The laws of marriage character'd in goldUpon the blanched tablets of her heart;A love still burning upward, giving lightTo read those laws; an accent very lowIn blandishment, but a most silver flowOf subtle-paced counsel in distress,Right to the heart and brain, tho' undescried,Winning its way with extreme gentlenessThrough all the outworks of suspicious pride.
The new home in which Maud found herself might well have contented a more fastidious critic than she was at all inclined to be. The Vernons were delightful hosts. Maud had established thoroughly comfortable relations with her cousin during the long journey to Dustypore; and though he was too indolent or perhaps too much absorbed in work for anything but a sort of passive politeness, still this was, upon the whole, satisfactory and reassuring, and Maud felt very much at her ease with him. Mrs. Vernon, the 'Cousin Felicia,' whom Maud now realised in flesh and blood for the first time, inspired her with a stronger, keener feeling of admiration thanany she had known before. She was beautiful, as Maud had often heard; but beauty alone would not account for the thrill of pleasure which something in Felicia's first greeting gave her. The charm lay in an unstudied, unconscious cordiality of manner that fascinated the new-comer with its sincerity and grace. Felicia coruscated with cheerfulness, courage, mirth. She was bright, and infected those about her with brightness. Transplanted from the quiet luxury of an English country-house to the rough experiences of Indian life, she bore through them all an air of calmness, joyousness, refinement, which the troubles of life seemed incapable of disturbing. When, years before, just fresh from the schoolroom and with all the dazzling possibilities of a London season before her, she had admitted her attachment to Vernon and her unalterable desire to go with him to India, her father's face had looked darker than she had ever seen it before, and a family chorus of indignation had proclaimed the unwisdom of the choice. The rector's son and the squire's daughter, however, had played about together as boy and girl, and long years of intimacy had cemented a friendship too strong to be shattered by such feeble blows as worldliness or prudence could inflict upon it. Vernon had nothing but the slender portion which a country clergyman might be expected to leave his children at hisdeath—nothing, that is, except a long list of school and college honours and a successful candidature for the Indian Civil Service. Felicia, as her deploring aunts murmured amongst themselves, 'was a girl who might have marriedany one;' and her parents, without incurring the charge of a vulgar ambition, might naturally complain of a match which gave them so little and cost them the pang of so complete a separation. Felicia, at any rate, had never repented of her choice; she was greatly in love with her husband, and had the pleasant consciousness that his taste—fastidious, critical, and not a little sarcastic—found in her nothing that was not absolute perfection. India had developed in her a self-reliance and fortitude which never could have been born in the safe tranquillity of her home. The hot winds of Dustypore had not quite robbed her cheeks of their English bloom; but there were lines of suffering, anxiety, and fatigue which, when her face was at rest, let out the secret that her habitual brightness was not as effortless as it seemed.
The fact was that life, with all its enjoyments, had been to her full of pangs, of which, even at a safe distance, she could scarcely trust herself to think. The separation from her home was a grief that long usage made none the easier to bear. On the contrary, there was a sort of aching want whichwas never appeased, and which the merest trifle—a letter—a message—a word—was sufficient to light up into something like anguish. Felicia never achieved the art of reading her home letters with decent composure, and used to carry them, with a sort of nervous uneasiness, to her own room, to be dealt with in solitude. Then four children, all with an air of Indian fragility, and whose over-refined looks their mother would thankfully have bartered for a little vigour and robustness, had cost her many a heartache. On the horizon of all her married life there loomed the dreadful certainty of a day when another series of separations would begin, and the choice would lie between the companionship of her husband in India, or the care of her children at home.
From this horrid thought it was natural for such a temperament as Felicia's to seek refuge in merriment, which, if sometimes a little strained, was never wholly unnatural. Excitement was a pleasant cure for gloomy thought, and it was to Felicia never hard to find. Every sort of society amused her, and those who saw her only in public would have pronounced her a being to whom melancholy was inconceivable. Her husband, however, could have told that Felicia was often sad. There were afternoons, too, when she was quite alone, when she would order the carriage and drive away by anunfrequented road to the dreary, lonely Station Cemetery, and weep passionate tears over a grave where years before she and her husband had come one morning together and left a precious little wasted form, and Felicia had felt that happiness was over for her, and that life could never be the same again. Nor was it, for there are some griefs which travel with us to our journey's end.
Charmed as Maud had been with her newly-found relation, she was conscious of the stiffness of a perfectly unaccustomed life, and thought wistfully of the pleasures of the voyage and even of her French and geography with Miss Goodenough. Felicia, with all her kindness, just a little alarmed her; she was so brilliant, so dignified, and quite unconsciously, so much of a fine lady. Vernon was buried in his books or away at office, and very seldom available for the purposes of conversation. The days, despite the excitement of novelty, dragged heavily, and Maud began to think that if every day was to be as long as these, and there were three hundred and sixty-five of them in the year, and fifty years, perhaps, in a lifetime, how terrific an affair existence was!
