“Buzz me over some butter, Flame! No, not like that; stick a fid on the end of a small knife and flick it. That’s it. You silly ass!” Nigel Peterson ducked his head as the pat of butter flew straight into his eye.
“You said ‘flick it.’” Flame Peterson’s small face was all alight with laughter as she pushed her chair a little way back from the table. “Let me do it: you’re making it worse; Nigel—your eyelashes!” Flame had walked round the table and was bending over the back of her brother’s chair. “Give me your fork and I’ll comb them,” she said, in convulsions of laughter.
“Leave me alone, you feeble idiot!” Nigel Peterson was also laughing, only rather reluctantly. After all, he was no longer a boy and there was something undignified about this. Besides, at any moment the old butler might come in—yes, there he was, with the silver tray held high in his hands; the coffee, of course. “Sit down,” he hissed.
“Good-morning, Waterton”—Flame’s voice was quite steady as she walked away from the chair which held her twin. “Isn’t it a heavenly day? It’s our birthday; did you know, Waterton?”
“Of course I knew, Miss Flame.” The old butler set down the tray on the sideboard, leaving the silver coffee-pot and fireproof china jug of hot milk standing, “And I wish to wish you both a very happy return of the day.”
“Only one, Waterton?” Nigel Peterson had surreptitiously scooped all the butter out of his eye with his handkerchief, and was engaged in tying it in a knot before putting it back into his pocket.
“Don’t tease him, Nigel!” Flame spoke sotto voce. “Thank you. Waterton,” she said, and she passed by her chair and went on to the sideboard. “Thank you, Waterton,” she said again, and she held up her flower-like face to be kissed.
“I say, Flame!” Nigel Peterson stood up in his place and made violent signs.
“Why not? I like Waterton far better than anyone else in this house except you. He’s been much nicer to me than anyone else—much nicer than you even, because you’ve had phases of thinking that I was only a girl, and therefore something dreadfully stupid. Kiss me, Waterton; I want you to.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Flame”—the heavy jowl of the old butler was shaking as he looked down into the blue eyes; “Sir Nigel is right, it would not be seemly. But I thank you, Miss Flame, notwithstanding, and I shall remember your kind permission till my dying day”; and placing the coffee-pot and hot milk jug hastily on the table, the old man left the room, groping awkwardly for his handkerchief.
“You are!” Nigel Peterson spoke in a disgusted undertone as he half got out of his chair to reach across the table for the coffee. “Girls of seventeen don’t go cadging about for kisses. Do pull yourself together a bit, and remember that you’re practically grown up; a thing like that makes me feel such a fool.”
Flame Peterson was still standing by the sideboard, but her face was turned towards the row of silver dishes with their little methylated lamps underneath. Her soft breast was heaving. She loved Waterton; he was really the only friend she had in the house. Since her father’s death nobody there had really cared for her, and he had only cared for her in patches; besides, that was a long time ago. Flame knew that her mother did not care for her at all, and that she almost loathed Nigel for the way that daddy had tied up his money. So in her really very lonely life with a series of governesses, Waterton had been her constant confidant and friend. She had sat up on the top of the long silver cupboard with a big green apron over her frock, cleaning her tiny bangles with a long, bristly thing like a toothbrush, with sips of lemonade in between, and Waterton had told her long stories of what he had done when he was a little boy. And when there was a dinner-party she and Nigel had often hung over the banisters, and Waterton had always had two little plates ready by the service lift full of what he thought they would like best—anything that was good for them, that is. And more than once, when she was quite tiny and nurse had slipped down the back-stairs in search of more congenial company, Waterton had found her screaming with wildest terror at the darkness and desolation of the big night nursery, and had lifted her in his kind old arms and hushed her to sleep against a crackly shirt-front with funny poky buttons that made little dents in her face. So no wonder Flame loved the old servant. She turned round very slowly.
“Why do you grudge me loving Waterton?” she asked, and her grey eyes were round and desolate.
“I don’t.” Sir Nigel Peterson had got to the marmalade stage, and he was holding his head a little sideways so that the large, uncertain blob of that golden preparation perched on the top of an absurdly lavish allowance of butter should not elude him. “I don’t. But all I do say is, that when you’re seventeen you put a stopper on all this free kissing. It’s not done, especially to a butler at breakfast-time.”
“Eton has made you a disgusting snob.”
“No, it hasn’t. And you mind out, Flame. If you start off in one of your tempers I shan’t have anything more to do with you these holidays. And there’s only a week left, and you’ll be damned dull without me.”
“Nigel, don’t!” Flame’s sensitive spirit was instantly racked with misery. Every day with her twin was something to be hoarded and cherished.
“All right, then; shut up and don’t argue. I’m half an hour older than you are, so don’t you forget it. And I’ve got a ripping scheme for to-day. We’ll get old jawbones to put us up some lunch and we’ll clear off to the Myne woods. I want to see if I can track down a woodpecker, and I want to photograph it near.” Nigel’s eyes were dropped to his plate. It was bad form to be keen about anything, and although his very soul was bound up in the life of wild things he would rather have died than admit it.
“In a way, it’s a mercy that mother never bothers about what we do.” Restored, Flame sat down again. Nigel was not angry with her any more; that was all that mattered. For to have anyone that she loved angry with her was to this small yellow-haired girl a torment. It sort of blotted everything out, like being suddenly flung into a dark tunnel with something close up against the end where the light ought to come through.
“What’s she doing to-day?” Nigel was turning over the peaches in the blue Canton china bowl.
“Going up to town to be tried on.”
“Oh my aunt! do you think she’s going to be married again?”
“Married again! Mother! Who would marry mother?” Flame’s eyes were wide.
“You silly juggins; heaps of people. The mater’s frightfully good-looking. M’ tutor was fearfully keen at the Eton and Harrow. He wanted me to introduce him, but I wasn’t having any: got rid of him somehow.”
“Mother good-looking!” This was something quite new to Flame. But the pale face was so hard, the red mouth so silent. And the eyes—they never absorbed you and loved you; they only looked at you, or looked at your teeth, with a soft hand under your chin to see better. And shining nails tapping on your eye-teeth, eye-teeth that were a little bit longer than the others, with a tiny frown between the black eyebrows.
“Yes, and you’re the dead spit of her, too.” Nigel had selected his peach and was beginning to peel it.
“The dead what?”
“The dead spit: exactly like. You’ve got that ghastly yellow hair and those black eyebrows and eyelashes, and a mouth that looks as if your tooth had been bleeding.”
“Nigel!”
“Yes; well, you have: I can’t help it.” Nigel dropped his eyes to his plate again.
“Well, if I’ve got all those things, so have you,” retorted Flame, not far from tears this time. “We’re exactly alike, everyone says so.”
“Yes, I know we are, but it’s all right for a man. It’s for a girl that it’s so desperate.”
“Well, if I am like that I can’t help it. And I think it most frightfully beastly of you to tell me like that on my birthday. Besides, you say that mother’s good-looking with all those things—why shouldn’t I be too?” Flame’s eyes were miserable and protesting.
“Mother’s much taller than you are; that makes it all right.”
Nigel Peterson’s mouth was twitching with satisfaction under his table-napkin. Flame was just at the age when she might get past herself if she realized how frightfully pretty she was. One or two of his form had got quite potty about her at the Eton and Harrow. And you couldn’t have that beginning, because you never knew where it would end. Nigel, looking at her appraisingly, supposed that it must be her hair: it was bobbed, and yellow, with a sort of funny tawny streak in it in places. And grey eyes that looked odd with it, and black eyebrows and eyelashes. It gave an appearance almost as if she were made up. And, of course, in school theatricals he himself was always cast for a girl, and he made a desperately good-looking one, as a silly ass in his form who tried to write poetry had once told him.
“Come on; let’s get out,” he said, getting up and scraping his chair back over the polished boards.
Flame followed, a little figure of dejection. Only that morning, feeling that she was beginning to be really grown up, she had spent quite a long time in front of her glass, trying on a felt hat at different angles. And it had suited her; she felt quite sure that it had. She had thrust her face close to the glass, and had smiled and poked out her chin a little, and had secretly thought that she looked very much like Mary Pickford—when she had smiled, that was. And now Nigel, who knew—who really knew, because he went away to stay with other people and went to school—said that she was not good-looking at all. A mouth that looked as if your tooth had been bleeding: it gave you a sick feeling inside even to say it to yourself. And to be small was hopeless; if you were tall, like mother, you could carry off things that otherwise would be thought disfiguring. Flame followed her brother with a very real droop of dejection in her shoulders.
Falaise was one of those heavenly country houses the sight of which from the train or road always annoys the lower middle classes. The sight of smooth velvety turf, greying stone, or perhaps, worse than anything, a peacock strutting arrogantly with disdainfully lifted feet, rouses the ire of that noble army of martyrs. And if there happens to be a flag flying from the topmost pinnacle of that undying monument to age and tradition, “Well, there you are; it ought to be put down by law . . . come along down from the winder, Georgie, you tiresome child, you,” and Georgie, his face covered with chocolate, is dragged from the only place where he has been comfortable for the last hour and dumped down between two parents, who have unfortunately raised their faces from “Film Flickerings “ or “Maisonette Muddlings” at an inauspicious moment.
But Flame and Nigel Peterson strolled out on to the old grey stone terrace quite unaware that there was anything to be deplored in their immediate surroundings. They loved them: quite unconsciously they had become part of them. Nigel would have hated anyone to know, but often when he had gone up to his room at night, he would lean out of his lattice window and draw long breaths of joy that all the beauty of it would one day belong to him. And Flame, too, sunned herself in it—the old terrace wall, with tiny little maidenhair fern growing out of the crevices; the sunk garden through the rose pergola; all blue delphiniums; the little paved courtyard with the sun-dial in the middle of it, fenced round with sweet peas, stacks of them, all colours, and scented beyond imagination. Even the bees and butterflies looked quite drunk with the scent, as Flame often thought, watching them, and breathing in the heavenly fragrance and feeling herself almost stupid with a riot of sensations that she could not analyse.
“Half a sec., while I get my camera.” Nigel walked off to a door at the side of the house, and Flame, waiting for him, heard a voice from above. “Yes, mother”; she looked up, her two small hands a penthouse over her eyes.
“You ought not to be out without a hat, Flame.” Lady Peterson leant down, her elbows on the window-sill, her black dressing-gown with deep muslin collar, and her black boudoir cap with the La France rose, framing her pale face very delightfully.
“Oh, mother, what does it matter?” Flame tried to smile a bright “good-morning,” and failed.
“It matters very much indeed. Get it at once, Flame.” Lady Peterson’s splashed-in mouth did not yield at all. She had that wonderful gift of making everyone do exactly what she wanted without any apparent effort. She had even been able to make her husband die just when she wanted, namely, just when she was beginning to be tired of him. The doctor had looked very bewildered and had eventually pronounced a verdict of heart failure. But a verdict of spirit failure would have been nearer the mark. Sir Claude Peterson had idolized his wife, and had just begun to find out that she only tolerated his love and adored somebody else. It had been too much for him, and as he was a man who never did anything by halves, he just died, very quietly and unobtrusively, but nevertheless very decidedly. So now Lady Peterson was free, although the man that she loved was not; but that would come, thought Lady Peterson, staring out from the middle of the big, beautiful bed into the shadowed corner of the still more beautiful bedroom at Falaises. Only Flame must be got rid of first: men who are unfaithful to their wives without much excuse for their infidelity are apt to let their attention wander when they have got what they want. And Lady Peterson was not going to risk a little unspoiled replica of herself wandering about the house, and sitting misty-eyed at the old refectory table opposite the elderly man that she adored. So Flame’s complexion and her teeth and her general deportment were things of great importance, and Flame loathed the mention of them, and often cursed the day when she had been born a girl.
“All right.” Flame turned and went in at the same door through which Nigel had disappeared a few minutes earlier.
“Hallo! why can’t you stay where I leave you?” Nigel spoke irritably; like all men, he liked his womenfolk to be always at hand. And Flame was awful in that way; she never could stay in one place for more than a second at a time.
Flame was groping in a cupboard. “It’s mother; she says I must wear a hat, and I can’t bother to go upstairs. Besides, I know that ghastly nuisance of a Marie is hanging about somewhere dying to rub some horrible stuff into my hair. The very smell of it makes me feel sick.”
“What’s the matter?—have you developed mange?” Nigel was poking the ferrule of a stick under the brim of a hat perched on a high shelf. “Here you are; have this old panama of mine.”
“Don’t be filthy; of course I haven’t. Thanks . . . pooh, look at the dust on the band. Here, Robert brush it, will you?” Flame gave a little twist of her soft forefinger, and the hat flew across the wide hall and fell in front of the younger footman, who was coming out of the dining-room carrying a collection of silver on a tray. “No; it’s because my hair is short; mother has some idea that I don’t brush it, or something.”
“I think you’re getting a bit free with the staff, Flame.” Nigel was watching the clean-shaven face of the footman, who was trying not to laugh as he put the loaded tray down on a gate-legged table.
“So would you be if you hadn’t anyone to talk to except old Minchings. And I know she tells mother everything I say. Besides, the staff are heavenly to me; Robert is always absolutely respectful. But his love affair has just come right, and he is most frightfully braced because I told him it would if he didn’t take too much notice of her. So you see he adores me now, because my advice came right.”
“And you’re getting fearfully slangy, too.” Nigel took the hat from the footman with a quiet nod. He did not pursue Flame’s disclosure about Robert; that would come later. He knew his sister’s tendency to dissolve into tears if she was too much criticized, and he did not want to begin the day like that.
But it was too late. “Nigel!” Flame’s face was broken up and quivering.
“Now then, get a pull on yourself,” Nigel spoke briskly. “I don’t mean to be unkind, old girl,” he said affectionately, as he stood aside for his sister to pass out on to the terrace. “But you know someone must tell you these things. Come on, we shall have to leg it if we’re to have any decent time in the Myne woods.”
“Flame!” This time it was Nigel who said “damn,” and he said it aloud.
“Yes, mother.” Flame dragged the brim of the panama low over her eyes as she stared upwards.
“Lord Lovegrove is coming to lunch; be back in time to change and do your hair properly. Good-morning, Nigel.”
“Good-morning, mother.” Nigel Peterson took off his hat and held it in his hand as he stared upwards. Why couldn’t his mother dress and come down to breakfast like an ordinary human being? he was thinking. But Nigel Peterson was one of a long line of aristocrats, and his manners were as irreproachable as his lineage. “Good-morning, mother; isn’t it a topping day?” he said.
“Yes, beautiful;” but Lady Peterson spoke shortly, and curving her shoulders a little, she drew back into the luxurious bedroom again. There was something about her son that roused all her antagonism. When he was of age she would have to clear out of this heavenly place. And she loathed the idea of it. Besides, she would really not be at all well off then. However, she had another four years, and as a matter of fact Flame’s future was the more important for the moment, and she was seventeen to-day. Why, she herself had had her twins when she was nineteen!
“What possesses the mater to ask that greasy old sandbag to lunch?” said Nigel, as, having got well out of sight of the house, he put a rather shamefaced arm round his sister’s waist. “I thought you said she was going up to town to be tried on?”
“So I thought she was. In fact, I expect she is, but it must be after lunch she is going and not before. Oh, Nigel, I do love it when you put your arm round me; it sort of warms me up and makes me feel that someone likes me.” Flame caught hold of the slim young hand and squeezed it.
“Mind out!” but Nigel Peterson was pleased all the same. His boy’s heart rather yearned over his twin—she was so pretty and sort of confiding, and there was no doubt she had a rotten time at home. “But when the mater gets the order of the boot from me, I’ll make it up to her,” he brooded silently, reluctantly squeezing the little soft hand, and keeping a sharp look-out for possible observers as he did so.
“All right.” Flame took her hand away, but she smiled as she did so. Affection was meat and drink to her. Nigel was a little bit of her; they often said the same things at the same moment. Fancy what it would be to belong to somebody like that! Somebody not a brother, because a brother gave you a different sort of feeling, but somebody you could look up to and admire. Somebody that you could quail in front of and be frightened of. Somebody who would perhaps beat you; and at that bewilderingly entrancing thought a funny sensation, as if she was being rubbed up the wrong way, ran all over Flame and alarmed her.
“I say, do you know how people have babies?” she exclaimed suddenly, stopping dead in the middle of the lush field.
“Rather.”
“Tell me, then,” said Flame, wondering why her heart was beating so fast.
“Not I! Ask old Mincemeat,” responded Nigel, feeling rather uncomfortable, but determined not to show it. Besides, Flame must know that surely. Nigel did not realize how little opportunity a girl who does not go to school has of knowing anything of the kind.
“No, you tell me; Mincemeat is such an old donkey she would probably tell me all wrong.”
“Well—oh, my gaudy aunt!” Nigel got very red and blew breathily up to the sky. “You do ask the most hopeless questions, Flame,” he said. “What on earth do you want to know now for? Well,” if you will have it—you sit on an egg,” he said, and he burst out laughing.
“You don’t.” Flame’s eyes were indignant. “All right; if you are going to say imbecile things like that,” she said, “I shall ask Waterton.”
“No, you can’t,” Nigel spoke quickly.
“All right, then, you tell me.”
“Well,” Nigel, took a long breath, “you ought to know. That horrible cat of yours, it has kittens about every other day; can’t you gather anything from that?”
“What, do we have them like that! What a wretched arrangement!” Flame’s eyes, now quite calm again, were deeply ruminative. “God ought to have thought of something better,” she said after a pause. “But somehow I thought it was that. Thank you, Nigel. Your ears are all red,” she said, chuckling.
“So would yours be if you had a sister like you,” said Nigel, deeply ruffled. Flame was really the outside edge. But, thank Heaven, she appeared to have switched off the subject now. And here were the woods, dark and deeply green against the blue sky. “Come on and don’t make a row. I saw a woodpecker skip round behind that old trunk,” he said, and his eyes were all alight with joy. “Crawl, you fathead!” and Nigel dropped on his knees in the long grass.
Lunch was over—very nice and very beautifully served, as it always was—and the twins were stretched on two flowery chesterfield sofas in the library. It was three o’clock and the long limousine car had just slid away from the front door, carrying in its extremely comfortable embrace their mother and her guest.
“What an old goggler he is!” Nigel had a cigarette between his lips. Premature smoking is not encouraged at Eton, and he was not very accustomed to it. So he spoke mumblingly; it was difficult to talk and smoke at the same time.
“Yes, isn’t he awful?” Flame had been refused a cigarette and so was rather subdued. Also, she had another reason for being subdued that she was anxious to keep from her brother. But twins are very near in spirit, and Nigel had an odd subconscious glimmering of what was going on under the yellow fringe.
“What were you and the old buffer doing for so long in the sunk garden?” he asked, taking out his cigarette and looking at the glowing end of it.
“Were we long?” Flame had a wild impulse to put off as long as possible the telling of her twin what had happened in the sunk garden. Somehow, she knew he would be angry, angry and disgusted, and she hated the thought of his being that.
“About half an hour.”
“Oh, was it as long as that?”
“Quite. What were you doing all the time?” Nigel Peterson stared across the glowing Persian rugs, that lay, with all the mystery of the East in their depths, upon the polished boards.
“Don’t make a fuss if I say.”
“Try not to.” But Sir Nigel’s eyes had suddenly become alert.
