The Native Born; or, the Rajah's People Part 25

"I--crying?" she said. "What should have made you think that? Have you ever seen me cry?"

"No, never. I couldn't understand. You are all right?"

"Perfectly all right, thank you. Hadn't you better see about the tea?"

Mrs. Cary heaved a sigh of relief and satisfaction.

"Of course. How thoughtful you can be, my dear! The gentlemen may be back any moment."

She sailed heavily across the room, on her way pa.s.sing the gla.s.s doors which opened on to the verandah.

"Why!" she exclaimed, stopping short, "if that isn't Captain Stafford mounting his horse! Look, Beaty! And he hasn't even come to say good-by."

Beatrice turned indifferently.

"I expect he has some important business--" she began, and then, as her eyes fell on the man outside swinging himself up into the saddle, she stopped and rose abruptly to her feet. "I have never seen anyone look like that before!" she said, under her breath. "He looks--awful."

Mrs. Cary nodded.

"As though he had seen a ghost," she supplemented unsteadily. "What can have happened?"

The horse's head was jerked around to the compound gates. Amidst a clatter of hoofs and in a cloud of dust Stafford galloped out of sight, not once turning to glance in their direction. The two women stood and stared at each other, even Beatrice for the moment shaken out of her usual self-control by what she had seen. They had no time to make any further observations, for almost immediately Travers came up the steps, his sun-helmet in his hand. Whatever had happened, he at least seemed unmoved. The exceptional pallor of his face had given place to the old healthy glow.

"I have come to drink Stafford's share of the tea as well as my own,"

he said cheerily. "You see, Mrs. Cary, in spite of your strict injunctions, I have sent the poor fellow flying off on a fresh business matter. He asked me to excuse him, as he was in a great hurry."

"So it seems!" Mrs. Cary observed, rather tartly. "He might at least have stayed to say good-by."

"Oh, well, you know what an impulsive creature he is," Travers apologized. "Besides, I believe he means to drop in later on. Please don't punish me, Mrs. Cary, for his delinquencies."

The suggestion that Stafford might resume his interrupted visit later mollified Mrs. Cary at once.

"No, you shan't suffer," she a.s.sured him, with fat motherliness. "I will go and tell the servants about tea at once."

The minute she was out of the room Travers came over to Beatrice's side. A slight change had taken place in his expression. It reminded her involuntarily of that night in the dog-cart when for an instant his pa.s.sions had forced him to drop the mask.

"You and I have every reason to congratulate each other," he said, in a low voice. "We can now go ahead and win. The road is clear for us both."

"What do you mean--what have you done?"

"Nothing," he answered, as Mrs. Cary reentered. "You will know in a day or two. And then--well, the game will be in our hands, Miss Cary."

Mrs. Cary, who had caught the last remark, looked quickly and suspiciously from one to the other.

"What's that you are talking about?" she demanded. "What game is in your hands, Beaty?"

Travers smiled frankly.

"Miss Cary and I are working out a bridge problem," he explained. "We have just discovered a solution to a difficulty. That's all."

His smile deepened as he glanced across at Beatrice, but there was no response on her grave face. She half turned away from him, and for the first time he thought that the climate was telling on her. She looked white and hara.s.sed.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH MANY THINGS ARE BROKEN

"I can't think what is making Captain Stafford so late," Lois said to Mrs. Carmichael, who was, as usual, knitting at some unrecognizable garment destined for a far-off London slum. "I wonder if he has forgotten that to-day is the tournament, and that he promised to fetch me."

"I hardly think he has forgotten the tournament," Travers remarked carelessly. "He was speaking about it to Miss Cary this morning. I expect he will be around soon--and if he fails, will I do instead?"

He looked at her with such a pleasant frankness in his eyes that any awkwardness she might have felt became impossible, and she could only smile back at him, grateful for the unchanged friendship which he had retained for her.

"Of course you will do!" she said gaily. "But I must give him a few minutes' grace. It has only just struck four o'clock."