Before, however, she had been a week at Dustypore the ice began to melt. Felicia came in one morning from a long busy time with nurses, children, servants and housekeeping, established herselfin an easy-chair, close to Maud, and was evidently bent upon a chat. Maud found herself presently, she knew not how, pouring out all her most sacred secrets, and giving her heart away in a most reckless fashion, to a companion whom, so far as time went, she still regarded as almost a stranger. Such a confession she had never made, even to Miss Goodenough, nor felt inclined to make it. Now, however, it seemed to come easily and as a matter of course. Felicia was sympathetic and greatly interested. Even the episode of the valentine was not forgotten.
'There,' Maud cried, with a slightly nervous dread of telling something either improper or ridiculous; 'that was my very last school-girl scrape. Was it very bad?'
'Very bad!' cried Felicia, with a laugh, the joyousness of which was entirely reassuring; 'it was that naughty boy who got you into trouble. Fortunately there are no galleries in our church here, and no boys, so there is nothing to fear.'
That evening Felicia was singing an old familiar favourite air, as she was fond of doing, half in the dark, and unconscious of a listener. Vernon was deep in his papers in the adjoining room. Maud, at the other end of the piano, where she had been turning over the leaves of some music, stood with her hand still resting on the page, gazing at thesinger and wrapt in attention. Something, she knew not what, nor stopped to ask—the time, the place, the song or the tone of Felicia's voice—touched her as with a sudden gust of feeling. When the song was over Maud walked across, flung her arms round her companion and kissed her with a sort of rapture.
Felicia, looking up, surprised, saw that the other's eyes were full of tears.
'That is pretty, is it not?' she said, taking Maud's hand kindly in her own.
'Sing it once more,' Maud petitioned. And so, while Vernon, unconscious of the flow of sentiment so close about him, was still absorbed in the vicissitudes of Orissa, Felicia's performance was encored, and two sympathetic natures had found each other out and worked into unison.
Afterwards, when Maud had departed, Felicia, with characteristic impulsiveness, broke out into vehement panegyric:
'Come, George,' she said, 'don't be stupid, please, and uninterested; don't you think she is quite charming?'
'Felicia,' said her husband, 'you are for ever falling in love with some one or other, and now you have lost your heart to Maud. No, I don't think her charming; but I dare say a great many other people will. She will be the plague of ourlives, you will see. I wish we had left her at Miss Goodenough's.'
'Of course everybody will fall in love with her,' cried Felicia, quite undaunted by her husband's gloomy forebodings; 'and I will tell you what, George—she will do delightfully for Jem.'
'Jem!' exclaimed her husband, with a tone of horror. 'Felicia, you are match-making already—and Jem too, poor fellow!'
Now, Jem Sutton was Vernon's oldest friend, and Felicia's kinsman, faithful servant and ally. Years before, the two men had boated and cricketed together at Eton, and spent pleasant weeks at each other's homes; and when they met in India, each seemed to waken up the other to a host of affectionate recollections about their golden youth. Sutton, in fact, was still a thorough schoolboy, and as delighted with finding his old chum as if he had just come back from the holidays. He had contrived to get as much marching, fighting, and adventuring into his ten years' service as a man could wish; had led several border forays with daring and success; had received several desperate wounds, of which a great scar across the forehead was the most conspicuous; had established a reputation as a rider and a swordsman, and had received from his Sovereign the brilliant distinction of the Victoria Cross, which, along with a great manyother honourable badges, covered the wide expanse of his chest on state occasions.
Despite his fighting proclivities, Sutton had the softest possible pair of blue eyes, his hair was still as bright a brown as when he was a curly-headed boy at his mother's side; nor did the copious growth of his moustache quite conceal a smile that was sweetness and honesty itself. Felicia's two little girls regarded him as their especial property and made the tenderest avowals of devotion to him. Sutton treated them, as all their sex, with a kindness that was chivalrously polite, and which they were already women enough to appreciate.
Lastly, among other accomplishments, which rendered him especially welcome at the Vernons' house, he possessed a tuneful tenor voice, and sang Moore's Melodies with a pathos which was more than artistic. On the whole, it is easy to understand how natural it seemed to Felicia that two such charming people as Sutton and Maud should be destined by Heaven for each other, and that hers should be the hand to lead them to their happy fate.
Consider this—he had been bred i' the warsSince he could draw a sword.
'Sutton's Flyers' were well known in the Sandy Tracts as the best irregular cavalry in that part of the country. Formed originally in the Mutiny, when spirits of an especial hardihood and enterprise gathered instinctively around congenial leaders, they had retained ever since theprestigethen acquired and a standard of chivalry which turned every man in the regiment into something of a hero. Many a stalwart lad, bred in the wild uplands of the Province, had felt his blood stirred within him at the fame of exploits which appealed directly to instincts on which the pacific British rule had for years put an unwelcome pressure. Around the fire of many an evening meal, in many a gossiping bazaar, in many a group at village well or ferry, the fame of the 'Flyers' was recounted, and 'Sutton Sahib' became a household word by which military enthusiasm could be speedilykindled to a blaze. With the lightest possible equipage, wiry country-bred horses, and a profound disregard for all baggage arrangements, Sutton had effected some marches which earned him the credit of being supernaturally ubiquitous. Again and again had Mutineer detachments, revelling in fancied security, found that the dreaded horsemen, whom they fancied a hundred miles away and marching in an opposite direction, had heard of their whereabouts and were close upon their track. Then the suddenness of the attack, the known prowess of the leader, the half-superstitious reverence which his followers paid him, invested the troop with a tradition of invincibility, and had secured them, on more than one occasion, a brilliant success against odds which less fervent temperaments than Sutton's might have felt it wrong to encounter, and which certainly made success seem almost a miracle. To his own men Sutton was hardly less than a god, and there were few of them on whom he could not safely depend to gallop with him to their doom.
