Captain Desmond, V.C.. Diver Maud
girl rose and turned to Wyndham with a friendly smile. "You and I can have our talk out another time, can't we?"
"By all means."
He sat watching her as she left him, with a tender concentration of gaze, his brain stunned by a glimpse into undreamed-of possibilities; into a region of life whereof he knew nothing, and had believed himself content to know nothing all his days.
Mrs Jim Conolly was a large woman, nearer forty than thirty. Twenty years of India, of hot weathers resolutely endured, of stretching small means to the utmost limit and beyond it, had left their mark, in sallowness of skin, in broken lines of thought between her brows, and of restrained endurance about her firmly-closed lips. She had the air of a woman who has never allowed herself to be worsted by the minor miseries of life; and in India the minor miseries multiply exceedingly. Unthinking observers stigmatised her face as harsh and unprepossessing; but it was softened and illumined by a glow of genuine welcome as she greeted Honor Meredith.
"I wonder if you have the smallest recollection of me?" she said. "My last glimpse of you was in a dak gharri at Pindi, when you were first starting for home nineteen years ago, and the sight of what you have grown into makes me feel a very old woman indeed! Do you remember those Pindi days at all?"
"Bits, here and there, quite vividly. I had been wondering already why I seemed to know your face. It was you who had the two nice babies I loved so dearly. Haven't you any for me to play with now?"
"Yes, my two youngest are still with me. But they are rather big babies by this time. You must come over and see them soon, and we will pick up the threads of our dropped friendship, Honor. Your father and mother were very good to me in the old days, but you were my chief friend from the start. You have grown into a very beautiful woman, dear," she added, in a lower tone; "and if you ever want help or advice while you are here alone, I hope you will turn to me for it as readily as you would to your own mother. I haven't seen Lady Meredith for years. Sit down under the cliff with me, and give me some news of them all."
By the time dusk had set in the little party was back again in Desmond's compound, the escort deserting them at the gate; and as Honor Meredith prepared to dismount, Paul Wyndham came forward, a certain restrained eagerness in his eyes.
"May I?" he asked, with the diffidence of a man unused to making such requests.
"I generally manage all right, thanks."
"You might make an exception, though – just this once."
For an instant of time his hands supported her – an instant of such keen sensation that, when it was passed, he pulled himself up sharply – called himself a fool, and in the same breath wished that she had been a few degrees less skilful in springing lightly to the ground.
Ready-made talk was, for the moment, beyond him; and he departed something hastily, leaving Honor and his friend alone together in the darkening verandah.
Voices and laughter came out to them from the drawing-room, where Evelyn and Denvil were carrying on their young foolishness with undiminished zeal; and Desmond turned upon the girl the irresistible friendliness of his eyes.
"You enjoyed yourself, I hope, – Miss Meredith?"
"Immensely, thank you, – Captain Desmond."
Her tone was a deliberate echo of his; and their eyes met in mutual laughter.
"Aren't we good friends enough now to drop the formality?" he asked. And at the question a lightning vision came to her of the scene on the hillside, so vividly described by his friend.
"Yes – I think – we are," she said slowly.
"That's right. I think so too."
"I seem to have made quite an advance in that direction this afternoon," she added, in no little surprise at her own boldness.
"How's that? Paul?"
"Yes."
"Oh! so that was the engrossing subject. I might have known Paul wasn't likely to be expatiating on himself."
"He gave me a stirring account of a certain day in October, six years ago," she went on, with an unconscious softening of her voice.
Desmond's short laugh had in it a genuine touch of embarrassment.
"Did he? That was superfluous of him. The good fellow would have done no less himself in the circumstances. Listen to those two children in there! How finely they're enjoying themselves! I say, Harry!" he shouted to the invisible Denvil, who came forth straightway; – a squarely built, chestnut-haired boy, his sea-blue eyes still full of laughter; "have you quite decided to invite yourself to dinner?"
"Rather– if you'll have me?"
"Of course I'll have you. Cut away and make yourself respectable."
And as the boy vanished in the darkness Desmond turned to find his wife's figure in the open doorway, its purity of outline thrown into strong relief by the light within.
She stood on the threshold balancing herself on the tips of her toes in a light-hearted ecstasy of unrest, and flung out both hands towards her husband.
"Oh, Theo, it was delicious! I had lovely fun!"
She came and nestled close to him with the confiding simplicity of a child; and Honor, under cover of the dusk, slipped round by the back of the house to her own room.
CHAPTER VII.
BRIGHT EYES OF DANGER
"My mistress still, the open road; And the bright eyes of danger."
By mid-April, life in the blue bungalow had undergone an unmistakable change for the better; and Theo Desmond, sitting alone in the congenial quietness of his study, an after-dinner pipe between his teeth, a volume of Persian open before him, and Rob's slumbering body pressed close against his ankles, told himself that he and his wife, in befriending Honor Meredith at a moment of difficulty, had without question entertained an angel unawares. Evelyn had blossomed visibly in the pleasure of her companionship; while he himself found her good to talk with, and undeniably good to look at.
There was also a third point in her favour, and that by no means the least. Her sympathetic rendering of the great masters of music had renewed a pleasure linked with memories sacred beyond all others. Althea Desmond bid fair to retain undivided supremacy over the strong son, who had been the crown and glory of her life. Death itself seemed powerless to affect their essential unity. Her spirit – vivid and vigorous as his own – still shared and dominated his every thought; and her photograph, set in a silver frame of massive simplicity, stood close at his elbow, while he reviewed the changes wrought in the past few weeks by the unobtrusive influence of John Meredith's sister.
The mere lessening of strain and friction in regard to the countless details of an Indian household was, in itself, an unspeakable relief. During the first few months of his marriage he had persevered steadily in the thankless task of instructing his cheerfully incompetent bride in the language and household mysteries of her adopted country. But the more patiently he helped her the more she leaned upon his help; till the futility of his task had threatened to wear his temper threadbare, and to put a severe strain on a relationship more complex than he had imagined possible.
Now, however, the tyranny of trifles was overpast. The man's elastic nature righted itself, with the spring of a finely-tempered blade released from pressure, and as the passing weeks revealed his wife's progress under Honor's tuition, he readily attributed her earlier failures to his own lack of skill.
As a matter of fact, her power to cope with Amar Singh – Desmond's devoted Hindu bearer – and the eternal enigmas of charcoal, jharrons,13 and the dhobie,14 had not increased one whit: and she knew it. But the welcome sound of praise from her husband's lips convinced her that she must have done something to deserve it. She accepted it, therefore, in all complacency, without any acknowledgment of the guiding hand upon the reins.
Great
Dusters.
Washerman.