CHAPTER XV.A PROUD MOMENT.
Captain Waring envied his comrade, who, with Miss Gordon, sauntered on a few paces ahead of him and, what he mentally termed, “his old woman of the sea.” She never ceased talking, and could not endure him out of her sight. The others appeared to get on capitally; they had plenty to say to one another, and their frequent laughter excited not alone his envy, but his amazement.
Mark was not a ladies’ man; this squiring of dames was a new departure. Such an avocation was far more in his own line, and by all the laws of the fitness of things,heshould be in Mark’s place—strolling bymoonlight with a pretty girl along the shores of this lovely mountain tarn. What were they talking about? Mark never could find much to say to girls—straining his ears, not from the ungentlemanly wish to listen, but merely from pure friendly curiosity—he paid but scant attention to Mrs. Brande’s questions, and gave her several misleading answers.
“His cousin had no profession—he was a gentleman at large—yes—hisprotége—yes. He himself was a man of leisure—yes.” Yes—yes—yes; he said “Yes” to everything indiscriminately; it is so easy to say “Yes!”
“It is strange that we should come across one another twice on the same journey,” remarked Jervis to his companion.
“If you had not come across me the first time, I suppose I should be sitting in that train still!”
“Oh no; not quite so long as all that.”
“You won’t say anything to aunt about——”
“Good gracious, Miss Gordon! Do you think I look like a lunatic?”
“You see, I have such a dreadful way of coming out with things, that I imagine that what is an irresistible temptation tome, might be the same to other people!”
“You need not be afraid, as far as I am concerned. I can answer for myself that I can hold my tongue. And how are you getting on? Still counting the hours until your departure?” with an air of gay interrogation.
“No, indeed. At first I was desperately home-sick; but I am getting over that now.”
And gradually she was led on to talk of Jessie’s stories, of their celebrated mulberry tree, and of the various quaint local characters. Surely there was some occult influence in the scene; or was it the frank air and pleasant voice of this young man, that thus unlocked her lips? She felt as if she had known him quite a long time; atany rate, he was her first acquaintance in India, and she once more repeated to herself the comforting fact that he was also a poor relation—that alone was a strong bond of sympathy. As they paced the narrow road that edged the lake of Nath Tal, they laughed and talked with a mutual enjoyment that filled the mind of Captain Waring and Mrs. Brande (who were not so happily paired) with dismay on the part of the lady, and disgust on the side of the gentleman. Captain Waring would no doubt have found their conversation insipid to the last degree; it contained no sugared compliments, and not the smallest spice of sentiment or flirtation.
“I have a bargain to propose to you two gentlemen,” said Mrs. Brande, ere they parted for the night. “We are going the same marches, and to the same place; I shall be happy to provide the commissariat, if you will be our escort and protect us. What do you say?” appealing to Captain Waring with a smirk.
“My dear madam, I say that we close with your offer on the spot; it is altogether in our favour,” was his prompt reply.
Mrs. Brande beamed still more effulgently. There was no occasion to consult the other young man.
“Then we will consider it all settled; it is a banderbust,” and taking Honor’s arm, she nodded quite an affectionate good night, and retired into her own quarters.
Precisely at six o’clock the next day the party made a start—the men on sturdy hill ponies, the ladies in dandies. What can be more exquisite than a clear April morning on the lower slopes of the Himalayas? The lake was still and lay half in shadow; the dew glittered among the cherry blossoms, as if they were set in diamonds; the low rush-covered marshes were sprinkled with herds of cattle, and the doves were cooing in the dense woods that overlooked the misty blue plains. The travellers encountered many groups of hill folk, going to work among the cultivated patches lowerdown, or in the neighbouring tea-gardens, as they passed through a village, a flock of delightful little brown children sallied out and tossed freshly plucked monthly roses into the ladies’ laps, “so charmingly Arcadian and simple,” thought Honor. But she was disillusioned, by the same little brown elves pursuing them for half a mile, with shrill demands for “Bucksheesh! bucksheesh!”
