The Great Amulet Part 39

"Anything ready for you over there?" said he.

"Not that I know of. But Zyarulla will shake things down in no time."

"All the same, as your luggage is handy, why not stop on here? You'd be uncommonly welcome; and I know Honor would be glad to keep an eye on you for a while longer."

The invitation, given on the spur of the moment, took Lenox aback.

"But, my good chap, . . . you've got Wyndham coming over."

"Yes. Thank G.o.d. To-morrow or next day. No distaste for Paul's company, have you?"

Lenox smiled, and shook his head.

"Hang it all, Desmond, you know what I mean. You and your wife have done too much for me already. There _are_ limits to a man's capacity for sponging on other folks' generosity."

"Well, if that's your only objection, we'll consider the matter settled!

Wyndham goes into my dressing-room; so the boy's nursery is at your service. My wife is never so happy as when she has her hands full; and it'll be less trying for you here, than in your own empty bungalow."

The last words flashed a suspicion into Lenox's mind.

"Look here, man," he broke out hotly, his eyes searching Desmond's face.

"Isn't it you yourself who would be glad to keep an eye on me? You're half afraid I shall knock under to this infernal thing if I'm too much alone. Is that it?"

Desmond met question and glance four-square.

"You gave me leave just now not to mince matters, and I take you at your word," said he. "To acknowledge that living alone may make the fight harder for you is no reflection on your powers of resistance. It is simple fact; and no earthly good can come of disregarding it. In your case discretion is the better part of valour.--Now, will you be reasonable, and accept my suggestion in the spirit in which it was made?"

He held out his hand. Lenox grasped, and wrung it hard.

"Thanks, old chap," he said. "I'll stay for the present. There's no withstanding you two."

That night he excused himself from mess: and long after the house and compound had fallen asleep, he and Desmond sat together in the _dufta_, with pipes and pegs, and softly snoring dogs at their feet, talking intermittently of all things in earth and heaven, with the rare unreserve bred of tobacco, and the communicative influence of midnight. Talk of this kind draws men very close together; and in the course of it Lenox discovered--as others had done before him--that this man who had become so intimately linked with the vital issues of his life was no mere good comrade, but a dynamic force, challenging and evoking the manhood of his friends.

When they parted Lenox felt more hopeful than he had done since the arrival of Quita's note; and honest sleep hung heavy on his eyelids.

"Don't believe you need the dose we spoke of after all," Desmond remarked on a note of satisfaction.

"Not a bit of it. Thanks to you, I believe I shall sleep like a top."

Nor was he disappointed.

For the first time in fifty-six hours he took his fill of natural dreamless sleep: and, on waking next morning, the first sight that greeted him was a letter from Dalhousie, propped against the milk-jug on his early tea tray.

[1] Duster.

[2] It is an order--you understand!

CHAPTER XIX.

"And methought that beauty and terror were only one, not two; And the world has room for love and death, and thunder and dew; And all the sinews of h.e.l.l slumber in summer air; And the face of G.o.d is a rock; but the face of the rock is fair."

--R.L.S.

That same evening after sunset, a hospital doolie was set down in the verandah, and from it emerged Paul Wyndham--a long lean figure of a man, whose most notable features were deep steadfast eyes, neither blue nor grey; a mouth of extraordinary gentleness and capacity for endurance; and the grave quietness of movement and speech, that may mean power in perfect equilibrium or mere dulness.

Desmond and Honor welcomed him with unconcealed affection; and for himself, his descent into the Valley of the Shadow seemed a small price to pay for a convalescence cheered by the ministrations of these two, than whom there were none dearer to him on earth. Of the unalterable nature of his feeling for Honor, both husband and wife were well aware; though no word of it ever pa.s.sed their lips. They were aware, also, that the love of a man like Paul Wyndham was a thing apart; implying neither disloyalty to his friend, nor the remotest danger to any of the three concerned. Conditions inconceivable to the pedestrian order of mind.

Too weak to fret against enforced inaction at a time of stress, Wyndham pa.s.sed his days between sleeping and waking and eating; between rare talks with Lenox and Desmond, and the restfulness diffused through heart and brain and body by Honor's constant presence at his bedside.