More than one of his officers had saved his life in hand-to-hand fight by reckless exposure of their own; and his adjutant had dragged him, stunned, crushed and bleeding, from under a fallen horse, and carried him through a storm of bullets to a place of safety. All of them, on the other hand,had experienced on a hundred occasions the benefit of his imperturbable calmness, his inspiring confidence and unshaken will. Once Sutton had gratified their pride—and perhaps, too, his own—by a display of prowess which, if somewhat theatrical, was nevertheless extremely effective. A fight was on hand, and the regiment was just going into action, when a Mohammedan trooper, famed as a swordsman on all the country-side, had ridden out from the enemy's lines, bawled out a defiance of the English rule, couched in the filthiest and most opprobrious terms, and dared Sutton to come out and fight, and let him throw his carcase to the dogs. There are moments when instinct becomes our safest, and indeed our only, guide. Sutton, for once in his life, felt a gust of downright fury: he gave the order to halt and sheathe swords, took his challenger at his word, rode out in front of his force and had a fair hand-to-hand duel with the hostile champion. The confronted troops looked on in breathless anxiety, while the fate of either combatant depended on a turn of the sword, and each fought as knowing that one or other was to die. Sutton at last saw his opportunity for a stroke which won him the honours of the day. It cost him a sabre-cut across his forehead, which to some eyes might have marred his beauty for ever; but the foul-mouthed Mussulman lay dead on the field,smitten through the heart, and Sutton rode back among his shouting followers the acknowledged first swordsman of the day.
Such a man stood in no need of Felicia's panegyrics to seem very impressive in the eyes of a girl like Maud. Despite his gentleness of manner and the sort of domestic footing on which everybody at the Vernons', down to the baby, evidently placed him, she felt a little awed. She was inclined to be romantic; but it was rather alarming to have a large, living, incarnate romance sitting next her at luncheon, cutting slices of mutton, and asking her, with a curiosity that seemed necessarily condescending, about all the details of the voyage. There seemed something incongruous and painfully below the mark in having to tell him that they had acted 'Woodcock's Little Game,' and had played 'Bon Jour, Philippe,' on board; and Maud, when the revelation became necessary, made it with a blush. After luncheon, however, Sutton and the little girls had a game of 'Post,' and Maud begun to console herself with the reassuring conviction that, after all, he was but a man, and a very pleasant one.
After he had gone, Felicia, who was the most indiscreet of match-makers, began one of her extravagant eulogiums. 'Like him!' she cried, in reply to Maud's inquiry; 'like is not the word. Heis the best, noblest, bravest, and most chivalrous of beings.'
'Not the handsomest!' interrupted Maud, tempted by Felicia's enthusiasm into feeling perversely indifferent.
'Yes, and the handsomest too,' Felicia said; 'tall, strong, with beautiful features, and eyes as soft and tender as a woman's; indeed a great deal softer than most women's.'
'Then,' objected Maud, 'why has he never' ——
'Because,' answered her companion, indignantly anticipating the objection, 'there is no one half-a-quarter good enough for him.'
'Well,' said the other, by this time quite in a rebellious mood, 'all I can say is, that I don't think him in the least good-looking. I don't like that great scar across his forehead.'
'Don't you?' cried Felicia; and then she told her how the scar had come there, and Maud could no longer pretend not to be interested.
The next day Sutton came with them for a drive, and Maud, who had by this time shaken off her fears, began to find him decidedly interesting. There was something extremely romantic in having a soldier, whose reputation was already almost historical, the hero of a dozen brilliant episodes, coming tame about the house, only too happy to do her bidding or Felicia's, and apparently perfectlycontented with their society. Felicia was in the highest spirits, for she found her pet project shaping itself with pleasant facility into a fair prospect of realisation; and when Felicia was in high spirits they infected all about her.
Sutton, innocently unconscious of the cause of her satisfaction, but realising only that she wanted Maud amused and befriended, lent himself with a ready zeal to further her wishes and let no leisure afternoon go by without suggesting some new scheme of pleasure. Maud's quick, impulsive, highly-strung temperament, her moods of joyousness or depression, hardly less transient than the shadows that flit across the fields in April, her keen appreciation of beauty and pathos, made her, child as she was in most of her thoughts and ways, an interesting companion to him. Her eagerness in enjoyment was a luxury to see; and Sutton, a good observer, knew before long, almost better than herself, what things she most enjoyed. Instead of the reluctant and unsympathetic permission which her late instructress had accorded to her poetical tastes, Sutton and Felicia completely understood what she felt, treated her taste on each occasion with a flattering consideration, and led her continually to 'fresh woods and pastures new,' where vistas of loveliness, fairer far than any she had yet discovered, seemed to break upon her.
