The Great Amulet Part 58

"Of course--I forgot. You're a new broom! If I meet you in March three or four years hence, I shall hear another story."

"And enjoy the triumph of your own cynicism! Very well, I accept your challenge. I shall write to you three years from now, just to tell you how the land lies."

"Do. And if you forget, I shall hear of you from some one else. We know all one another's little doings in this corner of the world. I feel curious about you, and prophesy that Simla and amateur theatricals will carry the day; though for Lenox's sake I hope all the triumph will be on your side. But it's no light matter, I can tell you, to win your spurs as a Frontier officer's wife of the right quality."

"Like Mrs Desmond, for instance?"

"Quite so. Like Mrs Desmond."

"I notice all the cynicism goes out of your voice when you speak of her. Yet you can make insulting prophecies about _me_, at my own table too! Am I so immeasurably inferior?"

"That remains to be seen! You have still to be tested in the furnace, and no imaginary furnace either. Man or woman, staying power's the great requisite for India, Mrs Lenox. To pull through for half a dozen hot weathers is all very well,--mere getting one's hand in. But by the time a man has completed his twentieth he begins to know something about the weakness of the flesh. I seem to you, with your youth and high courage, a cynical, disagreeable fellow enough. But perhaps when you are middle-aged and disillusioned, and all the good blood in your veins has been dried up by fever, you'll forgive my straight speaking to-night; though by then I shall be a forgotten old fogey, eating my heart out in England, or I shall have dropped in harness, which would be the kinder fate of the two."

"Indeed I have forgiven you already," she answered in a softened tone; and involuntarily her eyes sought the handsome heavy-featured woman beside her husband, whose Paris dinner-dress was cut lower than need be, and whose elaborate 'fringe' rather too obviously grew off her head.

"Thank you. It's more than I deserve; and I'm sorry I must repay you by giving you your first taste of the pleasant little surprises that are a main feature of Frontier life. I have to go off across the Border early next week, to fix the position of a post we are going to build for our Mahsud levies, and to collect a fine from some rascals who have been raiding Tank."

"Where's that?"

"An unlucky village near the Gomal Pa.s.s,--the great trade route into the hills. It gets burnt to the ground periodically by the Waziris, probably much to its advantage; but one can't overlook the insult to British authority. So I'm obliged to visit them in state and talk to them like a father, after collecting their fine; and I'm afraid I must take your husband and Richardson along with me, besides a handful of cavalry and infantry by way of protection and prestige."

Quita's face fell. "For how long?" she asked, collecting her last crumbs of pastry with a peculiar deliberation.

"We might be ten days coming and going. Not more."

"And--would there be fighting?"

"Probably not. It's a peaceful deputation. But peace armed to the teeth is the only kind the Waziri understands; and he can't always control his rifle when he finds the eternally aggressive white man taking liberties with his sacred hills! We shan't be sorry for a whiff of cool air any of us; and you won't be the only injured wife. Colonel Montague, of the Sikhs, comes with us; and I'm going to rob Mrs Desmond of her _preux chevalier_ also. I only want half a squadron, but I shall make special request for Desmond. He's a capital man to have handy in case of accidents. As for Lenox, he'll be delighted, if that's any consolation to you."

"Well, naturally," she faced him now, eyes and lips under control.

"Besides, ten days is nothing. One has to make a beginning; and it might have been ever so much worse."

"That's the plucky way to look at it," he said in evident approval, and Quita rather abruptly changed the subject.

The evening that followed was a remarkably cheerful affair, imbued with that spirit of friendly informality which makes the little dinners of India live long in the memory. O'Flannagan had brought his banjo.

Rivers and Richardson both sang creditably; and Quita herself was in one of her 'inspired' moods. Only Mrs Norton, having deposited her grey satin magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess; flirted--intellectually--with any one who had the hardihood to sit near her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a transparently insincere little speech about an enjoyable evening.

"Begad, but her works want oiling badly!" O'Flannagan confided to Quita, as the last shimmering morsel of her train slid out of sight.

"She's one o' your immaculate Englishwomen who give me the blues. Come on, Mrs Lenox. Thank Heaven for the dash of ould Ireland in you; and let's begin to enjoy ourselves!"

From that moment the evening took a new lease of life. Two battery subalterns came over from mess, and it was close on midnight when Lenox, returning from his final duties in the verandah, found Quita standing by the mantelpiece, her cheeks flushed, her eyes radiating enjoyment.

