The Jungle Girl Part 7

Raymond turned away quickly and walked over to the crocodile. Neither of them took any notice of him. Violet gazed fondly at Wargrave.

"I owe you so much, Frank, so very much," she murmured in a low voice.

"You've made my life worth living; and now you make me live."

He was embarra.s.sed but he pressed the hands he held in his. Then he released them and tried to speak lightly.

"Shall I have the _mugger_ skinned and get a dressing-bag made out of his hide for you?" he said, smiling. "That'd be a nice souvenir of the brute."

She shuddered.

"I don't want to remember him," she cried, turning to glance at the crocodile. "Horrid beast! I can't bear the sight of him."

The _mugger_ certainly looked a most repulsive brute as it lay stretched on the ground, its jaws occasionally opening and shutting spasmodically, the blood from its wounded throat spreading in a pool on the sun-baked earth. It was evidently an old beast; and skull and back were covered with thick h.o.r.n.y plates and bosses through which no bullet could penetrate. The big teeth studded irregularly in the cruel jaws were yellow and worn, as were the thick nails tipping the claws at the ends of the powerful limbs.

"The devil's not dead yet. Shall I put another bullet into him?" said Wargrave.

"It's only wasting a cartridge," replied his friend. "He can't do any more harm. When the men come we'll have him cut open and see what he's got inside him."

Violet shuddered.

"Oh, do you think he has ever eaten any human being?" she asked, gazing with loathing at the huge reptile.

"Judging from the way he stalked you I should think he has," answered Raymond. "Hullo! here comes one of the camel-drivers with some of the villagers. They'll be able to tell us about him."

On the rim of the basin appeared a group of natives moving in their direction. Suddenly they caught sight of the crocodile, stopped and pointed to it and began to talk excitedly. One of the local peasants ran back shouting. The rest hurried down for a closer view of the reptile. A chorus of wonder rose from them as they stood round it. The Mahommedan camel-driver exclaimed in Hindustani:

"_Ahre, bhai! Kiya janwar! Pukka shaitan!_ (Ah, brother! What an animal!

A veritable devil!)"

As the villagers spoke only the dialect of the State, Raymond used this man as interpreter and questioned them about the crocodile. They a.s.serted that it had inhabited the tank for many years--hundreds, said one man. It had, to their certain knowledge, killed several women incautiously bathing or drawing water from the tank. As women are not valued highly by the poorer Hindus this did not make the _mugger_ very unpopular. But early in that very year it had committed the awful crime of dragging under water and devouring a Brahmini bull, an animal devoted to the G.o.ds and held sacrosanct.

By this time the crocodile had breathed its last. Raymond measured it roughly and found it to be over twelve feet in length. The peasants turned the great body on its back. Wargrave saw that the skin underneath was too thick to be made into leather, so he bade them cut the belly open. The stomach contained many sh.e.l.ls of freshwater crabs and crayfish, as well as a surprising amount of large pebbles, either taken for digestive purposes or swallowed when the fish were being scooped up off the bottom. But further search resulted in the finding of several heavy bra.s.s or copper anklets and armlets, such as are worn by Indian women. Some had evidently been a long time in the reptile's interior.

When the camels had come and the party was preparing to mount and start back home, a crowd of villagers, led by their old priest, bore down upon them. Learning that Frank was the slayer of the sacrilegious crocodile the holy man hung a garland of marigolds round his neck and through the interpreter offered him the thanks of G.o.ds and men for his good deed.

And to a chorus of blessings and compliments he rode away with his companions.

So ended the incident--apparently. But consequences undreamed of by any of the actors in it flowed from it. For imperceptibly it brought a change into the relations between Mrs. Norton and Wargrave and eventually altered them completely. At first it merely seemed to strengthen their friendship and increase the feeling of intimacy. To Violet--they were Violet and Frank to each other now--the saving of her life const.i.tuted a bond that could never be severed. He had preserved her from a horrible death and she owed Wargrave more than grat.i.tude.

Hitherto she had often toyed with the idea of him as a lover, and the thought had been a pleasant one. But it had hardly occurred to her to be in love with him in return. In all her life up to now she had never known what it was to really love. She had married without affection. Her girlhood had been pa.s.sed without the mildest flirtation; for she had been brought up in a quiet country village where there never seemed to be any bachelors of her own cla.s.s between the ages of seventeen and fifty. Even the curate was grey-haired and married. She had made up for this deprivation during the voyage out to India and her season in Calcutta; but, although she had found many men ready to flirt with her, Norton's proposal was the only serious one that she had had and she accepted him in desperation. She had never felt any love for him. She did not realise that he had any for her; for, although he really entertained a sincere affection of a kind for her, it was so seldom and so badly expressed that she was never aware of its existence. Since her marriage she had had several careless flirtations during her visits to her relatives in Calcutta; but her heart was not seriously affected.