“Oh, the old donkey was trying to kiss me.” Flame’s little pointed face had suddenly become furtive and ashamed. She dared not look at her brother.
“Was he, though? How very disgusting!” Nigel Peterson withdrew his eyes from his sister’s face and levelled them on an old oil-painting that hung over the open fireplace. He had suspected as much: there had been something in his mother’s expression when they got up from lunch that had made him suspicious. “Take Lord Lovegrove down to the sunk garden to see the delphiniums, darling,” she had said, and Lady Peterson never said ‘darling’ to her children unless there was some reason for it. Nigel felt a fierce stirring of anger within him. That doddering old fool and his pretty little sister. Disgusting! But it was quite likely to be her game—the old beast had pots of money, and their estates adjoined. “I hope you smacked his ugly face for him,” he said virulently.
“No, I didn’t. How could I? He made me afraid,” said Flame miserably. “Besides, he started off by saying things. How that mother thought that it would be so nice if I could get to like him—to sort of feel that I could tell him anything and consult him about things. And then he said something about how my hair shone in the sunlight—at least, I think he did; anyhow, it was something frightfully futile. And then he put out his arm, and somehow his face seemed to gleam, and I felt fearfully sick and tried to push it away. But he sort of loomed over me, don’t you know—you could almost see the kiss frothing on his mouth; so I put my head up suddenly and the back of it hit his chin. He was fearfully sick; a hit like that hurts like anything.”
“Good for you! Hope the old beast takes the hint.” Nigel was laughing joyfully.
But Flame’s eyes were brooding and gloomy. “If mother once gets the idea into her head that it would be nice for me to marry him, I’m done,” she said. “And I rather think that that’s what it is. He had a sort of gloaty look in his eyes, don’t you know, as if he was going over my points, like you do when you buy an animal. And you know what mother is if she once makes up her mind about anything. You won’t be here; old Mincemeat adores her because she never interferes; and there I shall be—I shall probably have to give in because there won’t be anyone here to help me not to.”
Nigel Peterson did not reply for a moment or two. He was busily engaged in pinching up the stray bits of tobacco left sticking to his lower lip. He flicked a few on to the floor and then spoke.
“Look here, Flame,” he said, and Flame raised her yellow head with a start; Nigel’s voice wasn’t a bit like it generally was. “Look here, Flame; don’t be futile over this. Being married isn’t a bit the sort of thing to joke about. It’s a horrible thing that lasts for ever unless somebody dies, which they never do. Just get a pull on yourself, and remember you’re grown up. No one can make you marry that old beast unless you give in like a silly idiot.”
“Mother could.” Flame’s voice was melancholy.
“No, she couldn’t.”
“I tell you she could,” Flame spoke vehemently. “Nigel, being at Eton has made you forget what mother is really like, or perhaps she’s got more like it, because she is older—I don’t know. . . . She’s got that sort of way that makes you: it always reminds me of that awful thing that they used to have in the Inquisition, don’t you know—a room that got smaller and smaller until it squashed you up to nothing. You couldn’t see it actually closing in on you, because it came so gradually, but it came all the same. Mother is like that; she gets a sort of forcing feeling in her head, and before you know where you are, you’ve done the thing.”
“Rats!” But in spite of the scoffing rejoinder, Sir Nigel had got off the flowery sofa and was walking up and down the polished boards, slipping each foot in turn along in front of him. Flame was right, and he knew she was. His mother had that compelling way with her. He had felt it himself about little things like having friends to stay, ghastly things like not being allowed to stay up to dinner—things that shamed you for ever in the sight of everyone. He could remember quite plainly how once he had cried with anguish and terror when he found out that he and Travers were not to be allowed to come down to dinner.
“Mother, you simply must let us: Travers always does it at his own home, and he’ll tell all the other fellows; besides, he’s got a dress-suit that he’s awfully bucked about. Mother . . .” and the boy of fourteen had sobbed behind his wretched little brown hands.
But not an atom of relenting on the beautiful face, not a spark of sympathy in the hard eyes. Just the same cruel disregard of everyone else’s feelings that had finally killed this boy’s father. And Nigel Peterson had rushed out into the garden and had prayed aloud as he rushed. “God, kill her!” he had prayed. And then, white and struggling for self-control, he had returned to the house. Could he kill himself, he wondered, before he had to break to Travers that they were to come down to dessert like babies? And then he had met Waterton—Waterton, who had been in the back drawing-room putting out some silver, and who had heard it all, and whose heart was sore for the little boy.
“Don’t you worry, sir,” he had said. “You just tell Master Henry that you have your dinner sent upstairs because you like it better so.”
“But how will you get it there?” Nigel’s lips were trembling uncontrollably.
“Never you mind about that, sir. There it will be, in the blue room, on the tick of eight.”
And there it was, nurse and Robert scrambling up and down the back-stairs like children with the plates and finger-bowls. And at the very end, Waterton himself, breathing a little heavily certainly, because he was not as young as he was, and he had had to be quick, but there was the coffee, and the cigarettes and the silver lighter all bluey with its flickering flame.
And this happened every night of Master Henry Traver’s rather prolonged stay, and at the end of the time this very rich and snobbish young man had sauntered into the butler’s pantry with two golden sovereigns in his rather grubby hand. “Never been better done in my life,” he said. “Many thanks. Waterton. Oh, I forgot you,” and a further golden coin found its resting-place in Robert’s ready palm.
And this had saved Nigel, and he knew it, and when the big car had slid out of the wide stone gate, he had rushed down the long corridor and found Waterton looking over his gold spectacles into the courtyard, where one of the grooms was leading a horse up and down. “Waterton, I can’t thank you,” he had gasped, and to his dying shame a large tear had welled up and run down his heated face.
“Master Nigel, I loved your dear father, and you are very like him,” said Waterton, and his own eyes had been full of tears.
So Nigel Peterson knew that Flame was probably right when she said that their mother had a way of making people do things even if they were determined not to. And his young face was overclouded as he kicked at a glowing prayer-rug that lay in his way.
“Don’t be a silly juggins,” he said impatiently; “I can’t go back to school if you’re going to be futile like this.”
“What am I to do, then?” said Flame, very near to tears.
“Keep your end up: smack the old pig’s face if he comes too near you, and if things get really bad, send me a wire.”
“Will you come if I send you a wire?” breathed Flame.
“Yes, I will. But if I find out that you’ve sent me a wire for any potty reason I’ll flay you alive,” said Nigel Peterson firmly.
“How bad must they be, then, before I send you a wire?” inquired Flame, her lower lip quivering.
“As bad as this: that the old goggler has asked you to marry him, that you have said you won’t, and that mother has said that you are to,” replied her brother.
“All right,” said Flame, and her small face was all aglow with love and admiration as she followed the slim striding figure in its resolute pacing up and down the floor.
But now it was Flame’s turn to pace up and down her room. Lunch was just over—lunch for four people: her mother, Colonel Forsythe, Lord Lovegrove, and herself. She had made the excuse that she wanted to find some snapshots of Eton to show Lord Lovegrove: she had found them at once, but she had not yet started to go downstairs again. Was it time to send a telegram to Nigel, or was it not? That was the question that was racking her brain to the exclusion of everything else. Lord Lovegrove had not yet proposed in so many words, but he might at any moment. He bad begun sort of fumbling at her—fumbling and goggling more than ever; and Flame, with the sure intuition of her sex, knew that these must be the preliminaries to a declaration. Also, her mother was encouraging him; Flame knew that too. For Lady Peterson had made a special journey to the big white bedroom with the huge bay windows to tell Flame exactly what to wear for lunch that day.
“I told Marie to put out my striped silk frock,” said Flame, and she frowned.
“Your striped silk is too hot for to-day.” Lady Peterson had walked over the soft pink carpet to the white wardrobe, and had run her well-manicured hand along the row of padded dress-hangers, Marie watching admiringly. “Quelle beauté de diable!” as the maid had raved to Waterton later.
“I don’t know about the botay, but I do know about the deearble,” replied Waterton, who loathed Lord Lovegrove, and who was deeply concerned to see him such a constant visitor at Falaise.
“No, this will be the best.” Lady Peterson had paused with her fingers on a white hanger. “Marie, unhook it, will you? Yes, wear this. Flame; it’s just the thing for a day like this.”
“Mother, it’s so frightfully thin!” Flame surveyed the georgette wisp of a frock with a shiver of apprehension in her soul. To wear that with those bulgy eyes wandering over her! Why, the very thought of it made her feel sick.
But Lady Peterson had made up her mind, and like an armoured tank her mind had begun to mow down anything that stood in its way. “No, wear that, dear,” she said, and she added a few swift words in French to the maid, who stood gently shaking out the filmy streak.
So Flame had on the softly revealing little frock, and even Gerald Forsythe was disgusted to see the way in which the self-indulgent old face gloated over the childish curves. “You’re selling that child, Phil,” he said a few minutes later, as Flame crossed the lawn with lagging feet. She had come down from her room: what was the good of trying to stay in it?—her mother would only send for her. . . .
“No, I’m not.” Lady Peterson spoke swiftly and hotly. If Gerald began to suspect her, she was lost. Gerald, the only man who had stirred her pulses an iota—Gerald, the man who made her feel like a whipped child, the man who with lifted finger could make her do anything. . . .
“Now then . . .” Colonel Forsythe spoke warningly, and turned from the window.
“Gerald!” The beautiful face was broken up and quivering.
“Very well, then; behave!” Colonel Forsythe turned his gaze to the lawn again. Lord Lovegrove had got up from the low chair and was walking to meet the lagging figure. “I say you are selling the child,” he repeated; “ you can see the old beast means to have her, and she obviously loathes the sight of him.”
“Gerald!”
“Don’t say it again, it bores me!” Colonel Forsythe turned finally from the window and held out a careless hand. “Come over here, and tell me what you have been doing with your totally unscrupulous self since I saw you last.”
“I won’t come!” Lady Peterson was holding her white hands clenched against her neck and was staring over them.
“Very well; then stay where you are.” Colonel Forsythe crossed one gaitered leg over the other, and dropped his amused and rather cruel eyes on to the cigarette that he was tapping against the arm of the chair.
“Gerald, I want to come.” Lady Peterson’s voice came haltingly, like a child’s.
“Very well, then, come, but don’t make such a song about it.” But although Colonel Forsythe spoke brutally, his eyes were full of suppressed passion. She was heavenly beautiful, this woman of his. But she was of the type that must be kept to heel, otherwise the relationship meant slavery. And at fifty you cannot begin to be a slave. Fifty! the old age of youth, and the youth of old age, as some Johnny had it. He held out his hand again. “Little fool,” he said caressingly, as with a little rush she fell on her knees beside the big chair.
Flame, in the big thatched summer-house, was sitting on the scarlet-cushioned seat, her knees tightly pressed together. “But I don’t like you in that way,” she was saying feverishly.
“What way, darling?” Lord Lovegrove was fifty-eight, and he looked it.
“Why, the sort of way that one ought to like a husband.”
“And what is that?” inquired Lord Lovegrove, his sensual mouth all aquiver.
“Why, something like I feel for Nigel, only not quite, because he is my brother,” said Flame, with a sort of flushed hurriedness. “A sort of looking-up feeling, combined with a sort of cuddly feeling. I don’t mean that I want to cuddle Nigel, because I don’t; the very thought of it makes me feel sick,” put in Flame abruptly. “But it’s more that sort of feeling that I mean. If you belong to a man, you want to adore him; you want to feel that if he kicked you, you would roll over and lick his hand like a dog does.”
“Ah . . .” Lord Lovegrove got up and walked to the door of the summer-house. From the sunk garden below a flood of heavenly scent blew up. Sweet peas: Lord Lovegrove could not see them properly because he was so dreadfully short-sighted, but he knew that they were sweet peas. A riot of scent, bringing back youth, sensation, what not. Lord Lovegrove swung round suddenly. “All those feelings would come,” he said huskily.
“Are you sure?” queried Flame doubtfully. But although she spoke doubtfully, her spirits rose a little. What a solution of the whole affair if she could marry this man without minding too much! Freedom from the tyranny of her mother: a chance to travel about—Lord Lovegrove was always going off somewhere; a chance to have Nigel to stay with his friends, and to give them a heavenly time—Flame had heard about the Henry Travers incident; a chance to live, in fact. Flame raised her head.
And at the sight of that little face, set like an anemone on a slim stalk, Lord Lovegrove made the mistake of his life and lost his self-control.
“Let me go . . .!” Flame was fighting like a fly that feels the tentacles of a spider. “Let me go, I tell you; I loathe your holding me! Let me go! Oh, you pig, you pig! stop kissing me . . .” Flame was beating at the padded shoulders with clenched fists. But Lord Lovegrove was still a good deal stronger than Flame, and he did not let her go until the little scarlet mouth was bruised and flaming. And then he staggered back against the varnished walls of the summer-house, his breath coming very heavily.
Flame was weeping into her clenched fists. “Pig, pig!” she wept. “Pig, I would rather be dead than marry you. Oh, how I wish my brother was here! He would help me to kill you. How dare you touch me with your horrible mouth? You’ve made me unclean now and for ever,” and with one more wild lurch with a clenched fist Flame dashed out of the summerhouse, and fled, wailing under her breath, across the velvety lawn that she had crossed so slowly a few minutes before.
Two people saw the stormy return: Colonel Forsythe for one, lounging in the bay-window of the library, an excellent cigar between his equally excellent teeth; and Waterton for the other, stretched at full length in a padded wicker chair in the window of the stillroom. And Waterton’s exclamation was the more expressive:
“I thought as much!” He half got up, and then sat down again.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Bullock, the housekeeper, raised her eyes from her book, leaving a well pricked finger in between the pages as she did so.
“Why, it’s that Lovegrove. After our Miss Flame, or my name’s not Waterton.” Waterton and Mrs. Bullock were staunch friends, and had many sad consultations over the welfare of the children that they both adored.
“She’d never go as far as that!” Mrs. Bullock forgot that she was keeping a place with her finger, and let both hands fall on to the arms of her chair.
“Wouldn’t she? She’d do anything to keep the place clear for her Gerald.” Waterton got up and began to pace about the room. “Hear that side door?” he continued, one side of his pale face raised a little. “Don’t tell me that our Miss Flame’d charge into the house like that for nothing; there’s dirty work going on. Oh, my God! wouldn’t I like to twist her neck for her! . . .” and Waterton sat down again.
“But the man’s three times her age!” Mrs. Bullock’s round face was incredulous. She did not like Lady Peterson any more than Waterton did, but she credited her with some semblance of decent feeling. But Waterton waited at meals, and took in coffee, and had once or twice been in the back drawing-room when Lady Peterson had not known he was there, so decent feelings and the lady of the house were not coupled together in his mind.
“Three times her age! She’d marry her to a man eight times her age if it suited her purpose,” returned Waterton viciously, his old heart aching for the child who was dashing along the corridor just above their heads. He could hear her . . . there, she had shut the glass door at the end of the passage . . . now she would be flying up the shallow stairs . . . and there, there was the bang of the heavy oak door of the beautiful bedroom. And what could he do? Nothing! Only the butler! Waterton sat down again with something very much like a groan.
Gerald Forsythe roused himself sufficiently to get up, cross the room, and open the door just a crack to see what Flame looked like when she passed through the wide hall. And he whistled through his lower teeth as he saw the streaming eyes and the scarlet patches round the little red mouth. Lovegrove was a beast, and Phillida was going too far in this affair. He shut the door cautiously and went back to his seat in the window. After all, as he meditated, rolling his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, what was her game? Flame was a beautiful little creature and would be certain to marry without any difficulty. Why try to hustle her off the stocks like this? And then a probable solution of the mystery dawned on him, and he threw back his bull-dog head and grinned with his two rows of bull-dog teeth. She was jealous, that woman of his! Jealous of him and that baby. Pah! Colonel Forsythe got up and took a couple of turns up and down the room. So she thought he had got to the goggly age, did she—the age when a man flounders pathetically after a child young enough to be his own grand-daughter? Well, he would make her suffer for such a thought. In fact, he was not sure if it was not enough to stop him marrying her if he was ever able to do so. . . . And Colonel Forsythe sat down again, took the cigar out of his mouth, and stared angrily at the grey and glowing end of it.
Meanwhile, Flame, at her big crystal wash-hand basin, was swishing water over her face with frantic squeezings of the sponge. Pig! fiend! She made little gasping, sobbing interjections into the fragrant honeycomb. She would wire to Nigel . . . she would go to Nigel! But how could she ever face Nigel after this?—although, of course, she need not let him know the true horror of the whole thing. But he would find out—something would show it in her face—that that horrible mouth had been squashed against hers. Flame rushed, all dripping, to the glass and stared wildly into it. Yes, she didn’t look the same; there were red marks all round her lips, and one place was turning bluey. Supposing it never got right again! Or supposing . . . And then at that awful unspeakable thought Flame staggered back from the glass and dropped white and trembling into a chair. Supposing that she had a baby! How else? You loved a man and he kissed you. You didn’t kiss a man unless you were going to marry him, and when you did marry a man you almost always had a baby. “Lord, help me!” Flame began to rush up and down the room, mad with fear, as many a girl has been mad with fear before her at that same thought. Who could she ask? No one! Anyone would shrink from her in disgust and horror at what had just taken place. “I can’t live . . . I can’t live!” Flame moaned, and clenching her hands she rushed to her bed and flung herself face downwards on it. Why hadn’t she been happier before, before this awful horror overtook her? She pressed her face wildly down into the eiderdown and bit at it. Because now, of course, she would have to marry Lord Lovegrove; you couldn’t produce a baby and have no one for its father. Like the pretty daughter of the lodge-keeper, who had had the most heavenly baby all by herself; but it didn’t answer, because everyone got stiff and frowning when you talked about it, and when the car passed the lodge she never opened the gate if she was holding it, but rushed in and put the baby away first. Flame sat up again, her small face blurred and drawn. Her life was settled for good, then; she would have to marry Lord Lovegrove, with bulging eyes and mouth that sort of spread all over his face. Not a mouth that was a nice shape and that began and ended definitely, but one that ran into other things and had flaps at the corners of it. Flame sank slowly back on to her face and buried her wet forehead in the down pillow, with its beautiful monogrammed pillow-case.
“Well, what is all this about?” Flame, starting up at the sound of a closing door, met her mother’s hard eyes, as Lady Peterson came slowly over the floor towards the bed.
“I didn’t feel frightfully well, so I came to lie down,” said Flame, groping in her sleeve for her handkerchief.
“Really! it has come on very suddenly.” Lady Peterson reached out for a low wicker chair and began to drag it nearer to the bed. “Don’t lie to me, Flame, she said, as she dropped her long length on to the gay cretonne; “I know exactly what has happened. Lord Lovegrove has proposed to you and you are upset—isn’t that it?”
“Mother!” Flame cast herself down again into the pillows and began to sob despairingly. But what was the good . . . what sympathy would she get here? Other girls had mothers that they could turn to. “Mother, I have an awful terror that because someone kissed me desperately hard I might have a baby . . . do tell me that I couldn’t.” How easy it would be to say to some mothers. But to hers? Impossible! Besides, there was always the awful fear that she would hear her own terror confirmed. “Yes, of course you could; why did you allow him to do it?” Flame could see Lady Peterson looming cold and unrelenting over her as she pronounced this awful verdict. No, better not to know: better just to marry this awful man, and get away from home and chance about the baby, and have Nigel and his friends to stay and make the best of it. . . .