The Colonel looked around. He had come in five minutes before, hot and tired from a long ride of inspection, and his family, knowing his small peculiarities, had allowed him to get over his first exhaustion undisturbed.

"I shouldn't wait too long, little girl," he said, smiling kindly. "I fancy Stafford is not at all up to the mark. I told him to take a day off if he wanted it."

"Why, when did you see him?" his wife asked.

"This morning, of course, at parade. He struck me then as being rather peculiar."

"Ill?" Lois exclaimed with some alarm. She put her racquet on the table and came and slipped her hand through the Colonel's arm. "You don't think he is ill?" she asked earnestly.

Colonel Carmichael shook his head.

"No," he said, "not exactly ill." He laid his hand gently upon hers, so that she could not draw it back. "Let us go outside and see if he is coming," he went on.

The old man--for sorrow and physical weakness had made him older than his years--led the way on to the verandah, still holding Lois' hand in his own. He could not have explained the indefinable force which drove him out of his wife's presence. His ear shrank from her hard, matter-of-fact voice and undisturbed optimism. She who had never had any mood but the one energetic and untirable one, had no comprehension for the changing shades of his temper--would, indeed, have rather scorned the necessity of understanding them. She did not believe in what she called "vapors," and when they ventured to cross her path she swept them away again--or thought she did--with a none too sparing brush.

Unfortunately, there are some characters who can not overcome depression, be it reasonable or unreasonable, simply because someone else happens to be cheerful. The source of their melancholy lies too deep, and the more hidden it is, the more inexplicable, the harder it is to be overcome. It is as though a chord in their temperament is linked to the future, and vibrates with painful presentiment before that which is to come. Colonel Carmichael was one of these so-called sensitive and moody people--quite unknown to himself. When the cloud hung heavily over his head, he said it was his liver or the heat, and took his cure in the form of solitude, thus escaping his wife's pitiless condemnation. And on this afternoon, yielding to his instinct, he sought to be alone with Lois. Lois never disturbed him or jarred on his worn-out nerves. In spite of her energy and vigor, there was a side of her nature which responded absolutely to his own, and with her he could always be sure of a sympathetic silence, or, what was still more, a gentle sadness which helped him more than any overflow of strident high spirits.

For some little time they stood together arm-in-arm, looking over the garden. The excuse that they were watching for Stafford was no more than an excuse, for from their position the road was completely hidden by the high wall with which the whole compound was surrounded. Through the foliage of the trees the outline of the old bungalow was faintly visible, and thither their earnest contemplation was directed. For both of them it was something more than a ruin, something more than a relic out of the tragic past. It had become, above all for the Colonel, a part of their lives, a piece of inanimate destiny to which they felt themselves tied by all the bonds of possession. It was theirs, and they in turn were possessed by the influence it exercised over their lives. Their dear ones had died within its walls, and some intuition, feeling blindly through the lightless pa.s.sages of the future, told them that its history was not yet ended.

Colonel Carmichael bent down and looked into Lois' dark face. He had grown to love her as his own child, and the desire to protect and guard her from all misfortune was the one strong link that held him in the world. Life as life had disappointed him, not because he had made a failure out of it, but because success was not what he had supposed it to be. It is very likely that his subsequent indifference to existence, coupled with a far from robust const.i.tution, would have long since cut short his earthly career had it not been for Lois. She held him fast. He flattered himself--as what loving soul does not?--that he was necessary to her, that only his old hand could keep her path clear from thorns and pitfalls. It was the last duty which life had given him to perform, and he clung to it gratefully, never realizing the pathetic truth--the saddest truth of all--that with all our love, all our heartfelt devotion and self-sacrifice, we can no more shield our dear ones from the hand of Fate than we can shield ourselves, and that their salvation, if salvation there be for them, can only come from their own strength.

"What a grave face!" he said, with a lightness he was not feeling.

"Why so serious, dear? Has anything gone wrong?"

She shook her head.

"No, nothing whatever; on the contrary, I was thinking how grateful for all my happiness I ought to feel--and do feel. Would you call me an ungrateful, discontented person, Uncle?"

"You? No! What makes you ask?"