She never acknowledged to herself that any grat.i.tude or loyalty was due from her to her husband. On the contrary she felt that she owed him, as well as Fate, a grudge. She was young, warmblooded, of a pa.s.sionate temperament, yet she found herself wedded to a man who apparently needed a housekeeper, not a wife. Her husband did not appear to realise that a woman is not essentially different to a man, that she has feelings, desires, pa.s.sions, just as he has--although by a polite fiction the prudish Anglo-Saxon races seem to agree to regard her as of a more spiritual, more ethereal and less earthly a nature. Yet it is only a fiction after all. Violet was a living woman, a creature of flesh and blood who was not content to be a chattel, a household ornament, a piece of furniture. It was not to be wondered at that she longed to enter into woman's kingdom, to exercise the power of her s.e.x to sway the other and to experience the thrill of the realisation of that power. Often in her loneliness she pined to see eyes she loved look with love into hers. She was not a marble statue. It was but natural that she should long for Love, a lover, the clasp of strong arms, the pressure of a man's broad chest against her bosom, the feel of burning kisses on her lips, the glorious surrender of her whole being to some adored one to whom she was the universe, who lived but for her.

Now for the first time in her life her errant dreams took concrete shape. At last she began to feel the companionship of a particular man necessary for her happiness. She had never before realised the pleasure, the joy, to be derived from the presence of one of the opposite s.e.x who was in sympathy, in perfect harmony with her nature.

In her lonely hours--and they were many--she thought constantly of Wargrave; his face was ever before her, his voice sounding in her ears.

She usually saw her husband--absorbed in his work and studies--only at meals; and as she looked across the table at him then she could not help contrasting the heavy, unattractive man sitting silent, usually reading a book while he ate, with the good-looking, laughter-loving playfellow who had come into her life. She learned to day-dream of Wargrave, to watch for his coming and hate his going, to enjoy every moment of his presence. He had brought a new interest into her hitherto purposeless life, the life that he had preserved and that consequently seemed to belong to him. New feelings awakened in her. The world was a brighter, happier place than it had been. It pleased her to realise what it all meant, to know that the novel sensations, the fluttering hopes and fears, the strange, delightful thrills, were all symptoms of that longed-for malady that comes sooner or later to all women. She knew at last that she loved Wargrave and gloried in the knowledge. And she never doubted that he loved her in return.

Did he? It was hard to tell. To a man the thought of Love in the abstract seldom occurs; and the realisation of the concrete fact that he is in love with some particular woman generally comes somewhat as a shock. He is by nature a lover of freedom and in theory at least resents fetters, even silken ones. And Wargrave had never thought of a.n.a.lysing his feelings towards Violet. He was not a professional amorist and, although not a puritan, would never set himself deliberately to make love to a married woman under her husband's roof. He was fond of Mrs.

Norton--as a sister, he thought. She was a delightful friend, a real pal, so understanding, so companionable, he said to himself frequently.

It had not occurred to him that his feelings for her might be love. He had often before been on terms of friendship with women, married and single; but none of them had ever attracted him as much as she did. He had never felt any desire to be married; domesticity did not appeal to him. But now, as he watched Violet moving about her drawing-room or playing to him, he found himself thinking that it would be pleasant to return to his bungalow from parade and find a pretty little wife waiting to greet him with a smile and a kiss--and the wife of his dreams always had Violet's face, wore smart well-cut frocks like Violet's, and showed just such shapely, silken-clad legs and ankles and such small feet in dainty, silver-buckled, high-heeled shoes. And he thought with an inward groan that such a luxury was not for a debt-ridden subaltern like him, that his heavily-mortgaged pay would not run to expensive gowns, silk stockings and costly footwear.

Yet it never occurred to him that Violet cared for him nor did it enter his mind to try to win her love. But he felt that he would do much to make her happy, that saving her life made him in a way responsible for it in future; and he knew that she was not a contented woman. His sympathy went out to her for what he guessed she must suffer from her ill-a.s.sorted union.

But soon he had no need to surmise it; for before long Violet began to confide all her sorrows to him and the recital made his heart bleed for one so young and beautiful mated to a selfish wretch who was as blind to her suffering as he was to her charm. The younger man's chivalry was up in arms, and he felt that such a boor did not deserve so bright a jewel.

At times Frank was tempted to confront the callous husband and force him to open his dulled eyes to the bravely-borne misery of his neglected wife and realise how fortunate he ought to consider himself in being the owner of such a transcendent being. But the next moment the infatuated youth was convinced that Norton was incapable of appreciating so rare a woman, that only a nature like his own could understand or do full justice to the perfections of hers. Such is a young man's conceit. He rejoiced to know that his poor sympathy could help in a measure to make up to Violet for the happiness that she declared that she had missed in life. And so he gladly consented to play the consoler; and she, for the pleasure of being consoled, continued to pour out her griefs to him.