“Stop crying, Flame; you will make a perfect object of yourself,” Lady Peterson’s voice came cold as ice over the eiderdown.
“Mother, if only you . . .” Flame’s disfigured face reappeared, pathetic in its despair.
“If only I what? Don’t be ridiculous and hysterical, Flame. Tell me quietly what has happened.” There was a little click as the gold cigarette-case was snapped to again, and a little rustle as Lady Peterson got up to get the matches. And both these little familiar sounds recalled Flame to herself.
“If only you would wait just a minute till I have washed my face I will tell you everything that has happened,” returned Flame evenly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed preparatory to getting off it. For her self-control had come back with a rush. Humiliate herself before this mother of ice and snow! Never! And she sponged and powdered, and finally ran the silver-backed comb through her hair with a gentle self-possession that gave very little indication of the storm that had just passed.
“Well?” But there was eagerness beneath the cold interrogative.
“Well . . . may I have a cigarette, mother?” Flame leant across the small space that separated the two chairs. “Well, Lord Lovegrove did ask me to marry him,” she said, and in spite of her desperate efforts to control her voice it did tremble a little. “But I did not give him any answer. In fact, I didn’t wait to give him any answer; I dashed straight away up here and lay down on the bed.”
“And why did you do that?”
“Because I was excited,” lied Flame steadfastly.
“It was unwise,” said Lady Peterson slowly. “Lord Lovegrove is a very excellent match and he may be offended. And there is always the chance that he may not renew his offer.”
“I think he will, if I go anywhere near him,” said Flame with horrible intuition.
“Well, then, the best thing that you can do is to go back into the garden at once and find him,” said Lady Peterson, getting up instantly.
“What, now?” cried out Flame, off her guard.
“Yes, of course now.” Lady Peterson’s down-bent eyes were like frozen wells. “Please don’t tell me, Flame, that you are contemplating anything so wildly foolish as a refusal.”
“Mother, I don’t think I really love him.” This, in spite of Flame’s desperate efforts not to say it, burst from her.
Lady Peterson smiled a little, and the smile was a very cruel one. “Love!” she said; we are not talking about love, Flame; that comes afterwards. We are now discussing marriage, and a very excellent one, too.”
“But if you marry a person it is for ever,” stuttered Flame, holding two trembling hands cupped over a blueish flicker.
“Not of necessity,” said Lady Peterson, staring out of the window and remembering her dead husband.
“It generally is,” said Flame despairingly.
Lady Peterson withdrew her eyes from the window and levelled them on the child in front of her. “Why is your mouth all smudged and turning blue in one place?” she asked inconsequently.
“Mother, he kissed me so hard,” said Flame, all her being suddenly one great despairing outcry. Now she would hear it, her death sentence. “Hanged by the neck until you are dead”; almost as bad as that, only in a different way. She took the cigarette out of her trembling mouth and stared at the glowing end of it with eyes terror-stricken and glazing with tears.
“Then of course you must marry him,” said Lady Peterson decidedly, and she half got up out of the flowered chair.
“Why must I?” asked Flame, now reckless with despair. After all, why not hear it? And after all, a baby would compensate a bit. Fat legs, and a soft bald head, like the baby at the lodge.
“Because no decent girl allows a man to kiss her as Lord Lovegrove has evidently kissed you without marrying him,” said Lady Peterson decidedly, and she quite got up this time, and started to walk to the door. And Flame followed her across the carpet, a tragic little figure with outstretched hands, pleading for a little sympathy from this mother of stone. “After all, it isn’t as if I was so old,” she wept inwardly.
“Mother, do wait a minute; I want to ask you something else,” she cried.
But Lady Peterson had a sort of dim, shadowy idea of what Flame was going to say, and with deliberate brutality she struck back the question on to the trembling lips. After all, as she thought, one well-manicured hand on the glass door-knob, already her lover had begun to criticize her, and that on account of this child of hers. She turned round. “Flame,” she said, “don’t ask me any questions the answer to which you will be very sorry to hear. I have said enough. Go out into the garden again, and tell Lord Lovegrove that you will be proud and glad to be his wife,” and Lady Peterson opened the door and shut it behind her.
Flame stood stock-still in the middle of the floor. Then it was true what she had thought. What else could her mother mean by saying ‘the answer to which you will be very sorry to hear’? Dreadful enveloping, spreading kisses like she had had in the garden brought a baby in some mysterious way. Flame shrank and froze as, as I have already said, many a girl has shrunk and frozen before her. She stood, head hanging, hands clenched by her sides, until the quiet closing of a door farther along the corridor showed that her mother was back in her own bedroom, and then with a small hand that slipped and stuck she twisted the big glass knob of her own door.
Lord Lovegrove summoned some sort of chivalry and kindness to his aid when Flame, with hanging head, re-entered the summer-house. He had sat there ever since she had burst away from him, thinking with a sort of heavy disgust of the smash up of the future that he had pictured so differently.
“I’ve come back,” said Flame, sitting down on one of the scarlet seats.
“I see you have,” said Lord Lovegrove, his jaded spirits rising with a leap, “And I am very glad you have, because I wanted to tell you that I am sorry for the way I behaved before you left me.”
“Why didn’t you think of it before?” said Flame heavily.
“I was carried away by my feelings and did not know what I was doing,” said Lord Lovegrove, not altogether pleased at being spoken to like this.
“Does that mean that you won’t do anything like that again?” asked Flame.
“Not unless you give me permission,” said Lord Lovegrove humbly.
“Oh, I see; that does make it all rather better, then,” said Flame, and her listless eyes brightened a little. After all, if the fear of being horribly dashed at and engulfed was removed, the whole thing did take on rather a different aspect. Life with this old man would have its advantages: she would be away from her mother; she would be free from the stuffy supervision of her elderly governess; and, best of all, she would be able to have Nigel and his friends to stay and give them a heavenly time.
“About how much of that sort of thing do you think there would be if I were to decide to be your wife?” she said.
Lord Lovegrove did not answer for a moment or two. For, for about the first time in his life, he was ashamed. Innocence, sweet and unspoilt, staring up at him with inquiring eyes and ruffly head a little on one side, like a soft bird wondering whether to hop into the cage with the seed spread out on the sandy floor. Should he take advantage of it or not? that was the question that was agitating Lord Lovegrove’s mind to the exclusion of everything else. But when he looked down into Flame’s round grey eyes, round and circled with the fringe of black lashes like reeds round a clear pool, the momentary impulse of nobility died, and he spoke with a sort of swift fierceness in his voice.
“There should be none of that sort of thing, as you express it, unless you wished it,” he said, and his glance did not even waver as he uttered the lie.
“Oh, well, that does make it rather different, then,” said Flame, and she smoothed her soft frock a little closer over her small knees and clasped her arms round them. Should she ask him about the baby now, she wondered, or should she wait? He might be shocked, thinking that it should not have been mentioned . . . or, on the other hand, he might laugh at her and make her feel uncomfortable. And in any event the baby was practically on its way now; her mother had more or less made that quite clear to her, so the best thing to do was to be married at once. And as Flame came to this decision a tremendous peace settled down on her: she would get away from her mother, and she would be able to have Nigel and his friends to stay. Would she, though? She must first have that quite clear. She put the question frankly.
“You can have your brother to live with us, if it would give you any satisfaction,” said Lord Lovegrove, who was almost beside himself with joy and triumph at this sudden capitulation.
“Oh, thank you very much, but I don’t know that he would care for that,” said Flame, with her spirits suddenly down at zero again. For mentioning Nigel had reminded her of his strictures on this man. “A greasy old sandbag”—what an awful thing to call the man she was going to marry! Because he was rather like one, sort of sausagy, with a head squeezing out of his collar like the tied-up end of a sack. “Oh, Nigel, I wish you were here!” Flame’s yellow head sank on to her breast with a little sob.
“What is the matter, darling?” Lord Lovegrove got up and sat down very quietly again by Flame’s side. He was mortally afraid of frightening her off again, and so was making great efforts to subdue his natural brutality. Once his . . . and then Lord Lovegrove’s eyes, that looked like pools of blueish oil floating in water, flared up abruptly and went out.
“Oh, I don’t know; I suddenly feel so awfully wretched,” sobbed Flame, groping for her handkerchief and choking. “It’s all so wretched and sort of hopeless. Here I am, engaged now, and I don’t feel any of those sort of feelings that you are supposed to get in books when you are engaged. I only get the sort of feeling that I wish I were dead—that I wish I could crawl away under something and die, so that no one could ever find me and move the thing away.”
“My darling!” Lord Lovegrove had another stab of conscience, but he had subdued it almost before he realized it was there. He wanted this little soft thing, and he was going to have her, but until he had got her he had got to be very careful. So he only leant forward and did not even touch the little curled fingers that lay so near to his own. “My darling,” he said, and as he spoke he was fumbling in his waistcoat pocket—“my darling, you are tired and overwrought, and you must run away and have a little rest. But first let me give you this,” and then Lord Lovegrove paused, waiting for Flame to raise her head.
“Not a kiss!” blurted out Flame, raising it with a jerk.
“No,” replied Lord Lovegrove, with a certain amount of injured dignity, “this,” and he held out something between his finger and thumb.
“Oh, how heavenly!” There was genuine pleasure in Flame’s voice as she surveyed the complete circle of diamonds. “How did you know I would say yes?” she asked abruptly, as the old hand fumbled with hers.
“I did not, but I just brought it on the chance,” said Lord Lovegrove.
“But it fits!” said Flame wonderingly, holding up her small, outspread hand.
But to comment on this would have implicated both Lady Peterson and Marie, so Lord Lovegrove decided to maintain a discreet silence.
Colonel Forsythe did not see Flame for about six weeks after her engagement. He had been sent for rather hurriedly by the doctor in charge of the sanatorium in Switzerland, where his wife lay out on a balcony gazing with slowly dying eyes at the heavenly glory of the Alps spread out in front of her. “Gerald, I am so happy,” she said, and she turned her eyes from the snows to let them rest on the burly figure in Harris tweed by her side.
“Are you, darling?” said Colonel Forsythe, to whose credit be it said that he spent almost the whole of his not very large income in ensuring that his wife’s last days on this earth should be made as happy and comfortable as possible.
“Yes, I am, except just for one thing,” replied Mrs. Forsythe in the reedy voice that had always seemed to Colonel Forsythe to be so desperately ineffectual. But now he listened to it with a certain amount of tenderness. Agnes was dying, as she had always lived, without making any fuss. And he was grateful to her for it.
“Tell me then, dear,” he said, and he crossed one thick burly leg over the other.
“Well, it’s this,” replied Mrs. Forsythe, and her transparent face flushed. “I know you will want to marry again, Gerald, and I wish you to. But I do not want you to marry Lady Peterson; she is a terribly hard and unscrupulous woman, and she will end by making you terribly unhappy.”
Colonel Forsythe also flushed, and he shifted his position rather uncomfortably. Of course, Agnes must have known what was going on, but still, until that moment he had not thought that she knew so much. “Oh, don’t worry about that, dear,” he said, and he tried to speak with his usual breezy cheerfulness.
“I don’t exactly worry, because I seem to have lost that art,” said Mrs. Forsythe gently; “besides, when it is only a step out of this world into the next, it would be foolish to waste one’s time in worrying. But if you would only promise me, dear, that you would not marry Lady Peterson I should go very much more happily,” and Mrs. Forsythe’s face took on that expression of weak obstinacy that in the old days, when Gerald Forsythe was trying to make the best of a bad bargain, had driven him almost to insanity.
“Come, come, Agnes, it’s hardly fair to tie me down.” Desperately uncomfortable and miserable, Colonel Forsythe got up and began to pace about the glazed verandah.
“It is for your own happiness, dear,” said Mrs. Forsythe, and her pale eyes followed the burly figure in its agitated pacing. How like a boy he was, she thought tenderly, and how little she had ever understood him! But now, when the veil was so thin, she seemed to understand him better. Just a jolly, simple child, with the strong passions of a child grown up. And that woman would make his life a hell. . . . And then Mrs. Forsythe began to cough.
It was late that night when Colonel Forsythe walked out on to the verandah again. The moon hung low over the mountains—mountains that lay still and cold under the stars. Black, abysmal shadows, stretches of purest white, and here and there a peak, whiter than any others, stabbing the blue-black, star-hung sky. Absolute quiet, except for the distant roar of a waterfall. Colonel Forsythe had been to have a look at that waterfall that afternoon, and he had shivered as he stood on the edge of the great black cup; into that cup first, that huge volume of water, and then with a writhe out of it, and down hundreds of feet below, with a roar like artillery let loose. And Colonel Forsythe, who had been mentioned in dispatches more than once during the Great War, shivered again as he turned away. Fancy slipping on the edge of that cup, with the spray from below blowing up into your face, and trying to clutch wildly at the ferns as you fell. . . . Colonel Forsythe quickened his steps and groped in his pocket for his pipe.
And now the nurse stood and looked at him, the thin wrist between her fingers. Monsieur would assuredly marry again, she was thinking, counting mechanically meanwhile. Monsieur was stalwart and had extremely beaux yeux. And then there was a little sound from the bed, and she looked down, and then glanced up hurriedly.
“Will monsieur be kind enough to fetch monsieur le docteur,” she said. “Queek!” she ended hurriedly.
Monsieur le docteur was like a little black rabbit with pince-nez, and Colonel Forsythe found him in the verandah of the dining-room staring out at the same divine view that Colonel Forsythe had left above a few seconds earlier. “It will be the end,” he said quietly, as they mounted the stairs together, “and a peaceful one. Do not grieve, my friend.”
“Gerald, do promise me.”
Monsieur le docteur and the nurse stood together just inside the big glass door, and Colonel Forsythe, his eyes full of tears, held his wife’s hand, and wished he had been a better husband to her while he had had the chance.
“Agnes!” And then, even while he spoke almost imploringly, he knew he would have to. He had been utterly unfaithful to this woman who lay dying under his eyes, and through it all she had adored him. He could do no less. He stooped and whispered a word or two.
“Thank you. How good you have always been to me!” And then Agnes Forsythe gasped a little, and Colonel Forsythe stepped back and sent a frightened look through the glass door, And then the two whose business it was came in and took possession.
So it was quite six weeks before Colonel Forsythe went down to Falaise again. And when he saw Flame he was horrified, and he said so to the woman who followed him round with the eyes of a whipped spaniel. Gerald was going to marry her, he was! He had practically said so heaps of times. It was only a matter of waiting until he was free, and he was free now. . . . That stupid woman . . . it was about the only sensible thing she had ever done—to die.
“That child will die, if you don’t take care,” he said one night, when Flame came in to say good-night after an evening spent with her lover in the billiard-room.
“Die! Rubbish, Gerald; you are getting foolish in your old age.” Lady Peterson, who was doing some complicated sort of embroidery fixed in a round frame, glanced up over her softly moving hands.
“How you can allow the child to be shut up for hours with the old beast, I can’t conceive,” went on Colonel Forsythe angrily.
Lady Peterson flushed with anger, but she knew better than to show she was angry. She did not belong legally to this man yet, and until she did she would have to be careful. “Flame is going to be married in a little over three weeks,” she said smoothly, “and until she is, she is sure to look odd and unstrung. Girls always do when they are engaged, and Flame is young for her age.”
“The whole thing’s preposterous!” burst out Colonel Forsythe, on whom Flame’s wan and bleached little, face had made a very disquieting impression. Lovegrove was a satyr, and it was murder to throw this child to him. He got up and began to walk about the room. Lady Peterson watched him, and in her heart that most deadly of all poisons began to work, the jealousy of a mother of her child. Flame was young and beautiful, and this middle-aged man whom she worshipped had found it out. She must be got rid of, somehow. Another three weeks! and anything might happen in three weeks. . . . Flame must go away and not come back until immediately before her wedding-day. A couple of days in town would complete the trousseau shopping. She spoke quietly.
“Don’t worry, Gerald,” she said, and she began to put away the strands of silk, neatly laid out on the marqueterie table at her side. “After all, I understand Flame very well, and I felt very much as she does during my own engagement.” And then her own love and longing would no longer be denied. “Gerald, Gerald,” she cried, “be nice to me. What is the matter with you? You haven’t . . .” and then Lady Peterson flung her hands over her face, and the tears rolled down through her fingers.
“Give me a chance, Phil; Agnes has only been dead five weeks, and there is such a thing as decency.” There was an amused note in Colonel Forsythe’s voice, although the eyes that rested on the bowed head had not an ounce of pity in their depths. “By Gad, Agnes was right,” he thought; “she hasn’t even the ordinary instinct of the domestic animal for its young.” And Colonel Forsythe thought of a little incident that had happened that afternoon: he had been crossing the stable-yard with one of the Cocker spaniels, and spread out in the sun before them the stable cat had lain, two soft little heads buried in its side. And before he had had time to stop him, Bruiser had made a dash, and the soft silkiness was up, spitting fire and vengeance. And then, as Colonel Forsythe, whistling angrily, caught the abject crawling spaniel by the collar, the cat was up and away, one funny little fat thing hanging from its mouth, and then back in a couple of seconds for the other. And that was only an animal. He whistled softly between his lower teeth.
“Don’t you love me, then?” Lady Peterson had given up collecting her work, and was staring at her lover over her clenched hands.
“Love you? . . . Well, let me think.” Colonel Forsythe sat down again in the big easy-chair, and as he sat down, Lady Peterson fell at his feet and caught hold of one slim black silk ankle.
“Gerald! it’s death to me if you speak like that,” she cried. “I tell you, I can’t stand it. Love me . . . you are to . . .” and Lady Peterson reached up and dropped her head down on the crossed knee.
And, after all, Colonel Forsythe was only human, and the woman at his feet was very beautiful. “Little fool!” he said, and there was not an atom of tenderness in his voice, although his eyes glowed. “All right. . . . if you will have it so. But don’t let me run into that damned ugly maid of yours, as I did last time.”
The corridors at Falaise were long and echoing and very still, when Colonel Forsythe opened his heavy oak door, and, after listening carefully, glanced swiftly up and down once or twice. The moon came flooding in at the stained-glass window at the end, and made a pool of red and purple light on the polished boards. Colonel Forsythe closed the door softly behind him, and thrusting his muscular hands into his pyjama coat-pockets he started to walk with noiseless bare feet towards the wide shallow staircase at the end. He and Lord Lovegrove were housed in a part of the house by themselves; Flame and her mother slept in the south wing, not near to one another, although in the same corridor. Colonel Forsythe walked slowly, thinking deeply, his clean-shaven chin dropped on his bare throat. This affair would have to come to an end . . . but he would let Flame’s wedding get over first. She would make such a hell of a row if he smashed it all up suddenly. He would plead an unexpected call abroad . . . big-game shooting, anything, and then, once away, he could write. After all, she had really brought it on herself. You can’t stand by and see a pretty child sacrificed and then take the executioner to your heart. I mean to say, if you did, you were only courting disaster. And Colonel Forsythe, feeling better now that he had come to some sort of a decision, lifted his head and walked a little more quickly.