Vernon's library, his one extravagance, was all that the most fastidious scholar could desire; any choice edition of a favourite poet was on his table almost before his English friends had got it. A beautiful book, like a beautiful woman, deserves the best attire that art can give it, and Maud felt a thrill of satisfaction at all the finery of gilt and Russian leather in which she could now behold her well-beloved poems arrayed. Sutton told her, with a decisiveness which carried conviction, what things she would like and what she might neglect; and she soon followed his directions with unquestioning faith. He used to come and read to them sometimes, in a sweet, impressive manner, Maud felt; and the passage, as he had read it, lived on in her thoughts with the precise shade of feeling which his voice had given it.
One happy week was consecrated to the 'Idylls of the King,' and this had been so especially delightful as to make a little epoch in her existence—so rich was the picture—so great a revelation of beauty—such depths of sorrow—such agonies of repentance—such calm, quiet, ethereal scenes of loveliness.
More than once Sutton, in reading, had looked up suddenly and found her eyes bent full upon him, and swimming with tears; and Maud had stooped over her work, the sudden scarlet dyeingher cheek, yet almost too much moved to care about detection.
How true, how real, how living it all seemed! Did it, in truth, belong to the far-off, misty, fabulous kingdom over which the mystic Arthur ruled, or was she herself Elaine, and Lancelot sitting close before her, and all the harrowing story playing itself out in her own little troubled world? Anyhow, it struck a chord which vibrated pleasurably, yet with a half-painful vehemence, through her mind and filled it with harmonies and discords unheard before. Certainly, she confessed to herself, there was a something about Sutton that touched one to the heart.
Ainsi doit êtreUn petit-maître;Léger, amusant,Vif, complaisant,Plaisant,Railleur aimable,Traître adorable;C'est l'homme du jour,Fait pour l'amour.
One of the stupid things that people do in India is to select the two hottest hours of the day for calling on each other. How such an idiotic idea first found its way into existence, by what strange fate it became part of the social law of Anglo-Indians, and how it is that no one has yet been found with courage or strength enough to break down a custom so detrimental to the health and comfort of mankind, are among the numerous mysteries which the historian of India must be content to leave unsolved. Like Chinese ladies' feet, the high heels on which fashionable Europe at present does penance, suttee of Hindu widows, and infanticide among the Rajpoot nobles, it is merely a curious instance thatthere is nothing so foolish and so disagreeable that human beings will not do or endure if it only becomes the fashion.
At any rate, the ladies and gentlemen of Dustypore were resolved not to be a whit less fashionable and uncomfortable than their neighbours, and religiously exchanged visits from twelve to two.
Maud's arrival was the signal for a burst of callers, and a goodly stream of soldiers and civilians arrived day by day to pay their homage to the newly-arrived beauty and her chaperon. Felicia's house was always popular, and all that was pleasantest and best in Dustypore assembled at her parties. Young London dandies fresh from home, and exploring the Sandy Tracts under the impression of having left theUltima Thuleof civilisation far behind them, were sometimes startled to find her drawing-room as full of taste, luxury, and refinement as if they had suddenly been transported to Eaton Square.
What is the nameless grace that some women have the art of putting into chairs and tables, which turns them from mere bits of upholstery into something hardly short of poetry? How is it that in some rooms there breathes a subtle charm, an aroma of delicacy and culture, a propriety in the behaviour of the sofas and ottomans to one another, a pleasant negligence apparent throughthe general order, a courageous simplicity amid elaborated comfort, which, in the absence of the mistress, tells the expectant visitor that he is about to meet a thoroughbred lady?
Some such fascination, at any rate, there lingered about the cool, carefully-shaded room in which Felicia received her guests. It was by no means smart, and not especially tidy, for it was often invaded and occupied by a victorious horde from the nursery, and bore many a sign of the commonplace routine of daily life. But to Felicia's friends it was an enchanted abode, where a certain refuge might be found from whatever disagreeable things or people prevailed outside, and where Felicia, who, whatever she might feel, always looked calm and radiant and cool, presided as thegenius loci, to forbid the possibility of profane intrusion.
One thing that made it picturesque was that at all times and seasons it abounded in flowers. Felicia was an enthusiastic gardener, and her loving skill and care could save many a tender plant which would, in a less experienced hand, have withered and sunk under the burning heat and dust that prevailed everywhere but in the confines of Felicia's kingdom. Her garden gave her a more home-like feeling than any other Indian experience. It refreshed her to go out early in the morning, while the children were yet asleep, andthe sun's rays had barely surmounted the tall rows of plantains that marked the garden's boundary, and guarded her treasures from the sultry air. It soothed her to superintend ferns and roses, cuttings from some Himalayan shrub, or precious little seedlings from England. By dint of infinite care she had created a patch of turf, which, if not quite as green, fresh and dewy as the lawn at home, was at any rate a rest to eyes weary with dazzling wastes and the bright blazing air. There Felicia had a shady corner, where pots and sticks and garden-tools attested the progress of many a new gardening experiment, and where the water forced up from the well at the garden's end went rippling by with a pleasant sound, cooling and softening all the air around. Oftentimes, as she lingered here, her fancies would wander to the pleasant Manor House, where her taste for flowers had been acquired in her father's company, and she would be again fern-hunting with him through some cool mossy woodland, or roaming through a paradise of bluebells, with the well-loved beeches towering overhead, while the sweet summer evening died slowly away.