As they toiled upwards, the day grew perceptibly warmer, the ascent steeper. At twelve o’clock they halted by a mountain stream under some evergreen oaks, and there found an excellent repast awaiting them. Mrs. Brande’s portly cook had girded up his loins, and hastened by short cuts and by-paths, and now lay in ambush with this welcome repast of fowl, cold pie, rolls and coffee; claret and hock were cooling in a neighbouring stream.
There wassomesatisfaction in being escort to Mrs. Brande, who sat on a box, presiding over the table-cloth, and lookingthe embodiment of gratified hospitality. When the meal had come to an end and the men were smoking, she said—
“What’s that in your dandy, Honor? I see you taking as much care of it as if it was some great treasure; not your new hats, Ihope?” in a tone of real concern.
“No, aunt; it is my violin—a much more important affair.”
“Nonsense, child! Why did you not leave it with the heavy baggage?”
“Because it might have been smashed.”
“Well, if it was, it could be mended. We have a very clever Maistry carpenter at Shirani. I often give him little jobs. My butler—a Goanese—has a fiddle, too, and of an evening I hear him giving the other servants a benefit.”
“Perhaps he and I may play duets,” remarked Honor, demurely.
“My dear child!” with a deeply horrified air. “How can you talk in such a wild way? Captain Waring is shocked—ain’t you, captain?”
“Dreadfully scandalized; and I will only condone the outrage to my feelings on one condition, that Miss Gordon plays us a solo. Will you, Miss Gordon? This is the hour and the place.”
Mrs. Brande naturally expected that her niece would require at least a quarter of an hour’s incessant pressing; and, indeed, in spite of what the Hodsons had told her, this benighted old person was not at all sure that it was the correct thing for a woman to play the fiddle. “Would Mrs. Langrishe allow her girl to do it?” and visions of her own fat black butler, squatting outside the house in the cool of the day playing jigs and reels to a circle of enraptured syces and chuprassis, rose before her mind’s eye!
This vision was quickly dispelled by another. Honor longed for the sound of her beloved violin, her present audience were not formidable, and she was not the least nervous. Last time she had held her fiddle and bow it had been a dull wet afternoonat home—a type of the worst grey, sullen, English weather. She had played to them in the drawing-room Schubert’s “Adieu.” Yes, and her mother had wept. Now, what a different scene, and different listeners! Two men, almost strangers, prone on the grass, lazily expectant, and, as far as Captain Waring was concerned, condescendingly ready to be entertained; a stout lady sitting on a wine-case, with her napkin on her knee, and her topee quite at the back of her head; a distant group of scarlet-and-white clad servants; and all around a scene fit to encircle Orpheus himself. Range after range of purple-blue hills, rising out of rhododendron and oak forests, a rival across the valley in the shape of a cuckoo, otherwise a waiting, sympathetic silence.
As the girl took the violin out of its case, Captain Waring could see that it was in hands that loved it; and noted, moreover, that the said hands were beautiful—the wrists most daintily modelled. Soonthe bow began to call forth heavenly sounds.
Honor stood up, leaning carelessly against the trunk of a tree, and seemed wholly unconscious of her audience; her face, which was turned towards the hills, gradually assumed a rapt exalted expression, and her playing was in keeping with her attitude and her eyes. The performance was a revelation—a mixture of great simplicity, with a distinct note of human passion in its strain. Surely the music was the voice of this girl’s sweet soul!
The servants boldly came near to hear this new “Miss Sahib” who drew such marvellous strains from the “sitar.” The very ponies pricked their ears, a rambling hill cow halted to listen, the competitive cuckoo was dumb.
The two young men gradually dropped their cigarettes. Mrs. Brande dropped her jaw. Why, her niece played as well as a man at a concert! Even better, in her opinion, for this was a tune that touchedher, and that she could understand; those sweet wailing notes, resembling a human voice, penetrated her opaque sensibilities, and wafted her to the very gates of Paradise.