Outside Flame’s door he stopped, moved by a sudden feeling of compassion. She was such a child, he might easily have been her father. And there she was, so bitterly alone at a time like this, when a girl wanted her mother. Gad! if he had been her father, wouldn’t that lascivious old beast downstairs have had the order of the boot! And Colonel Forsythe drew a long breath. and very nearly turned to go back to his own room. And then he heard a sound, and instinctively he flattened himself back against the wall. That cursed maid, trying to get something out of him again if he wasn’t very much mistaken . . . and Colonel Forsythe waited, hardly breathing.
But the sounds went on, and relieved, he began to locate them. They were not the sounds of an opening door or of footfalls, as he had thought them. No, they were human sounds, agonized sounds—sounds of sobs torn up from the depth of a heart very near to breaking point, and Colonel Forsythe, moved by an impulse for which afterwards he thanked God, opened Flame’s door and went in.
At first he could not see anything. Then he did, guided by a shaft of moonlight that came stealing through the softly blowing muslin curtains. Flame was kneeling upon the bed in the corner, her yellow head buried in her hands. The piteous sobs came strangling up from the very depth of her; for some reason or other this child found herself in hell, and Colonel Forsythe came to the abrupt conclusion that it was his business to find out why. He came quietly across the carpet, his hands still in his pockets.
But Flame heard him come, and the sobs ceased instantly. And then there was a palpitating silence of intensest terror.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s only me.” Colonel Forsythe hardly knew what shyness was, but there was something in the little figure kneeling upon the bed in the scanty nightdress and the virginal whiteness of the whole room that affected him oddly.
“Yes, but I’m in bed!”
“Yes, I know you are. At least, as a matter of fact you aren’t, and that’s why I’ve come in. What’s the matter, old lady, eh?” Colonel Forsythe had reached the side of the bed and was holding out a kind hand.
“How did you know I wasn’t in bed?”
“I was passing, and I heard you crying. Tell me what’s wrong, Flame. It isn’t right that you should cry like this. Tell me,” and Colonel Forsythe sat down on the edge of the bed, which gave forth a cry of outraged springs.
“I only cry because I am tired.” Flame’s spirit was instantly on guard.
“No, you don’t. Little girls don’t get as tired as all that. You’re unhappy about something. Tell me, dear, and I may be able to help you.”
Flame suddenly crouched lower. “You’ll tell mother,” she said, and then the sobs began again.
“I shall not do anything of the kind. Come, come!” Colonel Forsythe put out a firm hand and took hold of Flame’s arm. “Come along on to my knee and tell me all about it,” he said, and he bundled her up in the eiderdown, and carried her to a big wicker chair seen vaguely outlined against the window.
“Gerald, Gerald! . . .” The comfort of the kind touch of human arms in this hour of her extremity was too much for Flame, and she burrowed her head into the striped silk shoulder and cried until she could cry no more.
And then Colonel Forsythe took hold of the little pointed chin. “Enough,” he said; “all this salt will take out the colour of my stripes, and Johnson will give me socks for spoiling my new pyjamas. Now then, what’s it all about, Flame? Make a clean breast of it.”
And then out it all came: the misery, the shrinking repugnance from the man that she was soon to call husband, the dread of the awful future. And Colonel Forsythe, listening, snapped his bull-dog jaws once or twice and ground his teeth. And then he spoke, and there was mystification in his voice:
“But why in the name of goodness have you gone on with the thing so long?” he said. “You don’t like the man; well, then you must break with him. No one can force you into a marriage that is utterly repugnant to you, Flame. I’ll square it with your mother, if she seems to be going to cut up rough about it.”
And then Flame spoke after a silence of extreme anguish. And Colonel Forsythe, seeing the little face shrivelled in the pale moonlight, knew with an awful certainty what he was going to hear.
“I must marry him,” she said; “I am going to have a baby.”
Colonel Forsythe let her slip gently off his knees. He felt he must stand up and walk about, or something would go ‘phut’ in his head. That scented, padded, lecherous brute in the corridor down below! God, he would beat out his brains on those polished boards before he was many hours older—beat them out slowly, a blow for each hour of misery that he had caused this child. Have a baby I this girl, not much more than a baby herself! Ah-h-h! and there was vengeance unspeakable in that low, drawn-out exclamation.
“Gerald, you’re beginning to loathe me!” Flame made a little passionate run to the side of the pacing figure, and caught hold of the striped coat.
“No, I’m not!” Colonel Forsythe’s response was instant, and he caught the little hands to his broad chest and held them there. “It’s not that, dear; don’t think it for a moment. It’s only that——” and then Colonel Forsythe’s voice failed him, and the dark blood surged up into his forehead, and then receded, leaving it wet. “Tell me about it if you can, dear,” he said gently, and he glanced down at Flame with the look in his eyes that only his dog had ever seen there.
“Oh, I will, I will!” Flame’s soul was out, rushing in a flood of passionate gratitude towards this man who had come like an angel into her room to deliver her from the torment of loneliness and terror in which she passed her days. “Let me sit down on your knee again, and I will tell you everything,” she said, and she began to drag him, like a child, towards the big chair.
Gerald Forsythe sat down, and before he leant back, he took his cigarette-case out of his pocket. “If you don’t mind,” he said, and he stooped a little as he shaded the match with his two cupped hands. Then he blew out a cloud, and leaning back, he drew Flame’s cropped head down into the hollow of his shoulder. “Now,” he said.
“You’re trembling,” said Flame anxiously; “you’re cold; let me get you my big coat.”
“No, I’m not.” Colonel Forsythe laughed shortly. How explain to this child the almost uncanny way in which he was visualizing those bulging, straining eyes staring from the shattered head and face. He would do it thoroughly and deliberately, once he began, and then take the consequences. After all, Agnes had not seemed to mind when it had come to the point, nor would he. And if there was an after-world—well, he would simply plead justification: “The girl was heavenly innocent, like a flower, and the man was a filthy satyr of sixty.” And if that wasn’t enough to secure his exemption, all right then, he would prefer to go to the other place.
“Are you sure you’re not cold?” Flame was peering anxiously up through the darkness.
“Positive. Now then, carry on. And don’t stop if I jerk or do anything funny, see?
“All right.” Flame laid her little soft head back and caught in her breath with a gasp. “It was the day we got engaged,” she said, “in the summer-house. He suddenly tore at me and grabbled hold of my waist, and spread his face all over mine. And I couldn’t get away in time to stop him. And I got a sort of awful squirly feeling of horror all over me, and that did it.” said Flame, beginning to cry again.
There was a little silence, during which Colonel Forsythe drew in his breath rather sharply. Then he spoke, very gently. “Go on,” he said.
“There isn’t anything very much more,” said Flame, weeping. “I rushed away then, and came up here, and scrubbed my face; but what was the good of that? It was done then! And then mother came in, and I told her what had happened, and she said, in that sort of awful freezing way she has, that of course I must marry him now—any decent girl would have to. So I went back and told him that I would.”
There was a long silence this time, and then Colonel Forsythe shifted Flame a little on his knee and sat back farther in the deep chair. “I don’t feel frightfully clear yet,” he said, and he cleared his throat a little. “You say that you are going to have a child—don’t mind my saying it, old lady, it’s got to be faced, hasn’t it? Well . . .” and then there was another long pause.
“Yes, but don’t you see it was the kisses,” sobbed Flame. “That’s the awful part of it; if there had been a table in between or anything to dodge round I could have got away. It’s the desperation of feeling that it so easily needn’t have happened that I mind most. Here I am, obliged to marry someone I loathe, simply because you’re not allowed to have a baby by yourself. Gerald, Gerald, help me!” and Flame buried a soaking face in the bull-dog neck.
And then Colonel Forsythe began to see light a little, and his first sensation, after the one of stupefying blinding relief, was one of fiercest, bitterest disgust and anger with this child’s mother. Any woman ought to have known, or any rate have had the sense to find out, what was at the bottom of flame’s obvious and constant misery. Gad! Agnes had been right; he would clear out of it the very next day. . . . And then he spoke.
“Look here, dear,” he said, and his voice was so kind that Flame clung to him anew, wondering in the depths of her gentle little heart why Nigel had always been so hard on Colonel Forsythe. “Look here, dear, it’s rather difficult to explain. But if you’re hanging on to your engagement because you think you’re going to have a baby, you need not do it any more. You’re not . . . there isn’t the remotest, vaguest chance of it. That is to say . . .” and then Colonel Forsythe had another spasm of fear, “that is to say, if you have told me everything,” he ended up quietly.
“Oh, I have,” gasped Flame, almost stupefied with relief at this deliverance from the stalking terror that for weeks had made her days and nights hideous. But it couldn’t be true . . . it couldn’t be true! “Gerald, how do you know?” she said.
“How do I know?” Colonel Forsythe laughed low down in his throat, a laugh that made even Flame, shaken as she was, want to laugh too—it sounded so very amused. “How do I know?” he said. “Well, I know because I am a very old man compared to you, Flame, and I have seen a good deal of the ways of the world.”
“But doesn’t spready kissing bring a baby, then?” asked Flame, still feeling uncertain and stupid, and longing to hear the words of reprieve again and again.
“No, thank Heaven!” said Colonel Forsythe, and then his excellent teeth did shine very white in the moonlight. “Flame, old lady, don’t be such a goose. Ask your mother about these things: she is the proper person to tell you.”
“Mother!” there was a world of scorn in the young voice. “Mother! Gerald, how could I?” Flame got resolutely off the muscular knee. “No, I would far rather ask Waterton anything like that, or Nigel,” she said. “But there is nothing to ask anyone now, because I know. God has delivered me”—Flame’s voice was solemn. “And now all I have to do is to tell Lord Lovegrove that I have made a mistake, and then settle down again in peace,” she said, and she lifted her young arms above her head and then let them fall again.
Colonel Forsythe was standing up, very square and burly in his striped pyjamas, but his rather underhung jaw was set in an anxious line. This wasn’t going to be as easy as Flame thought it was, and he tried to say so, as gently and reassuringly as he could.
But Flame was calm. “I shall manage it all right,” she said. “Nigel and I together can generally do things.”
“But Nigel is not here,” said Colonel Forsythe, reaching out and taking the two soft little hands in his, and thinking regretfully that a dog, however docile and affectionate, was a damned poor substitute for a little daughter of your own.
“No, but he easily can be,” said Flame, beginning to chuckle.
“How?” asked Colonel Forsythe.
And then Flame spoke mysteriously, leaning forward. “Nigel made me promise,” she said, “that if things got frightful, don’t you know, like they are, that I would telegraph for him. Well, I couldn’t, you see, because of—well, you know—because of what I thought I was going to have. But now I know that I’m not . . .” and at this Flame made a dart forward and flung her arms round the thick, bare neck, “now I know that I’m not—and it’s only because of you that I do know, and I adore you because you have been so absolutely heavenly to me—now I know all that, I shall send for him directly, and then everything will be perfectly all right.”
“How can it be?” said Colonel Forsythe uneasily, shifting from one bare foot to the other, and knowing in his heart of hearts that he ought to stay and see the thing through, and yet feeling that he simply could not do it—the unpleasantness would be so awful.
“It will, you see if it won’t,” said Flame, with entire assurance. “Nigel and Waterton and I can do marvellous things when we once start going.”
“Waterton!” said Colonel Forsythe, still more uneasily.
“Yes, rather! Waterton is our greatest standby,” said Flame calmly. “You see, Gerald, you really don’t know mother very well. To you she’s all right, because you’re more her own age. But to us, when she knows that we’ve got to do what she says, she can be very dreadful,” and then Flame began to cry again.
So later, when Flame was tucked snugly up under the beautiful eiderdown and Colonel Forsythe, like a stalking cat, descended noiselessly to his room again, his mind was absolutely made up. This was the end . . . and for ever. He could forgive most things . . . but deliberate callousness towards the young he could not forgive, and he was not going to try. “But I’m damned glad I haven’t got to be hanged,” he said whimsically, as he cautiously trod past the narrow oak door behind which Lord Lovegrove lay peacefully snoring.
But Colonel Forsythe had been right when he said to Flame that he did not think that things would go as easily as she imagined. Lady Peterson was white with rage at this sudden collapse of her plans, and she faced her daughter with something perilously near hatred in her eyes.
“How dare you do anything in the matter without consulting me first!” she said. “Write at once to Lord Lovegrove to tell him that you are sorry for what you have said to him, and that you wish to explain.”
“But I don’t,” said Flame, lifting eyes like dark pools with stars reflected in them.
“But you are to explain.” Lady Peterson was livid. “For no reason you break off an entirely satisfactory engagement. It is monstrous behaviour!” Lady Peterson had begun to pace up and down the room. As a matter of fact, she was almost beside herself with anxiety about her own affairs. Gerald had gone— gone without any apparent reason. What did it mean—what did it mean? Two entirely sleepless nights, with ears stretched to breaking-point, had played havoc with her nerves, and a heavy and entirely ineffectual dose of bromide had completed the devastation.
“His eyes are like big rounds of castor oil floating in hot milk,” said Flame slowly, anxious to find excuse. For her innocent mind shrank from even trying to explain to her mother the awful horror of repugnance that she felt for this old man who had wooed her. The feeling of him! the smell of him! Not smoky or sort of open-airy, but scented. And when you clutched him—Flame had once or twice clutched in horror your fingers sank into stuff; they didn’t come up against hard strings of muscle like they did in Nigel or Gerald. Besides . . . and then Flame’s flowerlike face sank. You couldn’t tell some things to anyone I . . .
“Don’t be utterly ridiculous!” Lady Peterson had flung herself down in the corner of a wide flowered sofa. “And don’t provoke me too far, Flame, I warn you. For if you persist in this disgraceful disobedience, I shall find means of bringing you to your senses.”
“How?” said Flame, whitening. For mother could be very dreadful when she liked. One tiny incident of long ago loomed clear: fat hands clutching the bars of the white cot in panic; Milady had said that there was to be no tiny flicker of gas left on in the night nursery, so said nurse.
“Not even a little thimble?” Flame, aged six, had spoken with stiff lips.
“No, not even a little thimble, Flame. And don’t you start, now,” and nurse had begun to take off her apron and fold it up. And then the heavy oak door, shaped like a church door, had closed behind her.
But Waterton, who after his beloved master’s death had always been more or less on the alert, soon found Flame lying stiff under the monogrammed blankets, her fists in her mouth and the perspiration pouring down her little soft neck. And it was he who took the nurse by her waist-belt and dragged her up the back-stairs to the night nursery.
“What does it mean, eh?” Waterton stood in the middle of a blaze of light—Flame, in the distant cot, joyfully absorbed in a rag book.
“She said there wasn’t to be any light.” The nurse, who was really a nice girl at heart, was terrified. Waterton ran the house; to get up against Waterton was to end your career at Falaise. For Sir Nigel Peterson had taken the precaution to make many things conditional on Waterton remaining on at Falaise, and Falaise was an extremely comfortable house in which to take service.
“She!” Waterton’s voice had been full of scorn. “She! Don’t you let me hear that again, miss! You take your orders from me . . . do you understand? And if I ever find this baby left up here alone in the dark . . . You quite understand me, I ’ope. . .”
So that terror had faded away into light again. But not because of mother; Flame had been quite old and cute enough to realize that. No, mother never came and rescued . . . she thrust you out and condemned. And now . . . Flame’s lips were as white as they had been eleven years before. How? she said again.
“Oh, there are many ways!” replied Lady Peterson, who, seeing Flame blench and pale, felt more herself again.
“Yes, but what sort of ways?” Flame suddenly felt that she must know what she was up against. Mother might shut her up somewhere . . . starve her into giving way. “What sort of ways?” she said again, and the quiver of the lower lip would have moved anyone who had not a heart of stone.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Lady Peterson had taken a cigarette out of the gold case at her waist and was tapping it on a crossed knee. “A convent . . . in Paris. There are many places where girls who defy their mothers can be brought to see reason.”
“Oh, I see.” Flame spoke very low, but with an awful terrified sinking at her heart. It would be so easy, with Mincemeat at the back of it all: Marie told to pack . . . the quite caressing swish of the car creeping up to the door; herself and her governess well on their way to Dover. And even if she fought and screamed out, Mincemeat’s calm explanation to the people who stood round and seemed to be going to help: “No, please don’t trouble; it simply is that this young lady does not care for the idea of going to school—she thinks she is too old.”
“So, you see, you would do well to reconsider your foolish behaviour of yesterday,” went on Lady Peterson, blowing the smoke out from between two very red lips (she felt ever so much better now). “Otherwise, as I am sure you will understand, I shall have to take steps that this sort of thing does not occur again.” And Lady Peterson got up very deliberately, reminding Flame, who still stood silently in the middle of the carpet, of the stable cat, when it got up to walk to a hole where it thought a mouse might have gone in. There was something deliberate and relentless about her mother’s back, like a cat, Flame thought, watching it with terror as it receded and grew smaller and then disappeared altogether out of the dark oblong of the door.
Nigel was crossing Sixth Form passage when the telegram was handed to him. He read it, nodded “no answer,” and walked into his own room. There he shut the door and sat down on the edge of a rather battered leather chair.
“Please come things very bad mother gone to London for two days—Flame.”
Nigel only sat for a minute or two, and then he got up. This must be dealt with at once, and it was a case for the Head. The Head would be in his own room now—the room outside the windows of which the limes of late September flapped their yellow leaves. Nigel started off for the room at the top of the stairs.
“Is it really urgent, Peterson?” The Head had a clean-shaven face and hair that was beginning to turn white. But he turned a very kindly glance on the gallant young figure in white flannels at his side. He liked Nigel Peterson very much, and valued his influence in the school.
“Yes, sir, it is urgent.” Nigel Peterson stopped abruptly, and then went on, blushing deeply. “It’s my sister,” he said; “she and my mater don’t see eye to eye. It’s a question of getting engaged, sir. Only I can be of any good . . . she depends on me a lot. You see, since the pater died——” and then
Nigel Peterson broke off. You couldn’t run down your mater to another man.
But the Head knew a certain amount of Nigel Peterson’s home-life—Heads have a way of finding out these things—and he nodded reflectively once or twice. “Very well, Peterson,” he said; “only try and be back by Monday, if possible.”
So a few hours later the young heir to all the beauty of it—the deer that lifted reflective munching jaws as the taxi buzzed through the park; the rooks that cawed overhead in the beech-trees; the rough-hewn, creeper-covered old grey walls—dismissed the taxi with an air, lent a cheerful hand to drag the suit-case out of the front seat, and then tiptoed like a child round to the stable yard on to which, from his pantry window, Waterton stood staring.
“Lazy!” he said, and then he bobbed down again.
“God bless my soul!”—Waterton lifted both hands over his head— “if it isn’t Master Nigel!” he gasped, and he began to unfasten his green apron. But by that time Nigel was in the room, both of his young hands held out, and Waterton clasped them both and began to weep.
“You’ll have some tea, sir,” he said, when he had recovered himself a little.
“No, thanks, Waterton; I had it at Waterloo. Look here, where’s Miss Flame? The mater’s away, I believe.”
“Yes, sir.” And then Waterton faltered, and sat down abruptly on a wooden stool. “Sir Nigel, you’re badly needed here, sir,” he said, and his old face went suddenly very careworn.
“Yes, so I gathered; tell me about it, will you. Waterton, before Miss Flame comes back. I want to get hold of the whole thing properly first. Miss Flame was engaged to Lord Lovegrove, so much I know. And now I gather the whole thing’s off—isn’t that so?”