Early amongst the visitors Mr. Desvœux was announced, and Felicia, when she saw his card, told Maud that she would be sure now to be very much amused.
'He is the most brilliant of all the young civilians,' she said, 'and is to do great things. But he talks great nonsense and abuses everybody. So do not be astonished at anything you hear.'
'And is he nice?' inquired Maud.
Felicia made a little face, not altogether of approval:
'Well,' she said, 'he is more curious than nice;' and then Desvœux made his appearance, and while he was exchanging preliminary commonplaces with Felicia, Maud had an opportunity of observing the visitor's exterior claims, which were not inconsiderable, to the regard of womankind.
He was certainly, Maud felt at once, extremely handsome and, apparently, extremely anxious to be thought so. The general effect which he produced was that of a poetical dandy. He was dressed with a sort of effeminate finery, with here and there a careless touch which redeemed it all from utter fopdom. He was far too profusely set about with pretty things, lockets and rings and costly knickknacks; on the other hand his handkerchief was tied with a more than Byronic negligence. The flower in his button-hole was exquisite, but it was stuck in with a carelessness which, if studied, was none the less artistic. On the whole he was over-dressed; but he walked into the room with the air of a man who had forgotten all about it, and whohad no eyes or thoughts for anything but his present company.
Maud soon began to think him very entertaining, but, as Felicia had said, 'curious.' He was full of fun, extravagant, joyous, unconventional; he had turned, after the first few sentences, straight upon Maud and pointedly invited her into the conversation; and she soon felt her spirits rising.
'I saw you this morning,' he said, 'in the distance, riding with Sutton. I should have asked to be allowed to join you, but that I was too shy, and Sutton would have hated me for spoiling histête-à-tête.'
'Three is an odious number, is it not, Mr. Desvœux?' said Felicia, 'and should be expunged from the arithmetic books. Why was it ever invented?'
'In order, I suppose,' said Desvœux, 'that we three might meet this morning, and that there might be three Graces and three witches in Macbeth, and three members of the Salt Board. Three is evidently a necessity; but when I am of the trio, and two of us are men, I confess I don't like it. It is so nice to have one's lady all to one's self. But, Miss Vernon, you are alarmed, I know, and naturally; you think that I am going to ask, what I suppose fifty people have been asking you all the week, whether you enjoyed the voyage to India, and how you like the looks of Dustypore. But I will beconsiderate, and spare you. Enjoyed the voyage, indeed! What a horrid mockery the question seems!'
'But Ididenjoy it,' cried Maud; 'so you see that you might have asked me after all. It was very exciting.'
'Yes, all the excitement of wondering every day what new mysteries of horror the ship's cooks will devise for dinner; whether the sinews of Sunday's turkey can rival those of Saturday's goose; the excitement of going to bed in the dark and treading on a black-beetle; the excitement of shaving in a gale of wind and cutting one's nose off, as I very nearly did; the excitement of the young ladies who are expecting their lovers at Bombay, and of the young ladies who will not wait till Bombay but manufacture their lovers out of hand. It is too thrilling!'
'Well,' said Maud, 'we had theatricals and readings and dances, and a gentleman who played the most lovely variations on the violin, and I enjoyed it all immensely!'
'Ah,' said Desvœux, as if suddenly convinced, 'then perhaps you are even capable of liking Dustypore!'
'Poor Mr. Desvœux!' said Felicia; 'how sorry you must be to have finished your march, and be back again at stupid Dustypore!'
'No place is stupid where Mrs. Vernon is,' saidDesvœux, gallantly; 'or rather no place would be, if she were not so often "not at home."'
'That must be,' Felicia said, 'because you call on mail-days, when I am busy with my home despatches.'
The real truth was that Felicia considered Desvœux in need of frequent setting down, and closed her door inhospitably against him, whenever he showed the least inclination to be intimate.
'Well,' said Desvœux, 'the days that you are busy with your despatches and when I have written the Agent's, I do not find it lively, I admit. Come, Mrs. Vernon, the Fotheringhams, for instance—does not the very thought of them leave a sort of damp upon your mind? It makes one shudder.' Then Desvœux passed on to the other officials, upon whom he poured the most vehement contempt.
The Salt Board, he told Maud, always from time immemorial consisted of the three greatest fogies in the Service; that was the traditionary rule; it was only when you were half-idiotic that you could do the work properly. As for Mr. Fotheringham, he was a lucky fellow; his idiocy had developed early and strong.
'That is why Mrs. Vernon detests him so.'
'I don't detest him at all,' said Felicia; 'but I think him rather dull.'
'Yes,' said Desvœux, with fervour; 'as Dr.Johnson said of some one, he was, no doubt, dull naturally, but he must have taken a great deal of pains to become as dull as he is now. Now, Miss Vernon, would you like to see what the Board is like? First, you must know that I am the Agent's private secretary, and part of my business is to knock his and their heads together and try to get a spark out. That is how I come to know about them. First I will show you how Vernon puts on his air of Under-Secretary and looks at me with a sort of serious, bored, official air, as if he were a bishop and thought I was going to say something impertinent.'