Captain Waring surveyed with unaffected curiosity this fair young musician, with his elbows dug into the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He knew something about music; the girl played with faultless taste and absolute purity of tone. He was listening to “linked sweetness long drawn out” rendered with truly expressive charm. Here was not the common or ordinary Indian spin, but a modern Saint Cecilia! He glanced at Mark, to see how this unexpected transformation had affected him; but Mark’s face was averted, and he gave no sign, though in reality he was enjoying a debauch of exquisite musical thoughts.
Presently the spell, a weird Russian air, died away in a long sobbing sigh, and, save for a murmur among the servants, there ensued quite a remarkable pause, broken atlength by Mrs. Brande, who exclaimed as if she had suddenly awoke—
“Verypretty indeed! And how did you like it, Captain Waring?”
“Like it!” he echoed indignantly. “My dear madam, what a feeble and inadequate expression! Miss Gordon plays magnificently.”
“Oh indeed, no,” she protested. “I can play music that I can feel—and that is easy, and I began to learn the violin when I was four years old, so that my fingers are pretty supple; but when I think of other people’s playing, such as Sarasate, I realize that I am nothing more than a well-meaning amateur, and never will be otherwise. I cannot master any excessive technical difficulties. I have no brilliancy—still,” with a happy little sigh, “I am glad that you liked it.”
“Yes, my dear,” said her aunt, nodding her head approvingly. “And now let us have something lively. Suppose you play a polka?”
But the violin was already in its case. Honor had laid it there with the air of a mother consigning an infant to its rest.
“Oh, Miss Gordon, what a shame!” expostulated Mark Jervis. “I could lie on this sunny slope, under the rhododendrons, listening to you fordays.”
“You would not find it very comfortable in therains,” remarked Mrs. Brande, with some asperity. She did not approve of penniless young men thus launching compliments at her accomplished niece. “And now we had better be getting on, if we are to reach Binsa before dark.”
The next and last day of their march the party were proceeding as usual in pairs; Honor and Captain Waring led the van, whilst Jervis and Mrs. Brande, who was a heavy load, lagged behind. The further they journeyed, the steeper grew the precipices, the wilder the scenery, the narrower the paths. At one place in the woods, high above them, grazed a herd ofso-called tame buffaloes—tame with natives, wild with Europeans. The huge bull, with his hairy head and enormous horns—though he carried a bell—was tame with no one! Hearing strange voices below, he lifted up his hideous china-blue eyes, stared fiercely about him, and then came crashing downhill for some dozen yards, but his prey—Honor and her escort—had already passed by, and were out of reach. He stood still in a meditative attitude, and gave vent to an angry and disappointed bellow.
After a considerable interval, another group came into view. Mrs. Brande’s gay jampannis and scarlet dandy rug settled the question. In half a moment he had blundered through the undergrowth, and placed himself in a warlike attitude upon the path—exactly six yards ahead of the party. The unanimity with which Mrs. Brande’s bearers dropped her, and fled up trees, was only equalled by the agility displayed by the lady herself, inleaping out of the dandy and scrambling down the khud! Nothing remained on the track but the empty vehicle, the buffalo, and Jervis.
He promptly jumped off his pony, snatched up a jampanni’s pole, on the end of which he raised the red rug, and boldly advanced like a matador in the arena. When the bull lowered his ponderous head to charge, he threw the rug over his horns with as much coolness and dexterity as if he had merely to deal with a stuffed animal! But this animal was dangerously animated. Rushing furiously forward, he tumbled blindly over the dandy, and with a loud crash, rolled down the khud, which, luckily for him (and Mrs. Brande) was not of sheer descent. The lady’s piercing screams attracted the notice of her niece, and—of what was far more to the purpose—the boy who was in charge of the herd. Probably he had been fast asleep, but he now came racing through the brushwood, routed up the buffalo,whose fall had undoubtedly quenched his spirit, and drove him away, laden with the hearty curses of the jampannis. These valiant gentlemen had now descended to mother earth, as brave as lions. The rug was in ribbons, the dandy in matchwood, but no one was injured. “What was to be done?” inquired Captain Waring, vainly struggling to preserve a grave countenance, as he saw Mrs. Brande, who presented a truly distressing spectacle, emerging from the bushes, on her hands and knees. The back of her dress was split right across the shoulders, her veil hung round her neck, and she was covered with sand and bits of twigs.