“Yes, sir,” and then the old butler poured it all out; little things he had heard, things told him by the maid, things that he had seen himself; a couple of telegrams taken by one of the grooms. And all pointing to the same thing: that the child he loved was to be sent away from home . . . to France, Waterton thought.
“Yes, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’re right, Waterton. The mater is probably mad with her for breaking it off. Thanks for telling me all about it so fully,” and the young face looked gratefully into the old one. And then it clouded very heavily. “We haven’t got very much time,” he said. “When do you expect Lady Peterson back?”
“The day after to-morrow, sir.”
“The train that gets in just before dinner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, we’ve got practically two clear days.” The cloud on Nigel Peterson’s brow lifted a little. “And do you know, Waterton,” he went on joyously, like a boy again, “I’ve got the whole thing absolutely fixed up in my head? I had an idea that that was what it would be when Miss Flame wired like that—that the mater was so fed up that she was going to hustle her off the stocks for a bit. But I’ve got in first—at least, I shall have done when the whole thing works out properly.”
“What is your plan, sir?” Waterton spoke a little anxiously. He had vivid recollections of the past, Sir Nigel’s plans—generally the most desperate affairs—ending in condign punishment usually about half-way through their execution.
“Vow you won’t think it your duty to give us away?” Nigel’s eyes were searching in their scrutiny.
“No, sir,” and Waterton spoke very firmly. For he had twice been inside the billiard-room when Lord Lovegrove had thought he was alone with Flame. And if that had not been enough, he had weeks of recollection of Flame’s wan, bleached little face at breakfast-time—miserable little hands twisting bits of dry toast about. “No, sir,” he said again.
“Well, then, listen,” said Nigel Peterson, and he put out a hand and dragged up the other wooden stool.
Waterton was still alive, although in his old heart he wondered at it. For the plan was more desperate and comprehensive than even he had imagined it could be. Flame was to run away from home, dressed up in her brother’s clothes.
“But run where to, sir?” gasped Waterton, searching in his pockets for his large coloured silk handkerchief.
“Well, that’s the point; I’m not quite certain about that yet. It’s got to be somewhere far. I’m quite certain about that, anyhow—somewhere in a ship: you can’t be got at in a ship.”
“In a ship!” Waterton was mopping feverishly.
“Yes, somewhere like Africa or India. By the way, Waterton, haven’t you some relations or other in India? You used to give me the stamps off their letters.”
But Waterton disregarded this question. The plan was more than even he, torn with anxiety about the child he loved, could countenance—to send little Flame, little Flame with the yellow hair and small soft hands, out into the wicked, cruel world all by herself.
“No, sir.” Waterton spoke energetically aloud.
“Yes; I thought you’d say that. But look here. Waterton, you don’t know the mater even as well as we do. She’d stick at nothing to make Flame do what she wants. She’ll cram her into a convent or something and have her made a Roman Catholic so that she can’t get out again.”
“Sir Nigel!” Waterton was a staunch Low Churchman, and Nigel had not miscalculated the effect of this bombshell. The old man sat with his head in his hands for a minute or two.
“Yes; now, then, you see that it really is serious,” said Nigel Peterson. And then, after a pause: “ Didn’t you say that you had a relation in Bombay or somewhere, Waterton?”
“My eldest daughter married a garrison gunner, and they’re stationed in a place called Colaba,” said Waterton, almost as if he were talking in his sleep. Miss Flame a nun—shut up for ever, the little sweet, perhaps not even allowed to talk! . . .
“Is Colaba in India?” asked Nigel, his eyes all alight with excitement.
“Yes, sir. According to the picture postcards it’s on the sea-shore. As you might say, a suburb of Bombay,” said Waterton heavily.
“The very place,” said Nigel Peterson, jumping up off his stool with excitement. Waterton always did the right thing: splendid old fellow! . . .
Flame’s almost equal excitement was tinged with a certain amount of misgiving. “People will be able to see my legs,” she faltered.
“Never mind; everyone knows you’ve got legs. Besides, they won’t; you’ll have to live in my plus, fours, and they’re much baggier than the dress you’ve got on now. Don’t be a juggins, Flame; who cares tuppence about people’s legs?”
“Yes, but on a ship, wouldn’t people have to dress for dinner?” Flame was sitting on a big cretonne pouf pulled up very near to the fire. For it was late September, and after dinner, and the leaping flames were very welcome. Flame had come back from her walk with her governess to find her twin arrived, and her joy had been pathetic. In fact, Nigel, horrified at the change in his little sister, had been very much moved by it, and had almost wept himself as he held her close to him and stared fixedly over her shoulder. Things must be being pretty bad to make Flame look like that, he thought; something must be done at once.
“And how could I tie a tie?” went on Flame, staring into the fire. “Little things like that would make it so difficult. And supposing I were ill? People might come poking about and find out.”
“You wouldn’t be ill.” Nigel spoke rather impatiently. “At least, only ordinary sort of sick, and that you could manage by yourself. Don’t make objections, Flame. I’ll buy you a made-up dress-tie; it’s a ghastly thing to have, but still you might need it at first.”
“You speak as if it were all settled,” said Flame wonderingly, staring across the big white bearskin hearthrug.
“It is,” said Nigel firmly. “Waterton and I fixed it all up before you came in this evening. I thought of the plan just as I got to that dump place by Slough—you know, where all the cars were. Waterton took a bit of persuading, because he’s a cautious old boy and he’s fearfully fond of you for some reason or other. But even he sees that things are pretty desperate. He’s heard things . . . things that the mater means to do.” and Nigel broke off.
“What sort of things?” Flame was white.
“Oh, she means to pack you off to France and put you into a convent, said Nigel briefly, but his young mouth was set.
“Nigel!”
“Yes; well, there you are. Now perhaps you see the need of putting on the pace a bit. And luck’s with us, as a matter of fact. The mater’s away till Friday; well, the mail steamer to Bombay starts from Tilbury on Fridays, so you’ll be off before she comes back. Mincemeat has to go to the dentist to-morrow; she wanted the Rolls, and Waterton wouldn’t let her have it, so, you see, that’s all right; she’ll have to start early to get the eleven o’clock from Marnehurst. We shall be able to dress and clear off to town by the eleven-forty. . . .”
“Nigel, but what shall I do when I get to Bombay?” Flame was gasping at this sudden smashing dislocation of the whole of her life. Go out to India dressed as a boy . . . the very thought was convulsing. Besides, there were heaps of things . . . her hair, it was bobbed like a girl’s. Besides, ships cost heaps of money. “Nigel, who’s going to pay?” she gasped.
“Waterton: he’s fearfully well off, so he says.” But at this Nigel did falter a little. That was the one blot on the wonderful plan, that he had had to depend on the old servant for the wherewithal to carry it out. But Waterton had been so absolutely topping about it; he had offered to pay, as a matter of fact. “Sir Nigel, I shall look upon it entirely as a loan, and an honour I feel it, sir, to be able to help the son of my dear late master,” and Waterton, blowing his nose like a trumpet, had got up and gone ponderously up the back-stairs and had come back with twenty-five beautiful crisp five-pound notes in his hand.
“Don’t you put your money in a bank, Waterton?” Nigel had gasped at the crackling crispness in front of him.
“No, sir, not since the recent failures,” replied Waterton with finality. And then, sensing his young master’s emotion, he had turned the conversation on to something else. But Nigel was deeply moved at this unselfish generosity, and he had choked and gripped the old hand, and shed a shamefaced tear on to the back of it. And now he frowned at his sister.
“Don’t keep on asking things, Flame,” he said, “except I’ll tell you where you are to go when you get to Bombay, because that is rather important. Waterton’s married daughter lives at Colaba—that’s a suburb of Bombay—and I’ll give you her address. And that’s all you’ve got to think about. I shall see you off at Tilbury, and you’ll simply have to sit tight on the ship until it gets to Bombay. It’s far easier really than going from here to Windsor.”
“Nigel, but it seems so awful!” Flame’s lower lip was trembling.
“How, awful?” demanded Nigel. “Wouldn’t it be more awful to either marry that old horror or be a man?”
“Yes, but—mother might get me back somehow. Or someone might see by my shape that I wasn’t really a boy,” faltered Flame, and she let her crimsoning glance fall into her lap.
“You haven’t any shape to speak of,” said her brother frankly; “at least, none that you can’t manage by pulling out your skirt a bit. And as to mother getting you back—how can she, Flame, if you are in the middle of the sea? Now, I ask you, don’t you think you really are being rather tiresome and futile? Pull yourself together a bit. Waterton and I are helping you to escape from a most ghastly fate, and all you can do is to find fault with the plans we make. It’s pretty discouraging, to put it mildly.”
“I don’t mean to be discouraging”—Flame was faltering and tearful—“and I am truly, truly grateful, Nigel.” Flame got up and came across the hearthrug with outstretched hands. “But it’s only that, when you haven’t been about very much, to hear that you’ve suddenly got to start off for anywhere as far as India, dressed up as a boy, does seem rather terrifying,” and Flame knelt down by her brother’s side and buried her face in his lap.
“Funkstick!” Nigel was ruffling the yellow hair with a derisive but affectionate hand. “Once you’re started you’ll love it. Think of to-morrow, Flame! London! lunch at a restaurant, rushing round for passages and passports. We’ll have the time of our lives.”
“Oh yes, that will be heavenly!” Flame lifted her head, restored. London with Nigel would be bliss; she had hardly ever been to London, only for dull things like the dentist, and then always with either her mother or her governess. “I begin to feel that it may be the most frightful fun,” she said, and smiled widely.
“Good for you!” returned her brother, more relieved than he liked to express.
“Oh, my hat; let me fetch Waterton!” Behind a carefully locked door Nigel Peterson was staggering about shaking with laughter. “Flame, if you could see yourself!” He cast himself face downward on to the bed.
“Do I look very fat behind?” Flame was twisting herself like a calf with a fly on its hindquarters, and was also contorting herself into all sorts of odd shapes.
“No, not a bit; you look exactly like I do in the holidays. Oh, my aunt! I must get Waterton. . . . Lock the door the minute I’ve gone out,” and Nigel Peterson, raising himself from the punched-in eiderdown, made a bolt for the door.
Both the boy and the old butler were back in less than two minutes, Waterton breathing a little heavily. But by now his heart and soul were in the whole thing. His darling in a convent; it didn’t bear thinking of. And late the night before, when he had slipped from his young master’s room (for they had packed for Flame till nearly midnight, nothing forgotten, even to the made-up tie, for Waterton possessed two), he had gone downstairs again, and had penned a long and explicit letter to the daughter in Colaba, and had sent it off to the post by the stable-boy first thing that morning. And now even the grave old face was drawn to a smile; it might have been his young master who stood there.
“Master Flame,” he said, and his solemn mastiff’s eyes were twinkling.
“Oh, Waterton, do I look all right?” Flame was trembling between laughter and tears.
“All right! you look a picture, Miss Flame, and not even your own mother would know that you wasn’t your own brother,” said Waterton, and then his face clouded. The mother, far away at that moment, intent on her own affairs. For Marie, always inclined to be garrulous, had spoken of sleepless nights and a note dispatched downstairs at a very early hour two days previously. And Waterton, always staunch to his beloved master’s memory, had fiercely resented this fouling of the nest in which his beloved nurselings should have been reared in integrity and singleness of heart. And that thought stiffened his resolution to see this thing through, cost him what it might.
“Are you positive I don’t look fat behind?” Flame was still twisting herself.
“Fat! you’ve got fat on the brain,” Nigel broke in impatiently. “Waterton, tell her she’s all right. Can’t you see you’ve got a coat on that hides all that, you juggins!” he went on, coming nearer, and under pretext of giving a final twist to the bow tie, speaking in an undertone.
“Oh, I see!” Flame stopped, restored.
“And now, Master Nigel, it’s time you was off,” said Waterton. “And Thomson is taking you to Mamehurst in the Sunbeam. It’s begun to rain, and I can’t have you both getting wet.”
“Waterton! Thomson! he’ll give us away.” Nigel, appalled, thrust two nervous hands into his pockets.
“Not he”—Waterton’s smile was slow and enveloping—“not Thomson, nor anyone else, Master Nigel. And the only one that might—that Marie—she daren’t,” said Waterton, and his tone spoke of many things that might be revealed.
“Oh, I see. That’s why you didn’t mind letting Robert cut her hair, then,” said Nigel quickly. It was an immense relief to feel that appearances had not to be kept up too much before the servants. Flame wasn’t enormously to be relied on, at any rate at this early stage in the proceedings. But Nigel knew his sister’s capacity for self-control when it was really demanded of her, so he was not really anxious about the future.
“Yes, sir, and now . . .” and then Waterton’s face did break up. His little lamb . . . and he was helping to send her forth into the wilderness.
“Darling, darling Waterton, good-bye!” Flame, sobbing, ran forward, and cast herself into the old arms. “I shall come back perfectly safe, don’t be worried; I shall go straight to your daughter at Colaba, and wait there till you tell me that everything is all right for me to come home; you and Nigel can let me know together.”
“God bless you, Miss Flame!” Waterton kissed the white forehead reverently, groping for his handkerchief as he did so. “And now you and your brother get straight down into the car, my lamb; don’t hang about,” and Waterton drew himself up to attention, and tried to wink back the tears that were stinging his eyes so cruelly.
Robert came forward into the room from the landing outside, and, without the quiver of an eyelash, picked up the two suit-cases. Flame was travelling light, but the suit-cases were capacious and Waterton was an excellent packer. Also, there was a black steel-helmet case, a relic of the gunner in Colaba, and it contained a complete change of Flame’s own clothes and a small straw hat. “But don’t you open that unless it’s vitally necessary,” Nigel had admonished, with feverish insistence, “because if anyone finds out who you really are you’re absolutely cooked.”
“Could I be put in prison?” Flame had queried tremblingly, her spirits down at zero again.
“No; I don’t think anything much more than a reformatory,” said Nigel vaguely, his attention all on the tie that stuck out so irritatingly under the little white chin. It was damned difficult to tie a tie on somebody else.
No one took any particular notice of the two slim youths when they stepped out of the big car at Mamehurst Junction. The early morning train had gone—the train that took in its padded embrace the flood of prosperous City men, and women on shopping intent. So Flame and her brother found an empty First without any difficulty, and Flame especially settled down into it with almost a groan of relief.
“Have a cigarette?” Nigel grinned across the compartment.
“Oh, thank you.” Flame put a dainty finger and thumb inside her waistcoat pocket and drew out her ebony and silver holder.
“Good for you; you’re settling down to it wonderfully.” Nigel beamed with approval at his sister, who sat with crossed legs, jerking a small foot up and down. But the shoes must be seen to the minute they got to Town. Flame had on brogues, flat-heeled enough and square-toed, but brown, and that was hopeless with a blue serge suit.
“If only I had some sort of a long coat! . . .” Flame stared wistfully at her brother.
“Well, you will have by the time we get to Waterloo, because it’s going to rain like Hades,” returned Nigel cheerfully. “And you can put on my new Burberry. But first we must buzz straight off to the Army and Navy Stores for some black shoes for you; those brown things absolutely give me the hump.”
“Aren’t they right?” said Flame, sticking her foot out.
“Hopelessly wrong,” returned her brother briefly.
“Oh!” Flame, was silent for a minute or two. Then she leant a little forward. “Nigel, do come and sit by me,” she said, with quivering mouth. “I feel so awful. Mincemeat will come back and find we’re gone, and she’ll wire to mother, or something. We never thought of that.”
“I did, and I squared it all with Waterton. Don’t fuss, Flame. Mincemeat is to be told that we’ve gone to stay with Gerald for a couple of nights, by mother’s wish . . . a wire or something. Don’t go into those details.” Nigel got up and crossed leisurely over.
“But it isn’t true,” said Flame piteously.
Nigel shrugged his shoulders. “Of course it isn’t,” he said quietly; “but when you’re out for a thing like this you can’t help telling a bloomer or two. I don’t like it any more than you do, but there it is. So now, shut up about that part of it, and try to think about the part that you do like. Wouldn’t you rather be here, like this, with me, than either being cuddled by that old horror or stuffed into a convent, probably never to be let out again?”
“Oh, I would.” Flame nestled closer and spoke fervently.
“Well, then, there you are; you can’t have everything in this world. And now, look here; I want to give you a few tips about how to behave. Come closer. . . . I’ve stacks of things to say and we shan’t stop again, so this is a good chance.”
And as the train swung its way through the heavenly country-side, Nigel, with Flame’s young hand nestling in his (Nigel had allowed this as a great concession, as they were soon to be parted), gave his little sister a good deal of very excellent advice. And Flame listened to every word, her small face grave and set.
“You mean that I must be careful whom I get to know?” she said.
“Yes. Do like poor people always say they do—keep yourself to yourself. It’ll only be for three weeks, after all. Just sit tight in your deck-chair and read a book. And when you get to Bombay it will all be perfectly straightforward: Waterton has written to his daughter.”
“How easy it all sounds when you say it!” said Flame wonderingly.
“It is easy,” said Nigel Peterson grandly. “And now we’re beginning to get there. Look at the backs of all those ghastly houses joined together. What would you do if you had to live in one, Flame?”
“Die,” said Flame with emphasis, remembering with a stab of agonized homesickness the old grey walls of the home she had left.
But it was not quite so easy as Master Nigel had thought it would be. To begin with, when after half an hour’s heated shopping at the Army and Navy Stores—to Nigel’s intense annoyance they had been redirected to the Children’s Outfitting Department, as Flame’s feet were too small for the Youths’ and Men’s—they ascended to the top floor for lunch, the first person they saw at a distant table was their London dentist. And that meant a hasty descent in the nonstop lift to the ground floor again.
“Why can’t you have feet like an ordinary human being?” Nigel was regularly put out. He had had to invent both a name and a number when paying his bill, and the effort had exhausted him.
“Oh, Nigel, I am so sorry!” Flame was very near to tears.
“Well, when all my other clothes fit you, I should have thought you could have had reasonable feet. I don’t know what I haven’t had to spend on shoes, pumps, and things. I shouldn’t wonder now if we haven’t enough money for your ticket.”
“Can’t I go then, now?” asked Flame, with a wild throb of hope.
“Yes; you’ll have to go. We should look too foolish in front of Waterton if we trailed home again after all this set out.”
“I don’t suppose he would mind.” Flame was standing in the middle of a throng of people all jostling past in an attempt to get into the lift. It was a quarter-past one, and there was the hot, buzzing feeling in the air that the Stores always get at about that hour.
“Don’t block up all the way.” Nigel gave his sister an angry little jerk. As a matter of fact, he was ravenously hungry, and was nervous and uncertain as to where to go to lunch. Running into their dentist had frightened him.
“Nigel!” Flame, also dreadfully hungry, thrust two small hands into the pockets of her coat and wondered why the idea of running away had ever seemed nice. Desolation and misery, and now Nigel angry with her.
But Nigel’s anger was short-lived. Flame’s face, so ridiculously small under the shallow bowler, recalled him to himself. She was his little sister, and she depended on him; he smiled, and gave her a quick and affectionate dig in the ribs. “Buck up,” he said; “we’ll clear out of this fug and go and have lunch at Fuller’s. There’s one a little farther along the road.”
Lunch made everything right. Cold chicken and ham, and cider to drink, and ices to end up with. And when she had finished, Flame wondered why the idea of running away had ever seemed anything but entirely desirable. She leant back in the comfortable chair, and blew the smoke through her nose and beamed at her brother. And when, the rather extensive bill paid, they were out in the street again, Nigel spoke much more cheerfully.