'As I dare say you generally are,' said Felicia, quite prepared to do battle for her husband.
'Well,' said Desvœux, 'this is how he sits and looks—gravity and fatigue personified.'
'Yes,' cried Maud, clapping her hands with pleasure; 'I can exactly fancy him.'
'Then,' continued Desvœux, who was really a good mimic and warming rapidly into the work, 'in comes the Board. First Fotheringham, condescending and serene and wishing us all "Good-morning," as if he were the Pope dispensing a blessing. You know his way—like this? Then here is Cockshaw, looking sagacious, but really pondering over his last night's rubber, and wishing the Board were finished.'
Felicia was forced to burst out laughing at the imitation.
'And now,' cried Maud, 'give us Mr. Blunt.'
Desvœux put on Blunt's square awkward manner and coughed an imprecatory cough.
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'your figures are wrong, your arguments false and your conclusions childish. I don't want to be offensive or personal, and I have the highest possible opinion of your service; but you must allow me to observe that you are all a pack of fools!'
'Capital,' cried Maud; 'and what do you do all the time, Mr. Desvœux?'
'Oh, Vernon and I sit still and wink at each other and hope for the time when we shall have become idiotic enough to be on the Board ourselves. We are of the newrégime, and are supposed to have wits, and we have a great deal of intelligence to get over. But you know how the old ones were chosen. All the stupidest sons of the stupidest families in England for several generations, like the pedigree-wheat, you know, on the principle of selection; none but the blockheads of course would have anything to do with India.'
'Don't abuse the bridge that carries you over,' Felicia said: 'No treason to India—it has many advantages.'
'Innumerable,' cried Desvœux: 'first, a decentexcuse for separation between husbands and wives who happen to be uncongenial—no other society has anything to compare with it. You quarrel, you know——'
'No, we don't,' said Felicia, 'thank you. Speak for yourself.'
'Well, I quarrel with Mrs. Desvœux, we'll say—though, by the way, I could not quarrel even with my wife—but suppose a quarrel, and we become mutually insupportable: there is no trouble, no scandal, no inconvenience. Mrs. Desvœux's health has long required change of air; I secure a berth for her on the P. & Q., escort her with the utmost politeness to Bombay, have a most affectionate parting, remit once a quarter, write once a fortnight—what can be more perfect?'
'But suppose,' said Maud, 'for the sake of argument, that you don't quarrel and don't want to separate?'
'Or suppose,' said Felicia, who knew that the conversation was taking just the turn she hated, 'that we try our duet, Mr. Desvœux? You know that you are a difficult person to catch.'
'That is one of your unjust speeches,' said Desvœux, dropping his voice as they approached the piano and becoming suddenly serious: 'You know that I come quite as often as I think I have a chance of being welcome.'
Felicia ignored the remark and began playing the accompaniment with the utmost unconcern. The fact was that Desvœux, though not quite such a Don Juan as he liked to be thought, had a large amount of affection to dispose of, and had given Felicia to understand upon twenty occasions that he would like to begin a flirtation with her if he dared.
Monstrum horrendum—informe—ingens——
There were many things which a man was expected to know about in official circles at Dustypore, and first and foremost was the 'Rumble Chunder Grant.' Not to know this argued one's self not only unknown but ignorant of the first principles of society and the common basis on which thought and conversation proceeded. It was like not having read Mr. Trollope's novels or knowing nothing about the Tichborne Trial or being in any other way out of tune with the times. One of the things that gave the old civilians such a sense of immeasurable superiority over all outsiders and new-comers was the consciousness that with them rested this priceless secret, this mystery of mysteries.
One inconvenient consequence, however, of everybodybeing expected to know was, that everybody took for granted that everybody else did know, and that those who did not know veiled their ignorance under a decent mask of familiarity and by talking about it in a vague, shadowy sort of phraseology which conveniently concealed any little inaccuracies. It had to do with salt, moreover, and it was at the Salt Board that the unsearchable depths of the subject were best appreciated and this vagueness of language was most in vogue.
The facts were something of this sort. When the English took the country we found particular families and villages in Rumble Chunder in enjoyment of various rights in connection with salt; some had little monopolies; others might manufacture for themselves at a quit rent, others might quarry for themselves at particular times and places, and so forth.
The Gazette, which announced the annexation of the province, had declared in tones of splendid generosity that the British Government, though inexorable to its foes, would temper justice with mercy so far as to respect existing rights of property and would protect the loyal proprietor in the enjoyment of his own. The sonorous phrases of a rhetorical Viceroy had entailed on his successors a never-ending series of disputes, and had saddledthe Empire with an obligation which was all the more burthensome for being undefined. Ever since that unlucky Gazette, officials had been hard at work to find out what it was that the Governor-General had promised to do and how much it would cost to do it. One diligent civilian after another went down to Rumble Chunder and made out a list of people who were or who pretended to be, entitled to interests in salt. Then these lists had been submitted and discussed, and minuted upon, and objected to, and returned for further investigation, and one set of officers had given place to another, and the chance of clearing up the matter had grown fainter every day. Meanwhile the Rumble Chunder people had gone their ways, exercising what rights they could, and happy in the possession of an interminable controversy. In course of time most of the original documents got destroyed in the Mutiny, or eaten by white ants, and a fresh element of uncertainty was introduced by the question of the authenticity of all existing copies. Then there had come a new Secretary of State at home, whose views as to the grantees were diametrically opposed to all his predecessors, and who sent peremptory orders to carry out the new policy with the least possible delay. Thus the subject had gradually got itself into a sort ofhopeless tangle, for which Desvœux used to say that the only effectual remedy would be the end of the world. No one knew exactly what his rights were, and every one was afraid of endangering his position by too rigid an inquiry or too bold an assertion.