"Thank the Lord that's over!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently, flinging himself into a deep arm-chair; and she turned on him promptly, with a visible ruffling of her feathers.

"Eldred, you're positively inhuman. When you talk like that you make me want to hit you!"

She stood above him, threatening him with one slim hand; but Lenox, reaching up lazily, grasped her arms below the elbow, and gently but irresistibly forced her on to her knees.

"Hit out, la.s.s, if you've a mind to," he said good-humouredly. "I swear I won't retaliate!"

She struggled for freedom; but he held her in a vice.

"You great schoolboy,--let me go!" she commanded, between laughter and vexation. "I don't care if you do hate dinner parties. I must have them sometimes. I love to see people enjoying themselves as they all did tonight, except that odious Mrs Norton, who doesn't count. You're not pliable enough. That's what's the matter with you. But if I live to a hundred and twenty you'd never make a hermit out of _me_!"

"And if you gave a party every night of your life you'd never make a society man out of me. I should simply apply for a trans-frontier billet, where wives are not admitted. But look here, little woman, did Norton tell you about next week?"

"Of course he did. You'll be gone in three or four days. It's hateful. Do let me have my arms back, darling."

And he surrendered this time.

"Are you sleepy?" she asked, her eyes, full of laughter, resting in his.

"Lord, no. I'm going to sit up and put in two hours work at least before turning in."

"Indeed you'll do no such thing. You're going to sit up and talk to me. I didn't like to bother Mr Norton; but I've a hundred questions to ask you about it all."

"_Hazur ke kushi_! [2] Ask away. Only let me get at my pipe, and I'm at your service."

He filled and lighted it with leisurely satisfaction; and Quita, settling herself on the carpet beside him, her face looking into his, her bright head laid against his knee, kept him talking of Border politics and Border warfare till all thought of putting in two hours'

work was out of the question.

[1] Prestige.

[2] As your Honour's pleases.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"The work is with us; the event is with Allah."

--Kipling.

"Shade, water, gra.s.s . . . Not half a bad place for a picnic, eh, Major? And I hope that plausible-looking scoundrel, talking to Norton, has provided a decent breakfast for us. Five hours of marching in this air puts an edge on a fellow's appet.i.te."

Richardson's remark was addressed to Desmond,--now a Major of six months' standing,--whose practised eye was critically surveying the camping-ground a.s.signed by the local magnate, Nussar Ali Khan, to the seven British officers and their handful of native troops.

The site chosen was the topmost of two wide terraces descending to a stream, from whose farther bank a great hill rose abruptly, dark with pine and ilex, and cleft into a formidable nullah. On the right, flat house-tops of a walled native village overlooked the terrace, with its inviting group of trees, beneath which breakfast was in preparation.

On the left another elevation, crowned with huts; behind them an open field, sloping to a ten-foot wall; and above the wall the ubiquitous watch-tower of the Border glowered like a frown upon the face of peace.

The impedimenta of the little force,--transport, field-hospital, and camp-followers,--still trailed along a narrow lane leading from the _kotal_[1] over which they had come, to the terrace itself. Already grey films of wood-smoke soared, plume-like, into the blue; and the air at ten of the morning was still keen with the sharpness of a small frost at high alt.i.tudes.

"Not half a bad place for a picnic," Desmond admitted mentally; though for several reasons, this man,--who was a Frontier soldier by instinct and heritage,--would scarcely have chosen it himself.

But stringent military precautions were no part of the programme: Norton's escort of half a squadron, two guns, and five hundred Sikhs and Punjabis, being little more than a necessary appendage to a peaceful visitation. Such commonplaces of Frontier government as the enforcing of a fine, and the choosing of a site for an outpost manned by friendly tribesmen, was unlikely to cause friction or stir up strife; and Norton, standing apart from the group of officers in khaki, was listening politely to Nussar Ali Khan and his friends,--some half a dozen Maliks from the fortified villages scattered among the hills.

Spare, muscular men, all of them, in peaked caps and turbans, sheep-skin coats, and voluminous trousers, girded by the formidable Pathan belt, with its pouches, dagger, and straight-handled sword; their bearded faces lighted up, as they talked, by flashes of white teeth; most of them towering half a head above the squarely-built Englishman, with the jaw of a bull-dog and the eyes of a hawk, who understood their language, their strange mingling of courage and cruelty, of simplicity and cunning, as a man only understands that to which he has devoted a lifetime of labour and thought.