The Hosts of the Lord Part 7

"All right, little 'un," he laughed gladly, finishing his sherry at a gulp, and, ere catching the little mite in his arms, giving himself that smartening pull together which was so characteristic of the man.

He looked very handsome, very happy, as he came up, with Gladys shaking her curls at him in outrageous flirtation.

"How kind!" said Muriel. "I don't know what I should do without you."

That was all; but it sent him off in absolute content to tackle the stoutest lady in the room.

"If _you_ make the move, Mrs. Campbell," he said diplomatically, "everyone will follow, and I know Mrs. Smith is anxious we should start, as it will take some time to go round."

"Ay! that it will!" a.s.sented the good lady in a mournful Scotch accent.

"'Deed if it were not for Dr. James--" she glanced fearfully at a tall man in a black frock coat--a man whose patriarchal beard had once been red and was now the colour of a carpet whisk--who was b.u.t.tonholing Father Ninian; the latter, with his straight slenderness, looking almost youthful beside the other's burly bulk.

"I wouldn't go if I didn't want to," put in a sharp-featured lady who belonged to another black frock coat--a small one. "You spoil the doctor, Mrs. Campbell. As I tell _my_ husband, I yield to him in spiritual matters--the mission, you know, and all that; but when it comes to realities--the housekeeping, and what we are to eat, and do, and that sort of thing--that is my province."

Mrs. Campbell turned her fat good-natured face on her neighbour's placidly. "Ay, my dear; but ye didn't promise to be a wife to Dr.

James, an' I did. So, Captain Dering, if you can find my niece--"

"Miss Shepherd is quite safe, Mrs. Campbell. Carlyon's looking after her," interrupted Vincent, feeling another spasm of sheer virtue. He had seen the two sitting together at lunch, apparently interested in each other, and he had noticed how Lance, on entering the drawing-room, had made his way straight to those coils of red-bronze hair which had a trick of being the most conspicuous point in any group of which they formed part. So Lance would enjoy himself simply; he would not have to gain pleasure in complex fashion by dragging about a _posse_ of uninteresting old ladies, for the sake of a lady who was neither.

Vincent's face had a bored look as he began his task by piloting his charge into the verandah, and so on into the open.

It was hot work crossing the stretch of sand which lay between the bungalow and the red brick abutments of the ca.n.a.l head; but once there, with the broad still basin of the united rivers before you, a cool breeze blew pleasantly from that blue barrier of hills with the gold-spiked temples of Eshwara enamelled against it, and a soft white mist hiding the feet of the far-distant snows; so hiding the "Cradle of the G.o.ds! The floods had gone, however, and so had the robe of righteousness. The sandbanks lay bare, of the earth, earthy. The logs, too, were no longer dipping and dancing in the currents. Some were piled criss-cross on the spit, awaiting ransomers, and a few lay like straight shadows, half in, half out of the receding water.

"A log! not a bit of it!" said someone, stooping for a stone. "Look!"

The missile fell far short of the low streak of sand and shadow, but did its work. The shadow disappeared, as a bottle-nosed alligator slipped silently into the stream. Most eyes watched it, but Lance Carlyon's turned to Erda Shepherd. He had only met her once, casually, when he was out fishing on the spit, since the day when Father Ninian had introduced them, and they had seen something else in the river that was also not a log.

"Do you remember," he began impulsively, "the first time we met?"

A shadow slipped into her limpid bronze eyes also. "Certainly," she interrupted coldly. "It is not so very long ago--is it?"

She had fenced with his a.s.sumption of friendliness more than once already; feeling vexed with herself, the while, that she should do so.

Since what did it matter? However much she might regret--and she had regretted with foolish unseen blushes as she had lain awake at night wondering what had possessed her--the almost indecent unveiling of realities in that first five minutes, she could not undo it. Besides, she had told herself, he had in all probability forgotten it in polo, and partridge-shooting, fishing, and such things.

But he had not, apparently; and he parried her fence with a still more friendly laugh.

"I didn't mean that, of course; but we won't talk of it, if you'd rather not. It isn't a very Mark Tapleyish subject, is it, for an afternoon party?"

The blush was to be seen this time. "So I have been thinking myself, Mr. Carlyon, ever since last Wednesday," she began, still more coldly, "and I am sorry--"

He interrupted her quite cavalierly. "I didn't mean that, either, and you know I didn't. However, we'll leave it alone. So you're not coming to the ball! Do you know, I think it's an awful pity; I'm sure you'd dance beautifully."

She felt outraged, in a way, and yet she smiled. He seemed so much younger than she was. Younger; but stronger and more vital. That calm a.s.sertion, too, that she knew she was playing feminine tricks with him, had been manly and dignified to quite a crushing degree. She could not help being at once meek and indulgent.

"I don't dance, Mr. Carlyon," she said quietly; adding, as a rider and salve to her conscience, "I--I think it wrong."

"I thought you might," he returned, evidently pleased at his own ac.u.men, "but I don't see it that way. Of course if--if you go in for those ideas, you know, you can make it seem--well--awful low; but I--"

he paused before even a possible sounding of his own trumpet--"you see I think it's awfully jolly; besides, it's such ripping good exercise, and I have to be careful, I tell you, not to put on flesh. I ride thirteen-four, as it is." His face grew grave over the confession.