She had amply fulfilled the promise given him more than four years ago of close and privileged friendship; and he counted himself more blest in its possession than many a man who wins the entire woman, to find her no more than a plaster G.o.ddess after all.

Honor herself, apart from the natural woman's pleasure in nursing an appreciative patient, was thankful for a definite demand upon her time.

For Theo was seldom available now, except for an occasional after-dinner drive, through darkness two degrees cooler than high noon; and beneath her surface serenity she suffered keenly from the ache of empty arms; from the completeness of separation involved in leaving a child too young to span distance even by hieroglyphs, profusely decorated with 'kisses,' such as she had seen women treasure in the days of her young ignorance. Mrs Rivers wrote constantly and copiously. But can the most unwearied pen set down all that a mother craves to know about her child?

At the end of a week, Lenox was with them still. To his sole suggestion of departure, Desmond had merely replied: "My dear man, don't talk nonsense. When we've had enough of you, we'll let you know it, without ceremony!" And Lenox, strangely loth to return to his bachelor quarters, took him at his word, and stayed on.

Yet the two men saw little enough of one another. For on the Frontier work means work: and when cholera hovers over the station like a bird of prey, it is carried on with redoubled vigour. Only by constant occupation can fear and fatalism be held at arm's-length. Only the infectious mettle of the British officer can infuse into all ranks that cheerful alertness which, at a time of epidemic, is the finest safeguard in the world. There is much virtue, also, in mere routine, one of the wingless good angels of earth; and only those who have proved its power to drag broken heart or broken body through the things that must be done, estimate it at its true value.

In Lenox's case, it helped to deaden the p.r.i.c.k of anxiety as to the future and the physical ache of longing; for as Commandant with two out of four subalterns on the 'sick list,' he had his hands full; and Desmond, the Colonel's chosen friend and ally in all regimental matters, was in the same enviable condition. The more so, since he and Meredith between them had antic.i.p.ated the modern theory that the spread of cholera or fever can be partially checked by a determined a.s.sault on flies and mosquitoes, the great disease-breeders of the East; a suggestion received at that time with a mild amus.e.m.e.nt, bordering on scorn. But the two men, zealous for the credit and welfare of the regiment--the Great Fetish 'that claims the lives of all and lives for ever'--determined to give the new notion a fair trial in their own Lines; and Desmond, as may be supposed, flung himself heart and soul into the organisation of this very novel form of campaign! Plunged neck-deep again in the work he loved, there seemed no limit to his tireless energy; and from the Colonel downward, all were heartily glad to get him back.

Even in an age given over to the marketable commodity, England can still breed men of this calibre. Not perhaps in her cities, where individual aspiration and character are cramped, warped, deadened by the brute force of money, the complex mechanism of modern life: but in unconsidered corners of her Empire, in the vast s.p.a.ces and comparative isolation, where old-fashioned patriotism takes the place of parochial party politics, and where, alone, strong natures can grow up in their own way.

It is to the Desmonds and Merediths of an earlier day that we are indebted for the st.u.r.dy loyalty of our Punjab and Frontier troops, for our hold upon the fighting races of the North. India may have been won by the sword, but it has been held mainly by attributes of heart and spirit; by individual strength of purpose, capacity for sympathy and devotion to the interests of those we govern. When we fail in these, and not till then, will power pa.s.s out of our hands.

That there was no such failure among the little band of Englishmen throughout that inglorious campaign against an enemy one could never have the satisfaction of thrashing in the open, the att.i.tude of their Native officers and men bore ample witness. Light-hearted subalterns--whisked away from half-fledged love affairs, or the more serious business of sport--might curse their luck with blasphemous vigour; older men might grumble openly at extra parades, at the strain of additional vigilance and discipline; but for all that, the work was done,--thoroughly, and with a will; not within the station only, but out there on the open plain, rolling in vast undulations to the naked spurs of the Saliman range, where the sun smote through the canvas as if it had been so much brown paper and the stricken regiment strove, by constantly shifting ground, to shake off the pursuing horror that steadily thinned its ranks. Here Colonel Stanham Buckley waked each morning with the cold clutch of fear at his heart; fortified himself with incessant 'nips' throughout the day; and left the bulk of the work to a cheery little Adjutant, untroubled by the sorrowful great gift of imagination. And here, as in the station, all officers were diligent in visits to the hospital; heartening the sufferers by their presence, and combating, as far as might be, the Oriental's fatalistic att.i.tude towards disease and death. Perhaps only those who have had close dealings with the British officer in time of action or emergency realise, to the full, the effective qualities hidden under a careless or conventional exterior:--the vital force, the pluck, endurance, and irrepressible spirit of enterprise, which--it has been aptly said--make him, at his best, the most romantic figure of our modern time.