But if Frank was unconscious of the danger of his post as sympathising confidant to another man's young and pretty wife, others were not. Her husband, of course, was as blind as most husbands seem to be in Anglo-Indian society. For in that land of the Household of Three, the Eternal Triangle, it is almost a recognised principle that every married woman who is at all attractive is ent.i.tled to have one particular bachelor always in close attendance on her, to be constantly at her beck and call, to ride with her, to drive her every afternoon to tennis or golf or watch polo, then on to the Club and sit with her there. His duty, a pleasant one, no doubt, is to cheer up her otherwise solitary dinner in her bungalow on the nights when her neglectful husband is dining out _en garcon_. No _cavaliere servente_ of Old Italy ever had so busy a time as the Tame Cat of the India of to-day. And the husband allows it, nay seems, as Major Norton did, to hail his presence with relief, as it eases the conscience of the selfish lord and master who leaves his spouse much alone.

But if the Resident saw no harm or danger in the young officer constantly seeking the society of his pretty wife others did. At first Frank's well-wishers tried to hint to him that there was likelihood of his friendship with her being misunderstood. But he laughed at Raymond's badly-expressed warning and rather resented Major Hepburn's kindly advice when on one occasion his Company Commander spoke plainly, though tactfully, to him on the subject. Then Violet's enemies took a hand in the game. Mrs. Trevor, having failed to decoy him to her bungalow for what she called "a quiet tea and a motherly little chat,"

cornered him one afternoon when he was on his way to the Residency and spoke very openly to him of the risk he ran of being entangled in the coils of such an outrageous coquette as "that Mrs. Norton," as she termed her. Frank was so indignant at her abuse of his friend that for the first time in his life he was rude to a woman and snubbed Mrs.

Trevor so severely that she went in a rage to her husband and insisted on his taking immediate steps to arrest the progress of a scandal that, she declared, would attract the unfavourable attention of the higher military authorities to the regiment.

"Do you realise, William, that you will be the one to suffer?" said the angry woman. "If anything happens, if Major Norton complains, if that shameless creature succeeds in making that foolish young man run away with her, you will be blamed. You can't afford it. You know that the General's confidential report on you last year was not too favourable."

"It wasn't really bad, my dear; it only hinted that I lacked decision,"

pleaded the hen-pecked man.

"Exactly. You are not firm enough," persisted his domestic tyrant. "They will say that you should have put your foot down at once and stopped this disgraceful affair."

"But what can I do?" asked the Colonel helplessly.

"Someone ought to speak to Major Norton at once."

"Oh, my dear Jane, I couldn't. I daren't."

"For two pins I'd do it myself. Mrs. Baird said the other day that it was our duty as respectable women."

"No, no, no, Jane. You mustn't think of it," exclaimed the alarmed man.

"I forbid you. You mustn't mix yourself up in the affair. It would be committing me."

"Then send that impertinent young man away," said Mrs. Trevor firmly. No General would have accused _her_ of lack of decision. "I used to have a high opinion of him once; but after his insolence to me I believe him to be nearly as bad as that woman."

"Where can I send him?" asked the worried Colonel. "He has done all the courses and pa.s.sed all the cla.s.ses and examinations he can."

"You know you have only to write confidentially to the Staff and inform them that young Wargrave's removal to another station is absolutely necessary to prevent a scandal; and they'll send him off somewhere else at once."

Her husband nodded his head. He was well aware of the fact that the Army in India looks closely after the behaviour and morals of its officers, that a colonel has only to hint that the transfer of a particular individual under his command is necessary to stop a scandal--and without loss of time that officer finds himself deported to the other side of the country.

One morning, a week after Mrs Trevor's conversation with her husband, Wargrave, superintending the musketry of his Double Company on the rifle range, was given an official note from the adjutant informing him that the Commanding Officer desired to see him at once in the Orderly Room.

As Major Hepburn was not present Frank handed the men over to the senior Indian company commander and rode off to the Regimental Office, wondering as he went what could be the reason of the sudden summons.

Reaching the building he found Raymond on the watch for him, while ostensibly engaged in criticising to the battalion _durzi_ (tailor) the fit of the new uniforms of several recruits.

"I say, Ray, what's up?" asked his friend cheerily, as he swung himself out of the saddle.

The adjutant nodded warningly towards the Orderly Room and dropped his voice as he replied:

"I don't know, old chap. The C.O.'s said nothing to me; but he's in there with Hepburn trying to work himself up into a rage so that he can bully-rag you properly. You'd better go in and get it over."