Captain Desmond, V.C.. Diver Maud
also in the compound, where a colony of servants and their families lived their unknown lives apart; and great pride in the heart of Parbutti, since Amar Singh had so far unbent as to prophesy that the Miss Sahib would without doubt become a Burra Mem before the end of her days.
While Desmond sat alone in this warm April evening, studying the fantastic Persian characters with something less than his wonted concentration, the sound of the piano came to him through the half-open door.
For a few moments he listened, motionless, to the first weird whispering bars of Grieg's Folkscene, "Auf den Bergen," then the book was pushed hastily aside and the lamp blown out. Rob – rudely awakened from a delectable dream of cats and the naked calves of unsuspecting coolies – found himself plunged in darkness, and his master vanishing through the curtains into the detested drawing-room.
Evelyn was installed on the fender-stool of dull red velvet, her hands clasped about her knees, her head raised in expectation. A dress of softly flowing white silk, and a single row of pearls at her throat, intensified her fragile freshness, as of a lily of the field, a creature out of touch with the sterner elements of life. It was at such moments that her husband was apt to suffer a contraction of heart, lest, in an impulse of infatuation, he had undertaken more than he would be able to perform.
She patted his favourite chair; then, impulsively deserting her seat, crouched on the hearth-rug beside him and nestled her head against his knee.
"I told her to play it! I knew it would bring you at once," she whispered, caressing him lightly with a long slim hand.
"You shall sing to me afterwards yourself," he said, "a song in keeping with your appearance to-night. You look like some sort of elf-maiden in that simple gown and my pearls. Only one touch wanted to complete the effect!"
With smiling deliberation he drew out four tortoise-shell pins that upheld the silken lightness of her hair, so that it fell in a fair soft cloud about her neck and shoulders.
"Theo! How dare you!"
And as she turned her face up to him, in laughing remonstrance, he was struck anew by the childishness of its contour, in spite of the pallor, which had become almost habitual of late. Taking it between his hands he looked steadfastly into the limpid shallows of her eyes, as though searching for a hidden something which he had little hope to find.
"Ladybird, what a baby you are still!" he murmured, "I wonder when you mean to grow into a woman?"
Then with a start he became aware that Amar Singh, having entered noiselessly through the door behind him, stood at his side in a pose of imperturbable reverence and dignity.
"Olliver Memsahib ghora per argya,"15 he announced with discreetly lowered lids; while Evelyn, springing up with rose-petal cheeks and a small sound of dismay, must needs try and look as if ladies in evening dress habitually wore their hair hanging loose about their shoulders.
Honor swung round upon the music-stool as Frank Olliver, in evening skirt and light drill jacket strode into the room.
Before she could bring out her news, a blare of trumpets, sounding the alarm, startled the quiet of the night, and Desmond leapt to his feet.
"There you are, Theo, man," she said. "You can hear for yourself. It's a fire in the Lines. Geoff and I caught sight of the flare just now from our back verandah. He's gone on ahead; but I said I'd look in here for you."
"Thanks. Tell 'em to saddle the Demon, will you? I'll be ready in two minutes."
And Mrs Olliver vanished from the room.
As Desmond prepared to follow her, his wife's fingers closed firmly on the edge of his dinner-jacket.
She was sitting now in the chair he had left; and turned up to him a face half beseeching, half resentful in its frame of soft hair.
"Why must you go, Theo? There are heaps of others who – aren't married."
"Don't be a little fool, child!" he broke out in spite of himself. Then gently, decisively, he disengaged her fingers from his coat; but their clinging grasp checked his impatience to be gone.
He bent down, and spoke in a softened tone. "I've no time for arguments, Evelyn. I am simply doing my duty."
He was gone – and she remained as he had left her, with hands lying listlessly in her lap, and a frown between her finely pencilled brows, – mollified, but by no means convinced.
Honor had hurried into the hall, where Frank Olliver greeted her with impulsive invitation.
"Why don't you 'boot and saddle' too, Honor, an' ride along with us?"
"I only wish I could! I'd love to go! But I must stay with Evelyn. She is upset and nervous about Theo as it is."
"Saints alive! How can you put up with her at all – at all!" muttered irrepressible Frank. "But hush, now, here's the blessed fellow himself!"
Theo Desmond strode rapidly down the square hall, hung with trophies of the chase and implements of war – an incongruous figure enough, in forage cap and long brown boots with gleaming spurs, his sword buckled on over his evening clothes. He snatched a long clasp-knife from the wall in passing, and the Irishwoman, with an nod of approval, hurried out into the verandah, where the impatient horses could be heard champing their bits.
Desmond had a friendly smile for Honor in passing.
"Pity you can't come too. Be good to Ladybird. Don't let her work herself into a fever about nothing."
For eight breathless minutes the grey and the dun sped through the warm night air, under a rising moon, their shadows fleeing before them, long and black, – two perspiring saïses following zealously in their wake; – till their riders drew rein before a pandemonium of scurrying men and horses, silhouetted against a background of fire.
The great pile of sun-dried bedding burnt merrily: sending up fierce tongues of flame, that shamed the moonlight, as dawn shames the lamp. A brisk wind from the hills caught up shreds and flakes from the burning mass, driving them hither and thither, to the sore distraction of man and beast.
Lithe forms of grass-cutters and water-carriers, in the scantiest remnants of clothing, leaped and pranced on the outskirts of the fire, like demons in a realistic hell.
In valiant spurts and jerks, alternating with ignominious flight, they were combating that column of flame and smoke with thimblefuls of water, flung out of stable buckets, or squirted from mussacks. They were beating it also with stript branches, making night radiant with a thousand sparks.
But the soaring flames jeered at their pigmy efforts; twinkled derisively on their glistening bodies; and assailed the vast composure of the skies with leaping blades of light.
To the bewildering confusion of movement was added a no less bewildering tumult of sound, whose most heart-piercing note was the maddened scream of horses; and whose lesser elements included shouts of officers and sowars; high-pitched lamentations from the audience of natives; the barking of dogs; and the drumming of a hundred hoofs upon the iron-hard ground.
During the first alarm of the fire, which had broken out perilously close to the quarters occupied by Desmond's squadron, the terrified animals in their frenzied efforts to break away from the ropes, had reduced the Lines to a state of chaos. Those of them, and they were many, who succeeded in wrenching out their pegs, had instinctively headed for the parade-ground beyond the huts; their flight complicated by wandering lengths of rope that trailed behind them, whirled in mid-air, or imprisoned their legs in treacherous coils; while sowars and officers risked life and limb in attempting to free them from their dilemma.
The restless brilliance gave to all things a strange nightmare grotesqueness: and a blinding, stifling shroud of smoke whirled and billowed over all.
As the riders drew up, there was a momentary lull, and before dismounting Desmond flung a ringing shout across the stillness.
"Shahbash,16 men, shahbash! Have no fear! Give more water – water without ceasing!"
He was answered by an
Has come on a horse.
Well done.