Mark had hastened to her assistance, and her niece, as she picked up her topee and umbrella, asked anxiously “if she was hurt?”
“No,” she panted, sitting down and dusting herself with her handkerchief, “I’m not a bit the worse.”
“But your dandy is in smithereens!”said Captain Waring. “What is to be done?”
“I know whathasbeen done. Young man,” solemnly addressing herself to Jervis, “you saved my life, as sure as I sit here, and you stand there. If you had not had the courage to throw the rug over his head, he would have come down the khud, and gored me to death—I’m not a woman of many words” (fond delusion) “but I won’t forget it—nor will P.” In moments of unusual excitement, or when with her intimates, she invariably spoke of her husband as “P.”
“Oh, Mrs. Brande,” he replied, “you think a great deal too much of it—it was only a buffalo.”
“Only a buffalo!” she repeated. “You little know them; in another minute I’d have been only a corpse. They are the most dangerous brutes you can come across, and so cunning. Ha,” changing her voice to another and sharper key, “Jait Sing, you base coward! I shall cut every one’spay two rupees. I’ve a mind to stop your wood tickets. What a contrast toyou,” she pointed her fat finger straight at Jervis. “Lions, indeed, as all these Sings call themselves—pretty lions—you are the bravest young man I ever saw!”
“Oh come, I say, Mrs. Brande,” expostulated Waring, playfully. “You don’t know whatIcould do if I tried.”
“Well, as you didnottry, I cannot say,” she answered dryly.
“It’s not such a marvellous feat, driving off an old buffalo——”
“Depends upon the humour the buffalo is in; and I’m surprised at you belittling your own cousin, instead of being proud of him,” pursued the lady with considerable heat, and entirely forgetting her intendedrôlewith respect to this millionaire.
“How are you to get on, aunt?” inquired Honor; “but of course you must go in my dandy and I can walk.”
“By no means, Miss Gordon; you shall ride my pony,” said Captain Waring. “Hehas a grand roomy old saddle and a fine broad back, and I will hold you from slipping off.”
To this arrangement Mrs. Brande (who had now recovered her composure and her wits) saw no objection. Quite the contrary, it was a capital idea. As for herself, she felt so shattered and so nervous, that she could not allow Mr. Jervis out of her sight.
They were now within seven miles of Shirani, and oh! what interminable miles—they seemed leagues—leagues of dreary monotonous road, winding and twisting round barren fawn-coloured hills, and apparently taking them straight into the very heart of Asia. They wound up and down valleys, to the crest of a range, which hid, as they fondly hoped, long-looked-for Shirani. Alas! it but gave them a view of yet another valley—yet another rounded hill slope. Honor was not surprised to hear that a lady of her aunt’s acquaintance, on her first visit, had, after a seriesof these maddening disappointments, collapsed on the journey, and given way to a storm of hysterical tears. Sometimes Honor walked—walked by preference, but at others, she mounted the pony in deference to her chaperon’s wishes. She did not enjoy her ride, it consisted of a gradual slide, slide, slide, a recover, then slide, slide, again. She declined Captain Waring’s eagerly tendered arm—support was twice as irksome as walking. Would this detestable road never, never, come to an end?
Ah, there were the pine trees of Shirani at last! In another twenty minutes, they were among them. As the little party debouched into the mall, Mrs. Brande heading the procession, Honor bringing up the rear, with Captain Waring leading her pony, they came face to face with Mrs. Langrishe, walking with her most stately air, between a soldierly looking man and a small, beautifully dressed, fair-haired girl.
Yes, she could not have failed to notice and take in the full significance of Mrs. Brande’srentrée(indeed she and her rival had exchanged bows), and dusty, hot, and thirsty, as that lady was, this was one of the happiest and proudest moments of her life!