One peculiarity of this, as of most Indian controversies, was the unnatural bitterness of spirit to which it gave rise. The most amiable officials turned to gall and wormwood at its very mention, and abused each other over it with the vehemence of vexed theologians.
Whether vain attempts to understand it had engendered an artificial spitefulness, or whether discussion, like beer-drinking, is a luxury too strong for natures enfeebled by an Eastern climate, sure enough it was that, directly this wretched question came to the fore, good-nature, moderation and politeness were forgotten, and the antagonists made up for the confusion of their ideas by the violence of the language in which they expressed them.
The last phase of the story was that some of the descendants of the original grantees, thinking the plum was now about ripe for picking, took up the question in a wily, patient, vexatious sort of way, and produced a tremendous lawsuit. Then a Memberof Parliament, whose ideas, by some sudden process (on which his banker's book would probably have thrown some light), had been suddenly turned Indiawards, made the most telling speech in the House, depicting in vivid colours the wrongs of the Rumble Chunder people and the satanic ruthlessness of British rule. Then pamphlets began to appear, which showed to demonstration that all the Viceroys had been either liars or thieves, except a few who had been both, and asked how long this Rumble Chunder swindle was to last. The whole subject, in fact, began to be ventilated. Now, ventilation, though a good thing in its time and place, is bad for such veteran institutions as the Salt Board, or controversies as delicate as the Rumble Chunder Grant. Every new ray of daylight let in disclosed an ugly flaw, and the fresh air nearly brought the tottering edifice about the ears of its inhabitants. It needed, as Fotheringham ruefully felt, but the rude, trenchant, uncompromising spirit of a man like Blunt to produce an imbroglio which could neither be endured, concealed, or disposed of in any of the usual methods known to Indian officialdom; and Blunt was known to be hard at work at the statistics, and already to have assumed an attitude of obtrusive hostility. Fotheringham could only fortify himself with the reflection that the Providencewhich had seen him through a long series of official scrapes would probably not desert him at this last stage of his career. He wished, nevertheless, that he had forestalled Cockshaw in his application for the Carraways.
O lovely earth! O lovely sky!I was in love with nature, I;And nature was in love with me;O lovely life—when I was free!
Felicia had been surprised, and not altogether pleased, at the unnecessary cordiality with which Maud had bade their visitor farewell. There was an excitement, an animation, an eagerness in her manner which Felicia had not before perceived, and which she felt at once might be difficult to manage. Desvœux was exactly the person whom she didnotwant Maud to like, and the very possibility of her liking him brought out in Felicia's mind a latent hostility of which, under an exterior of politeness and even familiarity, she was always dimly conscious. She did not mind talking to him herself; she was even amused by him; but then it was always with a kind of protest; she knew exactly how far she meant to go and felt no temptation to go any further. But the notion of him in anyother capacity but that of a remote member of society, whose function it was to say and do absurd things in an amusing way, was strange and altogether distasteful. Anything like intimacy was not to be thought of for an instant; the merest approach to close contact would bring out some discord, the jar of which, by a sort of instinctive anticipation, Felicia seemed to feel already. So long as he moved in quite another plane and belonged to a different world, his eccentricities might be smiled at for their comicality without the application of any rigid canon of taste or morals. But a person who was at once irreligious and over-dressed, who constantly had to be 'put down' for fear he should become offensive, and who was a stranger to all the little Masonic signals by which ladies and gentlemen can find each other out—the very idea of his presuming to cross the pale, and to form any other tie than those of the most indifferent acquaintance, filled Felicia with the strongest repugnance. It was provoking, therefore, that he seemed to take Maud's fancy and impress her more than any other of the many men with whom she was now becoming acquainted. It was more than provoking that she should let her impressions come so lightly to the surface, and be read in signs which Desvœux's experienced eye would, Felicia knew, have not the least trouble in interpreting.
Suppose—but this was one of the disagreeable suppositions which Felicia's mind put aside at once as too monstrous to be entertained—suppose he should come to stand in the way of the rightful, proper, destined lover? She thrust away the notion as absurd. All the same, it made her uncomfortable, and no doubt justified her to herself in pushing forward Sutton's interests with more eagerness than she might otherwise have thought it right to employ about another person's concerns. When one feels a thing to bethething that ought to happen, and sees it in danger of being frustrated by some thoroughly objectionable interference, it is but natural to do something more than merely wish for a fortunate result. Felicia, at any rate, could boast of no such passivity; and, if praising Sutton would have married him, Felicia's wishes on the subject would have been speedily realised.