“That’s right,” he said briskly; “and now, look here, Flame, I’m not going to drag you round with me any more; it takes too long. I’ve got stacks of things to do—passports, and passages, and I don’t know what else. You hop on to a green bus, and go along to Westminster Abbey and wait for me there. I’ll pick you up when I’ve done; it’ll take me about two hours all told, I should think. I’ve got to be photographed, you see; that’ll take some time.”
“How can you be photographed for me?” asked Flame.
“Because you are me now. Your passport will be me, so, of course, your photograph must be me too. We’re exactly alike, so don’t start off, Flame,” for Flame’s face had begun to break up again.
But Flame dug both hands into her coat-pockets and longed to wail aloud. It was too adventurous, this thing they were embarked on. “Hop on to a bus,” and she had hardly ever even been out alone before. But Nigel was in a hurry; he had suddenly realized that he had a very great deal to do, and not any too much time to do it in, so he only seized his sister’s arm in his and ran her across the road.
“Supposing someone speaks to me!” Flame was putting the handful of small silver into her trousers pocket.
“They won’t; you aren’t a squealing girl any more. Now then, when you see a green bus coming along with all the seats in it facing one way, get on to it, because you’ll know it’s the one. As a matter of fact, nearly all the buses going this way pass the Abbey, but you’re so vague, perhaps you’d better stick to one.”
“All right.” But there were terrified tears in Flame’s eyes as she was left standing alone under the indicator. Nigel had gone, diving across the road. And here was a motor-bus bearing down on the top of her. It stopped with a wild scrape of tyres against the curb. “Piccadilly Circus,” the conductor hanging over the pavement on his strap was roaring. “Where for sir?” He dropped neatly on to the pavement by Flame’s side.
“Westminster Abbey.”
“Right you are, then; on you get!” The conductor was a fatherly man, and he noted the boy’s frightened eyes. And before Flame knew where she was, she was standing on the little platform at the end of the bus, clutching at the conductor’s sleeve as the unwieldy vehicle lurched on again.
“My brother told me a green one.” Flame’s eyes were upturned and full of frightened tears. Two rows of staring people wavered in front of her; that was all wrong. Nigel had said seats all facing one way. “Oh, do let me get off!” She dragged at the stiff broad-cloth sleeve.
“That’s all right, sir; you get along inside and sit down. Move along there, please!” and Flame found herself tumbling backwards on to a long, already congested seat. The man sitting opposite to her smiled broadly. What a young greenhorn!—a tear on the scarlet face and a hat stuck on the back of his head!
“Here y’are, sir, Westminster Abbey, right across the road there.” The friendly conductor stopped in the middle of his ticket-punching and darted back on to the little platform as the bus stopped with a wild scoop at the end of Whitehall. “Don’t block the gangway, please”; for Flame was standing up and staring.
“I can’t see it,” she said, and she straightened her hat with a trembling hand.
“Oh, get along, you little ass!” The smiling man was smiling no longer; he was only shoving. And Flame found herself standing on the wide pavement by herself again, petrified with fear. Something was coming off; the conductor had put his arm round her waist to steady her descent and he must have pulled her braces. If you were a girl, and by any awful mischance anything came off, there was something left. If you were a boy there would be nothing left. “Lord, I beseech you!” prayed Flame in a torment.
“By faith ye shall move mountains.” Certainly, although Flame could almost have sworn she had heard a button tinkle on the pavement, the funny loopy ends of the braces seemed all right when she felt cautiously round them. And the relief from that sudden and overmastering terror seemed to give her new strength. She was not alone any more. Someone had rushed to her aid when called upon. Flame smiled under the hard hat.
“By Gad, it’s Peterson!” It was a tall young man in a top-hat and Eton coat who hailed her—a tall young man grinning cheerfully between what must have been a very nice mother and father. And Flame waited to hear no more; she butted down her head and ran.
“Mind where you’re going to!” It was a yell and a long-drawn-out scrape of brakes frantically applied that brought Flame to her senses again. That had been a friend of Nigel’s who had nearly caught her. And now, what was this? A crowd, and a tall policeman coming towards her. A huge crowd, surging; prison, or a reformatory? Flame cast one terrified glance around her, flung down her head again, and flew like a hare with the beagles after it.
“I don’t think there’s any damage done, sir.” The tall policeman was trying not to laugh; there had been something about Flame’s back view that had tickled him enormously. It had been panic incarnate that he had seen there.
“Damage!” The red face out of the window was infuriated. “About six months’ wear of my tyres gone in ten seconds just because some damned. . . Drive on, Wellman,” and the infuriated face disappeared again.
Wasn’t there something in the history books about people being able to rush to a church and be safe there? Flame recalled it with a throb of wonderful comfort and peace as the chill, heavy air of the dark vault blew back in her face as she passed through the little dark door. She had seen the Abbey as she flew along the pavements, and had made straight for it. Nearing it, she had slackened her pace a little: she mustn’t rush into a church.
“Kindly remove your hat, sir.” A black-gowned figure with terrible menacing eyes was at her elbow—an angry custodian, looking like a bat in his black gown, frowning heavily.
“Oh yes, of course.” Flame dragged in a panic at the bowler and held it down close to her side. Not safe yet. Yes, the custodian had turned away, bending an attentive ear to a whispering clergyman. Flame walked down the aisle behind a little trail of what looked like a mother’s meeting out for a treat. She would sit down somewhere—kneel down somewhere. . . .
Ten minutes on her knees in the dark shadow of one of the monuments restored Flame’s equilibrium. She could think again . . . breathe again, and she sat back in the rush-bottomed chair holding her hat with steady hands. The Abbey was filling up, people coming in from different parts of it, and all walking past where she sat, up more towards the front. There must be going to be a service. Joy! she would come in for it.
Flame got up and walked farther towards the front too.
“Are we allowed to sit there?” Flame, with enormous courage, had accosted one of the bats, and fortunately this particular bat had sons of its own, and so it smiled back into the clear grey eyes.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and he unhooked the big twisted red rope to let Flame pass into the chancel.
To the very end of her life Flame remembered that three-o’clock service at Westminster Abbey. The slowly advancing procession of scarlet-cassocked boys and men from the dim vagueness of Westminster Hall; the noiseless settling of them into their stalls, young hands busy with the chant-books round them; faces, young and old, seen palely under the shaded lights; and then the heavenly beauty of the voices, flung out with such utter freedom from self-consciousness, and echoing right away up into the misty arches of the groined roof.
“Lord, it’s too beautiful!” Flame, imaginative and musical to her very soul, was gripping her hands between her knees in a wild effort for self-control. What did it make her feel like, this? It made her feel as if she wanted to gather her soul up in two hands and hold it out as an offering to someone, as if she wanted to sob out all her joys and fears at somebody’s feet, to give herself in a wild surrender of body, soul, and spirit. Flame stared out into the blurred gloom, her face white and tense.
And Hugh Keymer, sitting opposite, leaning back with long legs crossed, watched her, and thought what a desperate pity it was that a boy with a face like that had ever to grow up. It was like seeing something very beautiful, like a piece of Venetian glass, and knowing that it was going to be smashed in a couple of hours. He sighed and turned away; Flame’s eyes had met his.
The vibrating, burring stop of the great organ had ceased, and the grandest bat of all was walking up to the lectern with a long staff with a knob on the end. There was a clergyman behind him, but somehow he didn’t seem nearly so important as the bat. This must be going to be a Lesson. . . . Flame sat back, but she still stared at the man in the stall opposite to her; there was something about his face that made you want to stare. What was it? There was plenty of time to find out, because the Lesson was a very long one—dull, because it was the Old Testament. There was always something dull about the Old Testament, Flame thought. So she gave herself up to the contemplation of the face that showed palely against the black carved background of the stall. It was not quite a young face; it had too many lines on it, and also the hair was sprinkled with grey. But it was the mouth that enchained Flame most. It was set in lines of heavenly kindness—kindness and endurance. Flame came to the conclusion that those were the two things about it that made her want to look at it so much. It was as if the person had realized that everything was all wrong and hopeless for him, but that he was going, because of that, to try and make it nicer for other people. He would be a heavenly person to tell things to, because he would so absolutely understand. . . . And then, as Flame thought this, the bat started to bring the clergyman back again, and the organ crept through the arches and aisles again, and Flame was lost in the Magnificat.
She did not notice the man again until the very end, when they were all standing to let the choir pass out. He was very tall—tall and broad—and he had an extremely nice tie on and a striped grey flannel suit. She slipped out of her seat so that she should walk out behind him; she wanted to see his hands.
Hands meant such a lot; you could tell by hands and mouth what a person was really like; Flame had the unerring instinct of extreme youth. And his hands were as nice as the rest of him; Flame saw that before he forged a little ahead and was lost in the crowd.
“We shall be closing the Abbey in a moment or two, sir.” The custodian of the north door, who had had his eye on Flame for some time, came nearer, and spoke in an admonitory undertone.
“Oh, but what shall I do? I have to stay here until my brother fetches me.” Flame stood up in a panic. She had been there for hours, it seemed to her; anyhow, it must be long past tea-time. . . .
“Well, we’ll give the young gentleman another ten minutes,” said the kindly custodian, and he considerately turned his back upon Flame, walked away to the door, and spent his time drumming with his white fingers on the ledges of the glass windows let into the panels of the inner door, and staring out at the flood of human beings pouring towards Victoria. How different to the way he spent his own life! he thought half-unconsciously—half-unconsciously, because you don’t think very vividly when you spend your life in the shadowed sombreness of something like Westminster Abbey. It dwarfs ordinary thought; it makes ordinary things seem futile. Only great things matter—things like the life beyond the grave. I don’t know that the custodian had got quite as far as this, but anyhow, it coloured his life, and made him a very considerate husband and father. Which is all that matters really, for it is written: “And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying . . .”
“Doesn’t being what you are make you realize that text in the Bible—you know: ‘I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness’?” Flame, encouraged by the custodian’s kind smile, had got up, and was beaming up at him through the dim light of late afternoon.
“Well, miss, I must say that it has occurred to me from time to time.” The custodian, taken completely by surprise, spoke without premeditation, and very kindly. This was a sweet little frightened thing that was staring up at him with round eyes, like one of the tiny kittens that had frisked out at him the other day from behind a monument—sanctuary even for the hunted, half-starved London cat, tortured with anxiety to find a safe place to lay her young.
“Miss! I’m a boy! Can’t you see my clothes?” But even as Flame, terrified, stammered the lie, her soul rocked itself and wept. To tell a lie in church, surely an awful judgment must fall on her.
“I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir.” The custodian, now utterly bewildered, stared vaguely at the slight figure in the lounge suit. Surely . . . But then the swing-door crunched and swung violently to and fro, and Nigel came in.
“Good heavens, I was afraid you might have gone!” Nigel was breathless and heated. “Come on and have some tea somewhere; I shall die if I don’t have something to drink.” Nigel’s yellow hair was damp and plastered on his forehead; he brushed it aside impatiently.
“Nigel, he’s kept the Abbey open specially for me.” Flame was drawing her brother a little aside and whispering.
“Has he, though? Good for him!” Nigel was fumbling good-temperedly in his pocket. “All right then, give him this;” he drew out a silver coin.
“Thank you very much, miss”—the custodian was still very much bewildered. Another young gentleman, and he the dead spit of the one already there! “Sir, I should say, sir,” he interpolated, taking a hasty step forward.
“What’s the old boy babbling about?” Nigel had got his sister outside again and was drawing in the cool air in long gasps. “Gad, I’m hot! Come on, Flame; don’t hang about,” for Flame was standing with her feet apart, staring back at the greyness of the great church.
“Nigel, I feel somehow as if I’d left my soul inside.” Flame’s mouth was trembling and she still stared.
“As long as you’ve got your hat and Burberry, I don’t care. Have you? Yes, you have; that’s a mercy. Come on, Flame.”
But as the custodian hung up his cloth and velvet bat’s-wings in their discreet wardrobe he was thinking very much more profoundly than usual. That had been no young gentleman that had spoken to him; that had been a young lady, and a very young one, too. Why hadn’t he noticed them more? The custodian had uneasy recollections of many a Sunday afternoon spent with the News of the World in a creaky old armchair. He walked very slowly to catch the bus to the Elephant and Castle.
Other people beside the custodian at Westminster Abbey had had their suspicions aroused. But mercifully the passport authorities were too accustomed to people with real things to hide, to concern themselves much with Nigel’s red face and rather halting statements. The photograph was obviously the photograph of the youth who stood in front of them, and the youth was obviously English. More did not concern them, and the stiff green cloth covers were slapped to with an air and shoved across the table also with an air, and this time one of relief. The young man in charge of the passport office had an appointment at five o’clock, and it was ten to now.
But at the big P. & O. offices in Cockspur Street things did not go quite so smoothly. The young man who attended to Nigel was as much of a gentleman as he was, and inclined to be friendly into the bargain.
“Want to sail to-morrow! Gad, you’ve cut it fine. Don’t think there’s a corner.” He sprawled easily over the big ledger and plan and then looked up. “Got a passport?”
“Yes.” Nigel produced it, the perspiration running down inside his collar.
“First class?”
“Yes, of course.” This touched Nigel up and restored his moral courage.
But the young man was laughing down into the passport. What a kid, seventeen! Fancy going to India at that age. “What on earth possesses you to go to that God-forsaken country?” he inquired. “It’s a dud country for the white man now.”
“I’m only going on a visit,” said Nigel frigidly. After all, as he told himself quickly, as long as he held a passport nothing could prevent this young man from giving him a passage—that is, provided there was a passage to give. And at that ghastly thought his blood ran cold.
“A visit! Oh, then next week would do as well, at a pinch?” The young man had raised his head with a hopeful jerk.
“No; it wouldn’t do at all.” Nigel spoke wildly. Next week!
“Well, I don’t know.” After a desperate pause the young man got up and lounged across to another table, where another equally languid young man sat. The two talked for some time, and then the first one came back. “We haven’t a corner here,” he said; “but if you’ll wait a second, I’ll ’phone through to our City office and see if anything’s been sent back. It happens sometimes, but not very often at this time of year. Sit down, won’t you?”
But sitting down was out of the question. All Nigel could do during the awful time of waiting was to stand feverishly staring at a map of the world. Why had he embarked on this ghastly affair? he was thinking.
The telephone rang off sharply, and the young man came back. “You’re in luck,” he said; “they’ve just had a first-class A berth returned, and you can have it if you’re prepared to take it at once and pay on the nail.”
“Oh yes, of course.” Nigel, almost sick with relief, dragged at his inner pocket. “How much?” he asked.
“Ninety pounds single from Tilbury. Are you sailing from London?”
“Yes.”
“Righto!” The young man counted the notes with unusual care. There was something awfully odd about this, he was thinking, a kid like that, out alone with all that money. However, all was in order, really—passport, cash; he couldn’t refuse to issue the ticket. “Labels?” he queried, still counting.
“Yes, please.”
“Here you are, then.” The young man returned from a distant table, where he had been filling up a large yellow form. “And here are the labels. Hold and cabin.”
“Thank you,” said Nigel, not knowing in the least what he was being given. To get away before the head office rang up to say that the first person had changed his mind and was going after ail; that was his one thought. And he gathered up the labels and stuffed them into his pocket, and, nodding, fled down the steps and into the street again before the young man had had time to ask what he had meant to do, namely, how long Nigel was going to stay out there.
So Nigel was a good deal shaken, and it took a great deal of hot buttered bun from the A.B.C. opposite the Houses of Parliament to restore his equilibrium. But once it was restored, it was restored thoroughly, and he beamed across the marble-topped table at his sister, who sat also munching buttered bun with much fervour.
“Isn’t it odd how having something to eat always makes one feel all right again?” she remarked easily, picking up an escaped currant with a small forefinger and thumb.
“Yes; but don’t chase crumbs round your plate like that; it’s fearfully bad form.”
“It’s only a currant.” But Flame stopped doing it notwithstanding. There was something about Nigel that made you have to do what he said.
“And now we’ll get a taxi and pick up our luggage at Waterloo, and then we’ll clear off to the Strand Palace Hotel. It’s always crammed, so we shan’t be seen. I’d rather go to the Rubens, but I daren’t. But the money I’ve spent!” Nigel groaned as he scrutinized the absurdly modest bill.
“Have you got enough to pay for the hotel?”
“Of course I have, silly, and enough to give you about twenty pounds to take with you. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t spent a fearful amount of money, because I have.”
“Oh well, as long as you’ve got some left it’s all right.” Flame had begun to enjoy herself again. And she was also beginning to love the feeling of being able to kick her legs about. She got into the taxi with a feeling of wild adventure and exhilaration. Waterloo did not take long, nor did the interview at the office in the hall of the Strand Palace Hotel. And then brother and sister found themselves being whisked upwards in a lift that made a sweet, soft noise like a kettle boiling.
“Oh, heavenly! there’s a door in between our rooms.” Flame stood in the middle of the carpet flapping her coat up and down. This was real excitement, a hotel all by themselves. And down below them the sonorous roar of London. Flame laughed jubilantly aloud.
“Don’t get excited.” But Nigel was also enjoying himself enormously. It was such a frightful relief to feel themselves under a roof with everything done. Now there was really nothing to do but to lie doggo until the next day, and then to see Flame off at Liverpool Street. But to he doggo for a whole evening, with all its glorious possibilities! It was too tantalizing. Besides, it would give Flame a chance to get into evening clothes. No; they would go out and enjoy themselves and chance being seen. “Look here, we’ll do a theatre,” he said abruptly.
“Nigel, by ourselves!” Flame was breathless.
“Yes, of course, donkey, who else? You unpack and I’ll clear off, and if you can’t manage anything, give me a shout.”
“What? Shall I have to put on evening clothes?”
“Of course. Cut along and have a bath; you need it—your face is absolutely black. It’s at the end of the corridor. Put on your bath-gown. Now, hurry up and don’t get one of your vague fits on.” Nigel spoke bracingly.
Nigel chose The Girl in the Jam Puff because Walter Kerry was in it. But he rather regretted his choice. Flame, who had never been to anything more than a pantomime, was in convulsions of laughter from beginning to end. Several people in the stalls turned round and laughed in sympathy with the charming boy, who opened his mouth wide and showed two beautiful rows of tiny teeth. “Nigel, I shall burst!” Flame had both hands held tightly to her pleated shirt and was rocking from side to side.
“Don’t make such a row!” Nigel was also laughing, only more reluctantly. Flame was beginning to make them conspicuous, and it alarmed him. “Don’t make such a row or I shall take you out,” he said in a fierce whisper.
“Not before it’s done?” Flame was petrified.
“Yes, I shall if you make a row so that people turn round. Shut up and enjoy it quietly. Your tie’s all under one ear too. You are hopeless. Pull it back.”
“Which way?” Flame was hauling wildly, her small face grave again. Nigel was going to get cross; now everything would be spoilt.
“The other way.” Nigel cast an uneasy glance sideways. Flame did not look in the least like a boy now. She had a sort of wild look on her face that a boy never got, and her hair was all rough. “Away from me!” he hissed.
“Is that right?” By now Flame could easily have cried, and her hands were damp and nervous.
“Better.” Nigel riveted his attention on the stage again, and Flame tried to follow suit.
