The Path of a Star Part 29

Their enthusiasm had ample opportunity to strengthen, their mutual satisfactions to expand, in the close confines of life on board ship, and as if to seal and sanctify the voyage permanently a conversion took place in the second saloon, owning Laura's agency. It was the maid of the lady in the cavalry regiment, a hardened heart, as two stewards and a bandmaster on board could testify. When this occurred the time that was to elapse between Laura's marriage and her return to the ranks was shortened to one week. "And quite long enough," Colonel Markin said, "considering how much more we need you than your gentleman does, my dear sister."

It was plain to them all that Colonel Markin had very special views about his dear sister. The other dear sisters looked on with pleasurable interest, admitting the propriety of it, as Colonel Markin walked up and down the deck with Laura, examining her lovely nature, "drawing her out"

on the subject of her faith and her a.s.surance. It was natural, as he told her, that in her peculiar situation she should have doubts and difficulties. He urged her to lay bare her heart, and she laid it bare.

One evening--it was heavenly moonlight on the Indian Ocean, and they were two days past Aden on the long south-east run to Ceylon--she came and stood before him with a small packet in her hand. She was all in white, and more like an angel than Markin expected ever to see anything in this world, though as to the next his antic.i.p.ations may have been extravagant.

"Now I wonder," said he, "where you are going to sit down?"

A youngster in the Police got up and pushed his chair forward, but Laura shook her head.

"I am going out there," she said, pointing to the farthermost stern where pa.s.sengers were not encouraged to sit, "and I want to consult you."

Markin got up. "If there's anything pressin' on your mind," he said, "you can't do better."

Laura said nothing until they were alone with the rushing of the screw, two Lascars, some coils of rope, and the hand-steering gear. Then she opened the packet. "These," she said, "these are pressing on my mind."

She held out a string of pearls, a necklace of pearls and turquoises, a heavy band bracelet studded, Delhi fashion, with gems, one or two lesser fantasies.

"Jewellery!" said Markin. "Real or imitation?"

"So far as that goes they are good. Mr. Lindsay gave them to me. But what have I to do with jewels, the very emblem of the folly of the world, the desire that itches in palms that know no good works, the price of sin!" She leaned against the masthead as she spoke, the wind blew her hair and her skirt out toward the following seas. With that look in her eyes she seemed a creature who had alighted on the ship but who could not stay.

Colonel Markin held the pearls up in the moonlight.

"They must have cost something to buy," he said.

Laura was silent.

"And so they're a trouble to you. Have you taken them to the Lord in prayer?"

"Oh, many times."

"Couldn't seem to hear any answer?"

"The only answer I could hear was. 'So long as you have them I will not speak with you.'"

"That seems pretty plain and clear. And yet?" said the Colonel, fondling the turquoises, "n.o.body can say there's any harm in such things, especially if you don't wear them."

"Colonel, they are my great temptation. I don't know that I wouldn't wear them. And when I wear them I can think of nothing sacred, nothing holy. When they were given to me I used--I used to get up in the night to look at them."

"Shall I lay it before the Almighty? That bracelet's got a remarkably good clasp."

"Oh no--no! I must part with them. To-night I can do it, to-night--"

"There's n.o.body on this ship that will give you any price for them."

"I would not think of selling them. It would be sending them from my hands to do harm to some other poor creature, weaker than I!"

"You can't return them to-night."

"I wouldn't return them. That would be the same as keeping them."

"Then what--oh, I see!" exclaimed Markin. "You want to give them to the Army. Well, in my capacity, on behalf of General Booth--"

"No," cried Laura with sudden excitement, "not that either. I will give them to n.o.body. But this is what I will do!" She seized the bracelet and flung it far out into the opaline track of the vessel, and the smaller objects, before her companion could stop her, followed it. Then he caught her wrist.

"Stop!" he cried. "You've gone off your head--you've got fever. You're acting wicked with that jewellery. Stop and let us reason it out together."

She already had the turquoises, and with a jerk of her left hand, she freed it and threw them after the rest. The necklace caught the handrail as it fell, and Markin made a vain spring to save it. He turned and stared at Laura, who stood fighting the greatest puissance of feeling she had known, looking at the pearls. As he stared she kissed them twice, and then, leaning over the ship's side, let them slowly slide out of her fingers and fall into the waves below. The moonlight gave them a divine gleam as they fell. She turned to Markin with tears in her eyes.

"Now," she faltered, "I can be happy again. But not to-night."

CHAPTER XXVIII

While the Coromandel was throbbing out her regulation number of knots towards Colombo, October was pa.s.sing over Bengal. It went with lethargy, the rains were too close on its heels; but at the end of the long hot days, when the resplendent sun struck down on the glossy trees and the over-lush Maidan, there often stole through Calcutta a breath of the coming respite of December. The blue smoke of the people's cooking fires began to hang again in the streets, the pungent smell of it was pleasant in the still air. The south wind turned back at the Sunderbunds; instead of it, one met round corners a sudden crispness that stayed just long enough to be recognised and melted damply away. A week might have two or three of such promises and foretastes.

Hilda Howe, approaching the end of her probation at the Baker Inst.i.tution, threw the dormitory window wide to them, went out to seek them. They gave her a new stirring of vitality, something deep within her leaped up responding to the voucher the evenings brought that presently they would bring something new and different. She vibrated to an irrepressible pulse of accord with that; it made her hand strong and her brain clear for the unimportant matters that remained within the scope of the monotonous moment. There had come upon her a stimulating a.s.surance that it would be only a moment--now. She did not consider this, she could hardly be said to be intelligently aware of it, but it underlay all that she said and did. Her spirits gained an enviable lightness, she began again to see beautiful, touching things in the life that carried her on with it. She explained to Stephen Arnold that she was immensely happy at having pa.s.sed the last of her nursing examinations.

"I hardly dare ask you," he said, "what you are going to do now."

He looked furtive and anxious; she saw that he did, and the perception irritated her. She had to tell herself that she had given him the right to look in any way he pleased--indeed yes.

"I hardly dare ask myself," she answered, and was immediately conscious that for the first time in the history of their relations she had spoken to him that which was expedient.

"I hope the Sisters are not trying to influence you," he said firmly.

"Fancy!" she cried irrelevantly. "I heard the other day that Sister Ann Frances had described me as the pride of the Baker Inst.i.tution!" She laughed with delight at the humour of it, and he smiled too. When she laughed, he had nearly always now confidence enough to smile too.

"You might ask for another six months."

"Heavens, no! No--I shall make up my mind."

"Then you may go away," Arnold said. They were standing at the crossing of the wide red road from which they would go in different directions.

She saw that the question was momentous to him. She also saw how curiously the sun sallowed him, and how many more hollows he had in his face than most people. She had a pathetic impression of the figure he made in his coa.r.s.e gown and shoes. "G.o.d's wayfarer," she murmured. There was pity in her mind, infinite pity. Her thought had no other tinge. It was a curiously simple feeling, and seemed to bring her an inconsistent lightness of heart.

"Come too," she said aloud, "come and be a Clarke Brother where the climatic conditions suit you better. The world wants Clarke Brothers everywhere."

He looked at her and tried to smile, but his lips quivered. He opened them in an effort to speak, gave it up, and turned away silently, lifting his hat. Hilda watched him for an instant as he went. His figure took strange proportions through the tears that sprang to her eyes, and she marvelled at the gaiety with which she had touched, had almost revealed, her heart's desire.

CHAPTER XXIX

"I knew it would happen in the end," Hilda said, "and it has happened.

The Archdeacon has asked me to tea."