The course of love, however, rarely flows exactly in the channels which other people fashion for it, and Maud's inclinations required, her cousin felt, the most judicious handling. There could be no harm, however, in allowing Sutton's visits to go on with their accustomed frequency; and since Maud must forthwith learn to ride and Sutton volunteered to come in the mornings to teach her, no one could blame Felicia if, in the intervals of instruction, the pupil and teacher should become unconsciously proficientin any other art besides that of equitation. Maud used to come in from these rides with such a bright glow on her cheek and in such rapturous spirits, that her cousin might well feel reassured.
Sutton had found for her the most perfect pony, whose silky coat, lean well-chiselled head and generally aristocratic bearing, pronounced it the inheritor of Arab blood. Maud speedily discovered that riding was the most enjoyable of all human occupations. Down by the river's side, or following long woodland paths, where the busy British rule had planted many an acre with the forests of the future, or out across the wide plains of corn stretching for miles, broken only by clumps of palms or villages nestling each in a little grove under the wing of some ancestral peepul-tree, the moon still shining overhead and the sun just above the horizon, still shrouded in the mists of morning—how fresh, how picturesque, how exhilarating everything looked! How pleasant, too, to go through all these pretty scenes with a companion who seemed somehow to know her tastes and wishes, and to have no thought but how to please her! Sutton, though in public a man of few words and unsatisfactorily taciturn on the subject of his own exploits, had, Maud presently discovered, plenty to tell her when they were alone. The power of observation which made him so nice a judge of character extendeditself to all the scene about him and revealed a hundred touches of interest or beauty which, to coarser or less careful vision, would have lain obscure. Maud felt that she had never known how beautiful Nature was till Sutton told her.
'There,' he would say, 'I brought you round this wood that we might not miss that pretty bend of the river, with Humayoun's Tomb and the palms beyond. See what a beautiful blue background the sky makes to the red dome and that nice old bit of crumbling wall. The bright Indian atmospheres have their own beauty, have they not? And see that little wreath of smoke hanging over the village. This is my pet morning landscape.'
'And those peach-groves,' cried Maud, 'all ablaze with blossom, and those delicious shady mulberries and the great stretch of green beyond. It is quite enchanting: a sort of dream of peace.'
'We had a fine gallop across here once,' Sutton said, 'when first we took the Sandy Tracts.' And then Maud learnt that they were riding over a battle-field, and that for a long summer's afternoon men had fought and fallen all along the path where now they stood, and that a battery of artillery had been posted at the very corner of the village to which her guide had brought her. 'I remember when they knocked that hole in the old wall yonder and how all the fellows behind it took to theirheels. Then, afterwards we stormed the Tomb and had to finish our fighting by moonlight.'
'Was that when you got your Victoria Cross?' asked Maud, who was possessed by a spirit of insatiable curiosity about Sutton's badges, which he was slow to gratify.
'Oh no,' said Sutton, laughing; 'I got nothing then but a bullet through my shoulder and a knock on the head from a musket-stock which very nearly ended my soldiering then and there. Look now how quickly the scene changes as the sun gets up—half its beauty is gone already! Let us have a good canter over this soft ground and get home before it grows too hot.'
Maud, who had never thought of a battle except as one of the afflicting details that had to be remembered at an historical class, and if possible to be hooked on to its proper site and date, felt a delicious thrill in actually realising with her own eyes the place where one of the troublesome events took place, and in talking to a person who had actually taken part in it. 'And what became of the bullet in your shoulder?' she asked.
'It was a very troublesome bullet,' said Sutton, 'and a great deal harder to dislodge than the people from the Tomb. But I was unlucky when I was a lad and never came out of action without asouvenirof some sort or other.'
When Maud got home she asked Felicia about this storming of the Tomb, and learnt that Sutton's account was not as truthful as it might have been. He and half-a-dozen others had, Felicia told her, volunteered for the storming-party, had made a rush for the walls through a shower of bullets; and Sutton and two companions, getting separated from the others, had been left for some seconds to hold their own as best they could against the angry, frightened mob within. No one, perhaps scarcely Sutton himself, knew exactly what had happened. The rest of the party, however, when they made their way in, found him standing at bay over a dead comrade's body, and his antagonists too completely taken aback at his audacity to venture, at any odds, within reach of his sword. In the scuffle which ensued Sutton received the wounds of which Maud had been informed; but his exploits on that day were for ever after quoted by his followers as a proof that there is nothing which a man may not do, if only he have pluck and will enough to do it.
Maud felt all this very impressive and Sutton's society more and more delightful. Her enjoyment of it, however—by this time by no means small—began to be seriously qualified by an anxiety, increasingly present to her mind, as to her fitness for the dignified companionship thus thrust upon her. She felt passionately anxious to please Sutton,and more and more distrustful of her power to do so. He was good, noble, chivalrous, everything that Felicia had said, and how hopelessly above herself! What must he think of one who was, as Miss Goodenough had often told her, a mere congeries of defects? True, he never seemed shocked or annoyed at anything she said, and professed to like the rides as much as she did; but might not this be from mere good-nature, or the charm of novelty, or the wish to oblige Felicia, or any transitory or accidental cause? Terrifying thought, if some day he should find her wanting, and banish her from his regards! Meanwhile, happy, happy mornings, and sweet, bright world, in which such pleasure can be found, even if haunted by a doubt as to whether it is really ours or not!