But she was shaken and a little unhappy, and when the heavy plush curtains fell together after the last act but one, she tugged at her brother’s sleeve. “I want to go out,” she whispered.
“Why?” Nigel had begun to enjoy himself again; besides, it was not safe to go out with the lights up.
“You’re cross and it makes me miserable. Besides, look over there; it’s Gerald in that box. Supposing he sees us, he will tell mother.”
“Gerald! Where?”
“There, with that lady with hardly any back to her dress. Nigel, are you allowed to dress like that in public?”
“Keep your head down,” Nigel was hissing with terror. Oh for the lights to go out again! They were done if Colonel Forsythe saw them, and people had a ghastly way of looking at you if you were thinking or talking about them. There! he had turned, and was looking their way. Now he had leaned forward and picked up the opera-glasses from the velvet ledge. “Keep your head down.” Nigel, with his own chin on his shirtfront, was white with fear.
“Seen a ghost, Gerry?” The lady with Colonel Forsythe was looking at him rather curiously. What was he staring at all of a sudden? she wondered. She settled her skirt a little resentfully. But Colonel Forsythe did not answer; he was out of the box and half-way down the red carpeted stairs before she had realized he was gone.
“He’s gone,” Flame, who had been peeping up under her long lashes, whispered excitedly.
“Gone where? Oh, thank God!” for the orchestra had struck up again, and the lights had gone out with a wink. “Flame, we must clear out of this at once. Don’t wait for anything; just follow me.”
“Before it’s done?” But Nigel silenced any protest by a sharp backward kick, and Flame followed her brother without any further demur. But they were too late. Gerald Forsythe was standing waiting for them in the red and gold circular foyer. He was lighting a cigarette.
“Hallo, Nigel!” He only glanced casually at the second figure in evening dress. “Where are you staying?”
“At the Strand Palace.” Nigel Peterson’s mouth was shaking in spite of his desperate efforts to control it.
“Well, I’ll be round by half-past eleven; don’t go to bed, will you?”
“No, all right.” But Nigel swung round with despair in his heart. Thrice damned fool that he had been not to stay at home for that evening. “Come on,” he spoke roughly over his shoulder to his sister.
“Well?” Colonel Forsythe had his sturdy legs crossed. The lift, with its singing noise of nearly boiling water, had just deposited him on the third floor of the Strand Palace Hotel.
“Well, you’ve done us down, that’s all.” If Nigel had done what he wanted to do, he would have cast himself down on the bed and shed bitter tears.
“Well, but what does it mean?” Colonel Forsythe nodded towards the second door. “Is Flame in there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, carry on; I want to hear.”
“There’s nothing to tell you—it’s obvious. You know as much as I do about Flame’s engagement having been broken off. Well, according to Flame and Waterton, the mater’s all out to get her into a convent in France. Waterton’s read a certain amount of correspondence, I gather—he’s sure to have done; they all do. Well, Flame wired to me in an awful funk, and I got leave from the Head and came up. And the rest you see. I dressed her up in my clothes and to-morrow she was to have sailed for Bombay.”
“Bombay!”
“Yes; Waterton’s got a married daughter out there.”
“But what in Heaven’s name!. . .”
“Oh, shut up; you don’t know the mater as I do!” Then a tear did find its way out from under the faintly freckled eyelid; and Nigel flung himself down in a chair. Flame! Her life would be hell from this time forward, and he would be able to do nothing.
Colonel Forsythe sat a little forward, moved, in spite of himself. It was a harebrained scheme, to give it its mildest term. But he had had a prolonged scene that afternoon with this boy’s mother at the Grosvenor Hotel, and the memory of it still lingered. “Flame! she has wormed her way into your good graces somehow, I’ll . . .” and there had really been a terrible look on the red mouth.
“Look here,” he said, and then the communicating door opened and Flame came in.
“Clear out, Flame!” Nigel jerked up an angry head.
“No, don’t, because Gerald will do as I ask him, because he’s already been most fearfully kind to me. Gerald”—Flame, looking delicious in the short black dinner-jacket, fell on her knees beside the big chair—“Gerald, you were frightfully kind to me before, when I easily could have died with misery; be kind now and don’t upset our plans. Nigel’s got the ticket and everything, and I don’t know what he hasn’t spent. Don’t upset it, darling, darling Gerald.”
“Shut up, Flame.”
But Colonel Forsythe interrupted, laying a gentle hand on the bowed yellow head. She might have been his own daughter, this little kneeling thing. And the woman certainly had the temper of a fiend. “Leave her alone, Nigel,” he said; “she’s right, in a way. And don’t look at me as if you’d like to cut my throat. I don’t want to butt in unless I can’t help it. But I must know this: has Flame anywhere certain to go to at the other end? If not, I must put a stopper on it.”
“Oh, I have, I have!” Flame broke in excitedly. “I know Waterton’s married daughter; she often used to come and have tea with us in the nursery.”
“And . . .” and then Colonel Forsythe broke off and glanced across the room. “I’ll settle it all with Nigel,” he said; “you go to bed, Flame. But I promise you this, that unless when we have talked it all out there seems any very violent reason why you shouldn’t go, I won’t interfere. But you must promise me this, Flame: that you will write to me from every port and tell me how you are getting on. See?” and then Colonel Forsythe beamed contentedly. After all, as he thought, as Flame after a grateful kiss closed the door behind her, what was it to do with him? He had broken with their mother, and there his responsibility ended. And left alone to the tender mercies of that termagant, what might not become of that gentle little child? He turned again to the boy in front of him.
But later, as he crossed Trafalgar Square, he did have one or two very severe twinges of conscience. A man of his age, dealing with two children like that, ought to have immediately telephoned to the Grosvenor and had them handed over into the charge of their mother. And then he shook his head as he visualized the mother as he had last seen her. No, no, anything but that. And that nice boy . . . how thankful he was that he had cut clear of the whole thing. It hadn’t been right to let it go on so long—it hadn’t been right.
Liverpool Street Station is not an inspiring spot to be seen off from, and Flame, clutching her umbrella-case and Burberry, thought it the most dreary station she had ever been in. And there were such crowds; almost every other minute a gate from a platform would clash open and crowds of drab, weary-looking people would flood through it, leaving behind them a steaming train, that gave forth ugly screams as it started to snort backwards. And all the people seemed to stare fixedly in front of them and dash for an exit, no joy or expectation in their faces, nothing but—nothing but what? Flame tried to analyse it. Nothing but endurance, the thing she had seen in the face of the man in Westminster Abbey. How awful to live like that, only bearing things, not enjoying them or making them part of a wonderfully deliriously exciting whole.
“Wake up!” Nigel, his young face working, was watching his sister. Here they must part; how could he get through it without crying like a baby? “There’s your train; have you got everything? Just go through your pockets while I hold your things. Ticket, money, passport?”
“Yes.” Flame, her face a shade whiter, located each thing in turn. “Nigel . . . I can’t!” She suddenly burst out crying.
“You must; it’s the only thing now. Don’t cry, dear.” Nigel’s young face was rigid. “Here, hop into this ‘first’; there’s no one in it.” He laid the coat and umbrella down on the padded seat. “Flame, darling old thing, darling old girl, good-bye . . .” and Nigel Peterson made a great sobbing choke in his throat as he clutched his sister.
“Nigel, supposing anything happens to you while I’m away—supposing you die?” The slim figure in the lounge suit was rent with sobs. Oh, the awful, awful misery of all this! Wouldn’t it have been better to marry Lord Lovegrove after all? Then she would at least have been able to have Nigel to stay. “Oh, Nigel, must I go—must I go?” she wailed.
“Yes, of course you must.” Flame’s collapse steadied her brother. “Of course you must, and you’ll love it when you’re once started. It’s only the beginning that’s so miserable. Here, wipe your eyes, Flame; someone’s coming and they’ll see.”
“Not in here?”
“Yes, I expect they are; you can’t expect to keep it to yourself. There now, that’s better.” Nigel made a systematic tour of his sister’s face with his gay silk handkerchief. “Now, then, old thing, I won’t hang about any more; give me a good hug and then I’ll clear off;” and with one more convulsive squeeze Nigel Peterson was gone, diving through the groups of people gathered in little knots on the platform, the tears running unchecked down his cheeks.
Left alone, Flame sank down in the corner of the compartment and gave way to unrestrained tears. Nigel had gone—Nigel, the one person in the world, except Waterton, that she loved. And here she was, absolutely alone, with this desperate journey in front of her; and then, to her horror, there were voices outside the carriage and the handle was twisted round, and then, to the accompaniment of a pleasant laugh, a woman stepped up into the compartment, a despatch-case in her hand.
“Yes, I’ll have all the small things in here, please. Doris, don’t you wait.” The woman had got out again and was talking to another woman very much like her, who was standing, her hand on the window-frame.
“Oh, it’s all right; I’ll see the last of you.” But there were tears in the eyes and voice of the woman speaking, and Flame, who up to that moment had been rather interested, buried her face in her handkerchief again and wept anew. And the porter, who was stacking the umbrellas and hat-box in the rack, averted his eyes kindly; he always disliked this boat-train to Tilbury—such a lot of crying and such-like. And he pocketed his tip with a gruff “Thank you,” and walked off to try to pick up a job from an incoming local.
“Too damp over there for me by ’arf,” as he said to another porter whom he passed leaning cheerfully against a mountain of luggage labelled “Bombay.”
“Oh, do we get out here?” Flame, who had cried steadily all the way down to Tilbury, raised a face almost unrecognizable as the train drew up between the platforms.
The woman opposite smiled. “Yes, we do,” she said; and there were marks of tears on her own face. The parting from home and family never got easier. But Hester Lane was possessed of a passion for her work, and, after all, parting with home and family meant the resumption of that work—the work of a doctor to the purdah women in India.
“Oh, what do I do now, then?” Flame had jumped to her feet and was beginning to seize on her few possessions.
“We have our medical examination when they’ve looked at our passports, and then we go straight on board.”
“Our what?” Flame went suddenly white.
“We have to pass the doctor—only a matter of form, he’ll just feel your pulse, and nod, and pass you on,” said Dr. Lane. “We have a woman, so she’ll probably fuss more,” and Dr. Lane smiled.
“Oh, how awful!” Flame’s lip was quivering.
“Oh no, it’s not; just follow along after me,” said Dr. Lane reassuringly. But inwardly she felt a little contemptuous. What a weakling! What on earth would become of him in the country to which he was going? For Dr. Lane had seen the labels on the two capacious suit-cases.
But Flame’s heart was beating like a trip-hammer. And the doctor behind the wooden barrier did hold the thin wrist a little longer than he generally did, because of the rate at which the pulse was going. But a glance down into Flame’s clear eyes reassured him—no temperature there. “All right,” he said, and smiled kindly, and Flame passed out, breathing again.
Embarking on a big liner is a very bewildering thing, especially if you are new to it. Flame lurched along up the slanting gangway with a stream of other people, also lurching. Nobody paid the slightest attention to her; they were all far too much absorbed in their own affairs. “First saloon to the right, please.” Flame was headed off in her efforts to enter the second class by a kindly man in white uniform. She stumbled along a passage smelling of paint—an enormously long passage with low curtained doors on both sides of it. What was this? Did they sleep in those funny little boxes, then? Flame, suddenly curious, thrust her head into one.
“What do you want? This is a ladies’ cabin.” It was an elderly lady who spoke, very angrily, and Flame backed out again in a panic. How awful to be shut up with someone like that for three weeks! How thankful she was that she had a cabin to herself! Ninety pounds, you would be sure to get the very best for that. She wandered on, beginning to enjoy the novelty of it all. A sailor on the quay had seized all her belongings, smiling into her frightened eyes and saying that she would find them all in her cabin as soon as she got there; so Flame was free to stroll along at ease, and she took off her bowler hat and fanned herself with it. It was hot in that narrow corridor.
“Hallo! so you’ve got on safely.” It was Dr. Lane, leaning up against the white painted wall talking to another lady. “I lost you when I came out from the doctor.”
“Yes; but somebody pushed me the way I had to go,” Flame smiled broadly. How grown-up this all made her feel—part of this great thing of steel and hawsers. “I’m looking for my cabin,” she said.
“I expect you’re on the hurricane deck; most of the men are. We poor females have to be content with deck cabins,” said Dr. Lane, and both women laughed ruefully.
“The hurricane deck!” Flame, smiling to herself, went on. It sounded lovely and breezy; how she hoped that her cabin would be up there. Twenty-eight, her number was; Nigel had written it on her labels. “Can you tell me where No. 28 cabin is, please?” she said. She had come to the end of the corridor, and was in a huge saloon full of long tables, beautifully laid for a meal. She spoke to an English steward.
“You’ll find that on the hurricane deck, sir. Up the stairs and out to the right.” The steward spoke as if he was in a desperate hurry, and his hands were overflowing with forks and spoons.
“Oh, thank you!” Flame went on again, this time enormously intrigued. Like a child diverted, her misery had gone for the moment.
“Oh, I say, how heavenly!” Flame exclaimed aloud. She was out on the deck on the riverside. Out beyond the dock in which they floated the river stretched dark and full of shipping—a tug, going full-tilt, the water swirling up astern; a barge, going very slowly, with a couple of leisurely figures lounging in the bows; and all along by the side of the river huge lean buildings—factories, Flame supposed; nobody would live in places like that.
She walked along a little, breathing in the cool air. This looked like cabins—it was a tiny passage, running inwards from the deck, and at the end of it numbers, very neatly painted in black letters on the white wall: Nos. 27, 28—29, 30. Four people. Flame turned down the tiny passage. Yes, here was hers, Nos. 27, 28. Jolly! there would be heaps of room. She pushed aside the heavy curtain and went in. It was a nice cabin, very large, with a port-hole that gave on to the deck, and there were two berths, spotlessly white and neat, one on each side of the bluey carpet. And each berth was covered with luggage.
“How can there be two people?” Flame’s breath suddenly caught in her throat. What did it mean—what did it mean? Nigel had said a cabin to herself—had he or hadn’t he? Anyhow, of course it must be like that. How could she? . . . She fled to the door and stared at the little label, so neat in its brass rim: No. 27, Mr. Hugh Keymer; No. 28, Mr. Nigel Peterson. Flame fled back again, and dragging the curtain across the brass rod behind her, she crouched down on her suit-case, holding her clenched hands over her ears. What should she do—what should she do? It must be changed. . . . She would find the woman who had come down in the train with her and ask her. She got up and fled down the stairs again.
“What do you do if you don’t like the sound of the person who’s in your cabin?” Flame had dashed along the passage and flung herself through the crimson serge curtain where she could hear Dr. Lane talking.
“Will you kindly go outside, please?” It was Dr. Lane’s friend who was speaking, furiously angry, with her hair streaming down her back in two pigtails.
“What on earth is the matter?” Dr. Lane was a good deal older than her friend, and she began to laugh. Was the boy deficient in some way? she wondered with professional curiosity. “You mustn’t dash into women’s cabins like this, you know,” she said, pushing Flame gently backwards. “Go outside, and I’ll come out.”
“Go to the purser if you really want anything altered,” she said, when she had heard Flame to a tumultuous end. “Although I happen to know Mr. Keymer, and I am sure you would find him a very kind and considerate cabin-companion. However, if you are set on it . . . But I warn you that you will find it a very difficult thing to get it altered. Rules as to accommodation on a P. & O. liner are inflexible.”
But Flame was already half-way down the corridor, tearing. ‘Purser;’ she had seen the name over a cabin door near the gangway opening. Dr. Lane watched her go and then turned back into her own cabin. There was something funny about that boy; she would keep her eye on him.
The purser, already harassed to death, wasted very little time on the distracted boy with staring eyes. “Altered, of course not!” he rapped out shortly. “Cabin to yourself, rubbish! We’re packed like sardines as it is. Yes, come in, Fergusson . . .” And as there was not room for three people in the cabin at once, Flame had to beat a retreat before a burly ship’s officer.
“Lord, what shall I do?” Flame was tearing up the stairs again. She would at any rate put all the other person’s luggage outside. She fled by the two men leaning against the wall at the end of the little corridor and began feverishly to collect it. The rugs first . . .
“I say, leave my things alone, please.” One of the men leaning against the wall had turned and was staring. “What damned cheek!” he remarked to his friend. “I’d better get along in before the kid bags all the pegs. Yes, see you later . . .” and Hugh Keymer came lounging along the corridor and stood in the narrow door, entirely filling it up.
“I say, my young friend, don’t be so free with other people’s belongings,” he said, and he came into the cabin and stood looking down at Flame. “This is your first voyage, I gather, but it’s my fifth. And I’m a good deal older than you are, so I’ll settle how things are done in this cabin. To begin with, we can’t both unpack at once, so you clear out until I’ve finished.”
“I can’t share a cabin with anyone else.” Flame was white and trembling.
“I am afraid that does not concern me,” said Hugh Keymer, stooping over a suit-case preparatory to unfastening its straps. “Get out of the way, please,” and Hugh turned his head a little impatiently.
Flame slunk out, shivering with misery and fear. This was more ghastly than, anything she had ever imagined. What should she do? Get off, while there was yet time. The thought went through her head like lightning. Nigel would understand that she couldn’t dress and undress with a strange man in the room. She dashed down the companion stairs.
Back at the open hatch through which she had come in the first instance she was pulled up short. A slowly widening strip of greenish water lay between her and the landing-stage. A powerful sailor laid a none too gentle hand on her shoulder. “Stand back there, sir, please,” he said; “the passengers are not allowed down below now. Upstairs on the left for the saloon deck.”
“I want to get off,” Flame had begun to sob.
“I’m afraid you’ve left it too late, sonnie,” said the sailor, smiling absently, his big hand cupped for a shout to the crowd in a state of feverish activity on the quay. “Let go there!” he bellowed, not taking any more notice of Flame.
The great steel hawsers creaked and groaned; the donkey engine on the lower deck brayed discordantly. Flame wrung her hands and went slowly back along the corridor she had flown along five minutes before. It was useless, then; she had got to stay where she was. . . . Sick at heart and terrified, she ascended the stairs and turned out on to the main deck—the deck below the one on to which her cabin gave. The rail was lined with people, some waving, some with handkerchiefs to their eyes. Flame joined the disconsolate little community also with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes. It was some vague consolation to find that other people minded going to India, she thought, weeping despairingly.
Nothing remains acutely awful for very long, especially to the very young, so by the time Flame had stopped crying, and had watched the people a little, and had felt a few pangs of very healthy hunger, she felt very much better. After all, as she meditated, standing with her back to the rail, leaning against it, no one looked at her particularly, so she must appear all right. And probably she would be able to manage all right in the cabin. Mr. Keymer, being old, would go to bed very late, so she could go first, and lie with the covers all drawn up over her head. Then in the morning she would get up and have a bath and dress in the bathroom. Flame breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that evidently the four upstairs cabins were catered for specially in that way; there would not be an awful walk and meeting crowds of people. So she felt decidedly better, and when a bugle rang out, and gloomy people turned from their staring at the river down which they were majestically proceeding, and started off for somewhere else, she followed them, her small hands stuck jauntily in her pockets.
It was lunch, very elaborate and beautifully served, and Flame was waited on by a black man with a very shiny head and beautiful teeth. He was dressed in immaculate blue serge uniform with an Eton coat, and he stood behind her chair, like Robert did. Flame was enormously pleased.