"Is that much?" she said, her eyes caught and held by the splendid figure beside her. "You are very tall, surely." There was almost a pride in her tone, certainly a tenderness.

He shook his head. "Not so tall as my people are generally. We Carlyons run to size. My uncle, Sir Lancelot's, six-three, and his son is six-four; but he's a bit weedy. So when you're only six-one and a half you can't afford to wax fat; you've got to keep the body in subjection.

That's right, isn't it?" His pride in his Scriptural knowledge made it impossible for her to be stern, though she felt she ought to be.

"Quite right, Mr. Carlyon," she a.s.sented, hurriedly, "but see! the others have gone on, and I don't want to miss--She stumbled, in her haste to end the tete-a-tete, on a loose brick, and for an instant was over-near the edge of the abutment.

"Take care!" he said, his hand on hers to give support; a cool, strong hand, with an insistence in its clasp which seemed to single her out from the world to stand so, hand fast in hand. "You were very nearly over that time," he said, smilingly, as he released her. "Now let's come on, or, as you say, we shall be too late for the fair. Smith's going to show off his electric light in the tents, you know."

Perhaps it was the slip which had made her dizzy, but she walked beside him feeling as if she were in a dream. And, in truth, the scene which grew upon them as they went on had a strange unearthliness and unreality. She paused, and gave a little gasp of pleasure and surprise.

"It seems impossible!" she said. "A week ago, when I was here, it was all sand, sand; and now--"

Her eyes met the wide, flower-set walks, the stately white palaces of the Vice-regal camp with absolute incredulity. "Did you do all this?"

she asked, doubtfully. "Why, you've made a new world!" She felt inwardly as if he had, somehow, for her.

"Oh! Vincent did a lot of the decorations, you know. He's that sort.

We--my fellows, I mean, and Dillon's gaol-birds--dug, and did the dirty work. But it looks all right, doesn't it?"

It did, indeed,--absolutely and entirely all right. So white, so straight, so disciplined; even to the very twist on the tent ropes.

"That peg's out of line," said Lance, pausing suddenly. "Here, sergeant!"

A following had gathered in their rear, bringing up the little procession of Englishmen and women, with a knot of dark faces, and from it a man in dust-coloured drill stepped, and saluted.

"Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half." Erda caught so much in the order given as she walked on.

_Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half!_ No more than that wrong in this dream city; and over yonder? Her eyes travelled past the snowdrift of the camp, rising against the blue background of wide water, to Eshwara, rising against its background of blue hill.

"I thought so; a good inch and a half," said Lance exultantly, coming up with measured strides. "It makes a lot of difference though."

She looked at him critically. Older by some months than he, full of strong character, almost overfull of strong convictions, she was yet--as women must be until experience of work-a-day life teaches them, as it has taught men, the value of subordination--curiously undisciplined, curiously lawless. And this striving after uniformity impressed her.

"I suppose you learn that sort of thing in the army," she said, with a new respect.

He laughed. "I should think so; b.u.t.tons and bootlaces all to pattern.

It's an awful bore, but it keeps things going. Now, here we are! Now, you can see properly."

They stood in the centre of the camp, in front of the huge _durbar_ tent, that wandering throne of an empire fixed and immovable as the stars. In front of them, rising out of a wilderness of roses, blossoming where nothing but sand had shown since the primeval sea receded from the hills, was the flag of that empire, its folds drooping round the mast. And beyond it, past the two bra.s.s guns pointing down the long vista, was an avenue of palms, bordered by green gra.s.s and beds of flowers, and intersected by broad paths leading back to the solid white squares of the tents. At the farther end, a quarter of a mile or more from the flagstaff, a triumphal arch at the entrance showed, until the palm-leaves cut it short, a legend:

"WELCOME TO THE LORD----"

and above it, far at the feet of those distant snows, lay that wreath of white mist hiding the "Cradle of the G.o.ds."

Erda's eyes travelled to it, and from it to the other vistas, similar yet smaller, stretching to the right and left of her. Then to the orderly rows on rows of tents, looking like solid blocks of marble behind her. The whole shut in from the world by a high white wall; still, silent, empty, waiting for the Hosts of the Lord. A snow-drift facing that mist-drift on the hills. And between them? Eshwara, and all that Eshwara held of evil and of good.

The dreaminess left her eyes, startled at a band of dark figures which at this moment appeared rounding the corner of a tent--figures in scanty striped clothing with a broad arrow on it; figures with shaven, close-capped heads and leg irons clanking, as their bare feet threaded through the flowers. And behind them, half-hidden, as ever, under his mushroom of a hat, came George Dillon. He had noticed, as he pa.s.sed with the others, that the roses were flagging a bit under the hot sun, and had gone back to summon a fatigue party of his criminals to water them.

"Bring another go, _mate_," he ordered, as the gang, filing past the flagstaff, emptied their earthen pots; "then go back to the road. And be quick. There's no time to lose. The Lord-_sahib_ comes to-morrow."