The Squaw Man. Faversham Julie Opp
chair and gulped down his gin-and-seltzer. Singleton called to the orderly to bring a whiskey-and-soda. Dunlap leaned forward to Tomlinson as he asked:
"Is that absolutely sure? We all know that Jim has done fine work in his seven years here, but are the powers above really going to commend his last bit of pluck?"
"The powers above," thundered Tomlinson, who loathed being doubted, "not only mean to commend him, but they mean to decorate him with the bronze cross itself. I had it from Watkins."
A long whistle greeted this bit of news. Watkins was not apt to talk without positive information.
Tomlinson was fairly bursting with enthusiasm and importance. For him station life in India meant gossip – good or bad news – so long as it was news. He could work himself into a fever of enthusiasm, get all the glory out of another man's receiving a decoration, and rejoice as though it had been given to himself. He only asked that it should occur in his station. "Tommy," as he was called, had been known to incite blackballing from his club against a man whom he had never seen, because no opposition was made. It meant news, and the passing of the word from one mess to another. When the man was blackballed, Tomlinson, in a high fever of indignation, sought the downed man and became so incensed with sympathy that he threatened to resign from a club that could offer such indignities: by that time he had forgotten that he had caused it. At the moment he was basking in the glory of Jim's coming honors. He took another gin-and-seltzer.
"By George! he was down and done for when he came here from the hospital," Dunlap said. "Never saw such a goner. But he's picked up tremendously during the past month."
Singleton took his whiskey-and-potash from the orderly.
"Strange," he continued, as he sat up, glass in hand. "Wynnegate is so eager to go back: never saw anything like it. Seems as though this illness had knocked soldiering out of him, and he was such a keen one before."
"Mighty fortunate the regiment's time was up and we're ordered home. Talk about Jim's being glad – Gad! it means something to see those kiddies of mine. Wonder if the little beggars will remember me," Dunlap mused.
After three gins-and-seltzers, it was time for Tomlinson to listen to Dunlap about his children. He had heard it all before. He had come from his own mess with the news about Jim. That was all that interested him, so he got up to go.
"Who'll play polo this evening?" he asked.
Singleton promised he would.
"I'll walk back with you," Tomlinson said.
They started to leave, but catching sight of an orderly with a mail-bag, Singleton let Tomlinson go on alone.
"See you at six for polo, Tommy; and I say, send any of our fellows in that you see. Tell them the post is in," he called as he saw Jim's long, loose-jointed stride across the road.
A blazing sun beat down on Jim as he crossed to the mess. The April weather was anticipating India's most wearing heat. But only vaguely he noted the ominous lead-colored sky, with its promise of dust storms. The green of England filled his vision. Since the days in the hospital, his thoughts had recurred incessantly to Diana. A picture in an illustrated paper, picked up in his ward, showed him Miss Diana Marjoribanks as a beautiful young girl – little Diana no longer. There was the same Madonna face, but more exquisitely fair than the child he had left had promised to be. He hardly cared to admit to himself how much the picture had stirred him.
When he entered the mess he found the men in groups, absorbed in their letters. Singleton and Dunlap both called to him.
"There are two for you, Jim."
Letters did not often come his way. When he first left England, several child's letters had come from Diana – these he had answered. He never heard from Henry, and his aunt wrote seldom.
"Dinningfold." He saw the familiar old postmark. It was from Lady Elizabeth, then. Boyishly, he fingered its ample thickness. It was good of her to write such a budget, he thought, as he tore it open. The chatter of voices about him fell unheeding on his ears as the men read their letters.
"God! Breese is dead – dropped down quite suddenly at the club," Singleton remarked as he turned a page of the letter he was reading.
His words were almost drowned by an eager, exulting cry. Half the fellows turned toward Dick Farninsby. He was usually so quiet. To-night his young, fair face was the color of a puppy.
"I've come into the money," he stammered.
Every one knew that Farninsby's uncle had been an old reprobate and that Dick had had a close pinch on his meagre allowance. They also knew that a pretty girl was waiting for him at home. A buzz of congratulations followed. But Tim took no part in them. He was reading his aunt's letter.
"… We are so sorry that you won't be home in time for the wedding. Diana and Henry are to be married. It will be a London wedding. Diana has grown into a beautiful girl and will make a worthy wife for Henry and a charming mistress of Maudsley Towers…"
As he read, the page became a dancing mass of hieroglyphics. The men were beginning to light their cigarettes and pipes as they called bits of news to one another from the English papers. He tried hard to make the strange letters shape themselves and form words. He reread them. "Diana and Henry are to be married." He turned the page. "On the 30th of April," it said. To-day was the 2d of May.
Several of the men started for the polo-fields. Some one called, "What's your news, Wynnegate?" He forgot to answer. He crushed the letter in his hand and left the mess. Mechanically he put the unopened letter from headquarters, with the news of his brilliant reward, in his pocket. Across the polo-fields he could see the heavy atmosphere gathering in great clouds. A dust-storm was nursing its imminent wrath.
It all seemed far away from the Fairies' Corner.
CHAPTER V
Since the day in his mess when Jim read the news of Diana's approaching marriage to Henry, he had been immersed in a strange dreariness of feeling and a curious indifference to the homeward-bound journey. Night after night he stood alone on the forward-deck of the Crocodile bound from Bombay for England, and heard the soldiers singing their camp-songs, their strong, rough voices growing tender as they sang their cockney ballads of home. But they roused no responsive echo in Jim; watching the Southern Cross in the sky, his thoughts often drifted back to the seven years of fighting with their sun-scorched days of fatigue and danger, full of work that drained body and brain. He almost wished that he were returning to them.
One night at Ismailia the pendulum of his emotions swung back from this indifference to the first hours of joy that he had experienced when he received the news that his regiment was ordered back. The ship had anchored there for a few hours to obtain supplies. With Dunlap and Singleton he went ashore to the little hotel with its Continental atmosphere of cheap table-d'hôte dinners and slipshod Italian waiters. It was a shaky wooden building, built around an inside court, with balconies over which clambered in exuberance pale, waxy tea-roses, while the front of the building hung over a cypress-tree garden.
The indifferently good but pretentious meal was served in the tiny court. Dunlap's and Singleton's boisterous mood jarred Jim. He found himself watching the other guests of Monsieur Carlos' hostelry. At adjacent tables parties of tourists were making merry while waiting for the P.&O. steamer to carry them from Cleopatra's land to golden Italy, and from a dance-hall came the fantastic music of the nautch women's instruments. In half an hour the hotel was empty of all the diners save Jim, who lingered until the shabby proprietor, Monsieur Carlos, informed Monsieur le Capitaine that after ten the court was closed, but the verandas were at Monsieur's disposal for his kummel and cigarettes. Jim ascended the creaking staircase to the broad veranda partly hidden from the road by its screen of blooming roses gleaming like stars against the shadowed foliage. Here and there a tight, pink-tipped bud shone like a tiny flame.
The moon had risen and illumined the entire place with an uncanny brilliance, turning the night into an unreal day. Jim sank into a chair. The air was heavy with the perfume of the rose-trees. In the distance he could hear the barbarous clash of the dancing women's cymbals. It was their trade-night with two ships in the harbor. Jim took from his pocket a leather portmonnaie and drew from