It is a living likeness--yes. Better send it to her friend, Captain Lenox. He would give you a hundred and fifty rupees for it like a shot."

The instant the words were out she tingled with mortification at having spoken them in Garth's presence. But he a.s.sumed a critical interest in the picture, and Michael, in the first flush of achievement, had eyes and thoughts for nothing else.

"A hundred and fifty? _Parbleu, non_!" he answered, hotly. "It is a possession, a triumph. I do not part with it for money. All the while she talked to you, I never took my eyes from her face, and I struck while the iron was hot. _Mon Dieu, mais die est superbe_! _C'est une deesse veritable_! _Rien non plus_!"

In ecstatic moments Michael deserted English altogether for the natural language of the emotions; and Quita flashed a glance of amus.e.m.e.nt at Garth.

"The pedestal already, you see!"

But Michael, deaf or unheeding, continued his paean of praise.

"But the head alone is not enough. _Il faut le tout ensemble_. _ca sera magnifique_. Now at last I have the centre figure for my great picture--Mater Triumphans. In a day or two I call on her. I ask her permission to immortalise her and myself in one achievement. No woman in her senses could refuse so flattering a request; and her lips, her eyes, betray that, G.o.ddess or not, she is before all things a woman."

"But, my good Michel," Quita interposed, with a deliberate lightness, "ride your enthusiasm on the curb, I beg of you. Isn't one G.o.ddess at a time enough to fill your expansive heart? I warn you that if you are going to disgrace me by ostentatiously falling in love with this Mrs Desmond, I shall give you up for good, and insist on a legal separation! Now, I am tired of idling, and it's high time I went back to my picture." She held out a hand to Garth. "_a demain_," she said, with a gracious smile of dismissal. "But not till tea-time, please. I have a certain amount of work to get through every day if _you_ have not!"

Garth's reply was conveyed to a lingering pressure of her hand. He was a past master in this discreet method of expressing the inexpressible; and he had the satisfaction of seeing the colour deepen in her cheeks, as she released herself hastily, and pa.s.sed on into the house.

During a long ride homeward, Garth found time for much interested speculation on the possible issue of events. The situation appeared sufficiently incomprehensible to afford scope for dramatic developments; and he shared to the full Quita's taste for drama, provided always that it did not deprive him of sleep, or render him personally uncomfortable. He shared also her magnanimous att.i.tude towards human shortcomings; frankly acknowledging his own, and skilfully utilising those of other men--and women. But bad men are as often tripped up by the unquenchable spark of good in human nature as good men are by the equally unquenchable spark of evil; and James Garth was not altogether devoid of the little leaven that leavens the whole lump. There were even moments--and the present was one--when it a.s.serted itself to the detriment of his cool-headed schemes. Generally speaking, a husband in the background in no way disturbed his accommodating code of morals. But scruples, hitherto unknown, seemed set like a hedge of defence about this girl, who was, in every respect, so very much a woman.

For all her love of dangerous ground, her airy scorn of conventions, she had a knack of compelling some measure of uprightness, even from so unpromising a subject as James Garth. Thus, bone-bred gossip though he was, his silence in respect of her astounding revelation was a.s.sured.

Her words, "I trust you, as a gentleman," had quickened that good grain in him, which is the saving grace of us all. Also the knowledge itself hurt him more than he could have believed. It seriously upset his equanimity for no less than a week; not indeed to the extent of damaging his appet.i.te, or his sleep, but enough to make her society a distraction more bitter than sweet; enough to drive him into dining at the Strawberry Bank Hotel, though the cuisine of that mixed establishment compared very unfavourably with his own.

Here he naturally met Lenox, and the meeting reawakened his consuming curiosity; awakened also those primitive savage instincts which no surface civilisation will ever annihilate while the world holds one woman and two men. And how should it be accounted theft to rob a man of that which, to all appearance, he neither possessed nor desired to recapture?

In twenty years of philandering he had never experienced so keen a desire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leave his wife in an equivocal position, he must be prepared to accept the consequences, which are, in general, the last things that any average man is prepared to accept. Shrewdness and vanity alike convinced Garth that Quita's att.i.tude on Dynkund, viewed in the light of her subsequent disclosure, counted for nothing; while the fact that for six months she had readily accepted his companionship counted for much. Her fine sense of honour had naturally compelled her to "head him off" dangerous ground. But he consoled himself with the reflection that a woman's sense of honour is rarely her strongest point. Pit her heart against it, and the outcome is merely a question of time. A conviction founded on his own complicated past!

In his esteem, then, nothing stood between him and his desire but a poor crop of scruples, readily trampled under foot; and by a fine stroke of irony Lenox himself completed the trampling process. He, who rarely took an active part in the random, unedifying talk congenial to after-dinner "pegs" and cigars, had one night been moved to administer advice to a rapturous subaltern, in the shape of a few trenchant cynicisms in respect of women and marriage, bidding him not be fool enough to run his misguided head into the noose; and the subaltern had collapsed like a p.r.i.c.ked air-ball. But Garth, to his own surprise, retorted with no little warmth; and Lenox, turning in his chair, looked at him deliberately--a glint of steel in his eyes.

"I couldn't presume to cross swords with you, Major," he remarked, on a quiet note of contempt. "Your experience is as extensive as my own is limited; and you have the good luck to be popular. I have not. But that is simply a question of _metier_. Yours is to flatter women, even behind their backs; whilst I am blockhead enough to speak the truth about them, even to their faces. And the last thing a normal woman wants from any man is--the truth."