And while indefatigable soldiers fought the enemy in camp and in the Lines, Dudley Norton, O.S.I., Deputy Commissioner, and ruler-in-chief of the station, fought him no less energetically in the bazaar and native city; an even more heart-breaking task. For here was no disciplined body of men, but a swarm of prejudiced individuals, caring nothing for infection, and everything for the sanct.i.ty of house and caste. Precautions and sanitary measures had to be carried at the point of the bayonet; and they were so carried. For Dudley Norton, no novice at Frontier work, had long since made himself wholesomely feared and respected throughout the Derajat; while, among the Maliks of his district, his hawk-like eyes gleaming under heavy brows were accredited with the power of watching a man's thoughts at their birth. A reputation too useful to be discouraged!

Like all detached frontier civilians, he practically lived at the station mess; except on fugitive occasions, when a placidly handsome woman, bearing his name, vouchsafed him a flying visit from home; for no other reason--said the evil-minded--than to establish a right-of-way over her property. At these times Norton welcomed, and entertained his wife with a scrupulous politeness and concern for her physical well-being that was a tragedy in itself; and eventually 'saw her off'

at the nearest railway station with a sigh of relief. For, once--in a former life, it seemed--he had been in love with her; and the ghost of a dead pa.s.sion is an ill companion at bed and board. At the present moment, he had seen neither her nor his only son for more than five years; and of the small daughter, whose coming had transfigured his life, there remained only a cross in Kohat cemetery, and a faded photo of the flagrantly unnatural type that prevailed in the late 'seventies.

But the man who gives his heart to the Indian Borderland must steel himself to forgo much that, in the arrogance of youth, he has deemed indispensable to happiness, or even to living at all.

Frontier service begets closer contact between soldier and civilian, both in work and play, than cantonment life down country; most often to the uprooting of prejudice on both sides; and Norton was one of the few men in the station who had achieved comparative intimacy with Lenox.

Those formidable eyes of his had been quick to detect in the taciturn Gunner, who had done so much, and had so little to say about it, a coming 'political' of no mean quality, a man of ideas and ambitions, for whom the great country of his service was something more than a vast playground, or shooting-box; in effect, a man after his own heart.

Thus, finding Lenox established at the Desmonds, Norton called upon them soon after Honor's arrival. He was rewarded by a standing invitation to 'drop in' any afternoon, or evening that he happened to be free, an invitation which Honor extended to most of the men who came to bid her welcome; and tea at the Desmonds--with iced coffee or pegs as alternatives, and smoking a matter of course--soon became a daily inst.i.tution; a respite, if only for an hour or two, from the monotony of mess, parade-ground, and hospital.

"Awfully sporting of Mrs Desmond," was the verdict of grateful subalterns, who found these tea-drinkings a vast improvement on stale home papers, and half-hearted gambling at the Club. There was always music. Honor, besides playing magnificently, could be safely relied upon for impromptu accompaniments. The Chicken, and an irrepressible Irishman of the Sikhs, who gloried in the name of O'Flanagan, were indefatigable on the banjo, and in the construction of topical verses to vary the programme. Hot-weather audiences are not hypercritical; and in the red-hot circle of days and nights the mildest innovation is welcome as a sail on a blank horizon.

Desmond himself was delighted with his wife's spontaneous contribution to the good spirits of the station; and if the two had little quiet time together, they had at least a satisfying sense of comradeship in work; the strongest link that can be added to the strong chain of marriage.

Frank Olliver, with her big smile, and infectious gaiety, looked in most days, as a matter of course; till one of the two fever cases she had managed to lay hands on took a serious turn, and an hour off duty could only be secured when Honor insisted on relieving guard, and sending Frank over to play hostess in her stead.