“What sort of a man is he?” she whispered confidentially to the lady who sat beside her. She had a lady on each side of her, but she spoke to the one who had on the nicest clothes and looked the youngest.
“I beg your pardon.” The lady was disappointing when she turned, in that she was not nearly so young as Flame had thought her. Her hair was very fair, certainly, but her face was covered with wrinkles, especially round her eyes. And all over her face was a sort of blueish tinge. Too much powder, thought Flame wisely. But she beamed at Flame when she saw what a very young man it was.
“Do you mean the man behind your chair?” she asked. “That is a Goanese waiter. This must be your first voyage if you don’t know that.”
“It is,” said Flame, and melancholy descended on her again.
“But you are sure to enjoy it,” said the lady, whose name was Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, and she was smiling kindly at Flame. What a love of a boy! she was thinking—such a dear yellow head, and the black eyebrows and eyelashes looking so fascinating with it.
“Do you think I shall?” said Flame, lifting still, grey eyes.
“I am sure you will,” replied Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, with enthusiasm; “especially if you play Bridge.”
“I do, rather badly,” replied Flame, who had often made an anguished fourth with her mother and Gerald when Nigel was at home for the holidays. “But I don’t like it,” she concluded decidedly.
“Oh, well, you will find it passes the time very pleasantly on board ship,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne easily. “Try this cold pie; it is excellent. I know these pies of old.”
Flame tried it and liked it, and had some more. And when, after a good deal of fruit salad and cream and a cup of excellent coffee, she slid out of her revolving chair, she felt that she really was going to enjoy herself enormously.
“And what are you going to do now?” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne. She had caught Flame up at the foot of the stairs. “Come and finish your cigarette with me. Have you got a deck chair?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Flame blankly. “How awful! I didn’t know I should want one.”
“Of course you will.” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne laughed musically. “You must hire one from the deck steward; it’s quite simple. Only get hold of him soon, before all the best ones are gone.”
So Flame went off in search of the deck steward, and very soon found him, neat and obliging in his blue uniform. And the chair was produced, and set down next to Mrs. Holroyd-Browne’s in a delightfully sheltered corner, and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne lit a second cigarette and passed her tortoiseshell and gold case over to Flame.
“No, thank you,” said Flame, who had promised Nigel never to have more than two a day, however much she wanted to.
“Abstemious boy!” laughed Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, putting one beautifully shod suede foot over the other, and laughing archly across the small space that separated the two chairs.
But Flame had spied a tall figure in the distance, and was not listening. That was her cabin companion, and it meant that the cabin was clear for her to unpack. She must go at once. “I say, I’ve got to go and unpack,” she said, struggling abruptly out of the sagging canvas of her chair.
“Not at once, surely,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne reproachfully.
“Yes, now, this instant, or I may not get another chance,” said Flame, and her small feet twinkled over the spotless boards of the deck.
Mr. Keymer was a very neat man; Flame came to that conclusion swiftly. Everything in the cabin was so neatly arranged—bath-gown hanging on the door, safety razor in one of the polished partitions of the looking-glass cupboard thing, strop caught over one of the little acorn knobs of the cupboard, and striped pyjamas (silk) lying on the pillow.
“I wish mine were silk.” Flame got hers out and laid them rather dejectedly on the pillow; they were striped Ceylon flannel, not as new as they might have been, either; all Nigel’s best ones had been at school. But still, they would have to do. Her shoes were new, anyhow, and she surveyed a gleaming row of them with satisfaction. It did not take long to unpack—-Flame was travelling light—-and it did not take long either to fill the two empty drawers with the clothes she possessed. She looked with pleasure on the four pairs of white flannel trousers and blue blazer. She would wear some of those to-morrow, she decided. She laid her evening suit carefully away. What a mercy she had had a chance of trying it on. Now she would be able to manage it all right; otherwise the collar might have stumped her.
“Getting on all right?” Hugh Keymer had been rather regretting his brusque treatment of the boy who shared his cabin. He had sat next to Dr. Lane at lunch, and she had told him how he had cried all the way down to Tilbury. So he thought he would stroll along to the cabin and have a look at him.
“Oh yes, thank you,” said Flame, looking up with a bright smile. This man had a nice face, after all—a good face. “Hallo! you’re the man I saw in Westminster Abbey,” she exclaimed after an astounded pause.
“Westminster Abbey!” Hugh Keymer was mystified. Then he remembered, and smiled. “Of course,” he said. “I thought I had seen you somewhere before. You sat opposite me in the chancel.”
“Yes, I did,” said Flame. “Oh, wasn’t it heavenly?” and she sat down abruptly on the edge of her berth. “Do you know, I’ve never felt that sort of singing feeling in my soul before,” she said. “Do you know?—as if you wanted to drag out all the feeling part of you, and cast it down at somebody’s feet.”
“My sainted aunt!” Hugh Keymer spoke sotto voce and with conscious discomfort. Was the boy dotty? as Hester had rather inferred. If so, he was in for a cheerful voyage! “No, I don’t know the feeling, I am glad to say,” he replied rather frigidly; “anyhow, I just came along to see that you were all right; take the pegs that are left,” and Hugh Keymer, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, went out again.
Flame, left alone, sighed. “He seems a little touchy,” she said, and she got her sponge out of its waterproof bag with her feelings down at zero again. Three weeks in a tiny space like this with a man who got angry easily! It might be simply ghastly. “Oh, Nigel, Nigel!” Flame flung herself face downwards on to her berth and shed a few very bitter tears into the despised pyjamas.
Even to the most experienced traveller there is something very awe-inspiring about the first night out at sea. It is so dark, so mysterious. The darkness seems to come right up to the rail of the ship and touch you on the elbow. And it is so relentless, too; you see the lights of places you know—ordinary cheerful places, like Margate and Eastbourne—and yet if you were to rush up to the captain on the bridge deck and offer him everything you possessed in this world he would only smile at your entreaties to be allowed to land. No, it is another case of ‘for better, for worse,’ and Flame all unconsciously felt this as, very slim and neat in her evening clothes, she leant over the rail, straining her swollen eyes out into the darkness. For she had begun to cry again. Things are always more desolate when it begins to get dark, and she had had a very agitating evening.
She had unpacked, and had then flung herself down on her berth and cried. And when she had come round to a realization of ordinary things again, she found she had been to sleep, and that a steward was standing by her bed. “A cup of tea, sir,” this kind man had said, and he handed it to her with a plate of biscuits. Tea had restored her a little, and, finished, she had carried the cup and plate outside and put them on a grating. Then, seeing the deck fairly deserted, she had started to walk up and down. It was heavenly cool—in fact, almost cold—and, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, she had rushed in to get her Burberry, and had then felt much happier, her slim legs concealed. So the exercise had done her good, and when the ever active deck steward had approached her with an armful of rugs, she had cheerfully asked him what time dinner would be.
“Half-past seven, sir.”
“What time do the people generally start dressing for dinner?” questioned Flame anxiously.
“Oh, from half-past six onwards, sir.”
“Oh, I see,” and then Flame glanced at the silver watch on her wrist. It was nearly six now. She must begin, otherwise that dreadful man would be coming up to change. So she walked as carelessly as she could to her own cabin, and, once inside, flung herself passionately on the door and locked and bolted it.
She had got to the shirt stage when there was a sharp rap outside. It was Mr. Keymer’s voice, rather impatient.
“Open the door, will you?” he said. “I want to get a couple of books.”
“I can’t; I’m not properly dressed,” returned Flame, suddenly pallid.
“Never mind that; I shan’t be a second.”
There was an awful silence. Flame could hear Mr. Keymer clearing his throat. Then he spoke again, more quietly this time. “Look here, you’re not supposed to lock your cabin door,” he said; “open it at once, please.”
“I can’t!” Flame had her hands held tightly over her breast.
“Damn you, do what you’re told!” Mr. Keymer rattled the handle, and Flame, terrified at this, cried out: “I will,” she said. “Oh, wait a minute—wait a minute!”
How often in after-years Hugh Keymer laughed tenderly as he thought of that shrinking little figure in the bath-gown crushed up against the end of the berth; but now he was annoyed, and he walked into the cabin trying not to show it. He took two books out of the rack. “Hurry up with your dressing,” he said; “I shall be back in about another ten minutes.”
“I don’t know if I shall be quite ready by then,” returned Flame, thinking in a frenzy of the ties that she had not been able to find. Hunting for them had delayed her; she had had to go twice through the suit-cases as well as through the things in the drawers. Fancy if she had left them at the Strand Palace Hotel! What should she do—what should she do? . . .
“Well, I shan’t be more than ten minutes,” said Hugh, and he turned on his heel and went out of the door. But he was back before Flame had done more than look all through one suit-case. She lifted her face, pale with anxiety. “I can’t find my dress-tie,” she said.
“I think I have a spare one.” Hugh Keymer looked with amusement at the small slight figure in shirt and trousers. The kid had got one of the loops of the braces twisted. What was it doing out alone like this? “Here you are,” he said, and opening a drawer he took out a narrow black strip and threw it across the cabin.
“But it isn’t tied ready,” exclaimed Flame, as she looked at it lying in her hand.
“No, I should hope it isn’t,” laconically returned the tall man, who had taken off his coat and was settling it on a wooden hanger.
“Don’t start undressing until I’ve gone,” cried out Flame, flushing all over her small pointed face.
Hugh Keymer turned round and stared. The kid must be mad; he came to the conclusion swiftly; He would go to the purser the next day and find out a little about him; meanwhile he would humour him.
“Very well,” he said, and he sat good-temperedly down on the edge of the berth and waited.
Flame advanced to the glass, the tie in her hand. How did you tie a dress-tie? she wondered uneasily. It looked easy enough when Nigel did it, but sometimes those easy-looking things were the most difficult. She slipped it round her neck, and pulled the ends even.
“I say, don’t ruin it!” Hugh Keymer spoke after two minutes of intensest irritation. He had made up his mind not to say anything, but it was too much for him. Besides, he only had two black evening ties with him.
“I can’t do it,” faltered Flame, and in the mirror Hugh Keymer could see the small face working.
“Let me do it for you, then?” Hugh Keymer got up and strolled to the glass.
“Oh, thank you!” Flame swung round, her face all alight with joy and relief. “How ghastly I have made it look!” she said, as Hugh wound it leisurely round two of his fingers to obliterate the creases.
“Yes; it doesn’t improve a tie to be hauled at like that. Now turn your back to me; it’s easier to tie a bow tie on somebody else if they’re not facing you.”
Flame turned obediently, and Hugh, behind her, strained the tie carefully round the collar and then, with a couple of deft twists, tied an excellent bow. Flame watched him excitedly in the mirror.
“I say, you do do it well!” she exclaimed.
“Long practice,” returned Hugh Keymer, who under pretext of adjusting the bow to the exact middle of the collar was scrutinizing the face below his in the glass. There was a something about it—what was it? Not insanity, though; he dismissed that theory at once.
Flame lifted her little white chin. “Has anyone told you what an awfully nice face you’ve got?” she said, and she smiled up into the mirrored eyes.
Hugh Keymer was taken aback and a little disgusted. He dropped his hands and turned on his heel, ignoring the question. “Here, don’t go without your waistcoat,” he said, as Flame, after a couple of minutes’ agonized fumbling with her coat, stood upright in it.
“I’ve annoyed you by saying that about your face,” stammered Flame, not hearing the remark about the coat.
“Oh no, it’s all right,” but Hugh Keymer spoke very shortly. He would certainly get the kid shifted. “Put on your waistcoat,” he said.
“Oh, haven’t I got it on?” Flame spoke with tears in her eyes. There was something about this man that had given her a wonderful warm, comforting feeling in her soul. And now he was frowning.
“No, you haven’t.” But as he spoke, a little impatiently, Hugh had his eyes on the little face again. What was it? he wondered.
So Flame, as she leant over the rail of the great liner, listening to the throb, throb of its powerful engines, felt despair well up in her soul again. It was so lonely, so desolate; everybody but her knew somebody. They were all sitting in groups or walking up and down the deck together. Dr. Lane and her own cabin companion were together, walking up and down, she with her face turned up and he with his tall head a little bent. And Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was sitting with another lady talking vociferously about clothes; they had begun it at dinner, and had got very friendly over it. And she—Flame—was all alone, and England was getting farther and farther away. Flame laid her head down on the rail and wept. No one took any notice of her; Hugh Keymer because he was absorbed in talking to Hester Lane, one of his eldest friends, and Hester Lane because she was absorbed in listening to Hugh; so after about half an hour’s miserable homesick weeping, Flame lifted her head, wiped her eyes surreptitiously on the back of her hand, and went up to her cabin. Bed would be something, anyhow; there she would be at peace until the tall man came to bed too, and by that time she would be asleep, she hoped and prayed. So she undressed, washed elaborately in the beautiful white-tiled bathroom near at hand, brushed her teeth in the adjacent lavatory, also beautifully equipped, and, switching out the light, crawled in under the sheets, wondering how it was that anything so narrow as a berth could be so terrifically comfortable.
Hugh Keymer came to bed very late; he had been drawn into a men’s Bridge four, and he came into the cabin very quietly. But Flame was awake; her afternoon’s sleep had used up a good deal of the sleep that would have served her in such good stead on that first miserable night, and she was huddled under the blankets sobbing hopelessly. She had fallen asleep at first, and had then waked wondering where she was, and the newness and the strangeness of it all had stabbed anew into her soul. “Nigel, Nigel!” The words came out in an overwhelming flood of homesickness.
Hugh Keymer stopped, his finger on the electric switch. He had made up his mind as he came up the stairs that he would not grope about the cabin in the dark; let the kid take his chance if he had already gone to bed. But at the sound of the sobs his heart melted and he took his hand down; so had he sobbed in the old days on his first night back at school.
“I say, don’t give it up,” he said, and very kindly he sat down on the end of the narrow berth. “We all know what it is to leave home for the first time. Get a pull on yourself and tell me about it; it may make you feel better.”
But Flame, startled and terrified, burrowed lower into the blankets. The man coming to bed! And no one ever shared a cabin with a man—at least, not a strange one. What would people think?—Nigel, for instance.
“I’m all right,” she choked, and she turned a little in a wild effort for self-control, and looked up at the face seen dimly close to hers.
And Hugh Keymer was touched at the sudden struggle with obviously overmastering misery, and he put out a kind hand. “Tell me a little about it all,” he said, and he laid his hand on what he thought would be a shoulder.
But it was not, and Hugh Keymer stood abruptly upright. There was a palpitating silence, and then Flame, all unconscious, spoke:
“You see, it’s the desperate loneliness of it,” she said, and as she spoke she rolled over and faced the cabin. “That’s what I mind so much. I’ve got a twin brother, and although he goes to school we always seem as if we belong to each other. And now I seem to be getting farther and farther away from him; in fact, I am getting farther and farther away,” and Flame wept anew.
Hugh Keymer did not answer. He was staring blankly out into the darkness. What in the name of Heaven was he to do? Keep quiet; he came to the conclusion swiftly. But in the meantime . . . and he slid a seeking foot round the cabin, located the carpet stool, and, opening it, drew it up close to the bed. Then he sat down on it, linking his hands loosely in front of him.
“Look here,” he said. “Don’t cry any more; men don’t cry. Keep a stiff upper lip, and things will be better in the morning. And meanwhile, try and go to sleep. It’s fearfully late—almost early, in fact.”
“What time is it, then?”
“A quarter to one.”
“Oh, how late! Do you always go to bed so late?”
“Generally.” Hugh’s nice mouth smiled.
“Oh, I say, how tired you must be! I’m sleepy now,” and through the darkness Hugh heard a little yawn, like the creak of a kitten’s pink jaws.
“Good. Just roll over and shut your eyes, then, and you’ll be off in two twos.”
“I wish you would sit by me till I am off,” said Flame, and Hugh, sitting very still, felt with alarm the groping of a soft hand on his knee. “I should like to take hold of your hand too; it would give me a heavenly comforted feeling inside. You’ve got that sort of a face too—a sort of understanding face; I saw it in Westminster Abbey. Do you think it would matter if I did take hold of your hand, or would it be the sort of thing that a man of my age would never do?”
“Oh, I don’t think it would matter!” Hugh’s lean brown hand closed on the softly groping one. “You see, I’m very old compared to you,” he said, and the kind face suddenly looked weary.
“How old?”
“Forty.”
“Oh, I say, how old!” Flame spoke in consternation.
“Yes, it’s desperate, isn’t it?” But the weariness broke up into laughter notwithstanding.
“Now I hold your hand I feel that heavenly sleepy feeling creeping all over me,” said Flame drowsily. “Stay a minute or two more, will you?”
“Yes, I will, certainly,” said Hugh Keymer, and he sat until the clasp of the soft little fingers relaxed and the breath came slow and evenly from between the parted lips. Then he got up, and, tucking his pyjamas under his arm, tiptoed along to the bathroom.
But all the same, back in his cabin again, in spite of his calm acceptance of what was indubitably a fact, Hugh Keymer took a very long time to go to sleep. He could hear Flame’s soft, even breathing, and once or twice she caught her breath in a long sobbing sigh. It was not an easy situation, even to a man as much of the world as Hugh Keymer. Who was she? . . . that was the question that occupied him to the exclusion of everything else at the moment. Gently bred, apparently, but then you could never tell; he might at any moment find himself horribly involved—ignominiously involved, anyhow; and Hugh Keymer was not a man who cared to be made to look ridiculous. But, by Gad! what a plot for one of these flimsy novels that flood the market nowadays, and the mind of the novelist fastened on it. Not his line, though; he soon dismissed it with a shrug. But what was he to do? Of course, really and truly there was no doubt about it, he ought at once, or at any rate the first thing in the morning, to inform the purser. Then the girl, whoever she was, would be made to give a certain amount of information about herself, and would be put off at Gibraltar to catch the next homegoing steamer. But that would mean a great deal of very uncomfortable gossip, in which he himself would be very largely involved. What should he do? And Hugh Keymer, kicking back the sheet, crossed one long leg over the other and stared up at the white ceiling, dimly seen by the shaded electric light from the corridor outside. Keep quiet! He came to the conclusion after ten minutes’ profound thought. Keep quiet, at any rate until they were getting near to Marseilles, and then, if he found that it was necessary, he could inform the authorities and she could be sent to the nearest Girls’ Friendly Society. But meanwhile—and Hugh Keymer’s mouth twitched—he was in command of the situation, and ‘Master’ Peterson must be made to remember it. And Hugh Keymer rolled blithely over on to his side and went to sleep.
Hester Lane was one of those unmarried women, no longer quite young, without whom the world would be a very much poorer place than it is. There is no one in this world who makes a better friend or a more sympathetic confidant than an unmarried woman. A married woman may tell her husband what you confide in her; of course, on the other hand, she may not, but ten to one she has the idea that she and her husband are the same person, and so it comes quite naturally to her to pass gently on what you fondly imagine will be locked behind her lips for ever. But the unselfish unmarried woman is the gentlest, wisest, and most sympathetic of confidants; and well she may be, for when you have attained to sweet unselfish spinsterhood you have attained to a great deal.
“Well, this is pretty gorgeous, isn’t it?” Hugh Keymer, his face stinging from the spray that from time to time fell on the upper deck with a rattle of small shot, dropped his long length in a vacant chair and beamed.
“Um—m—m.” Dr. Lane was lying at full length in her chair and was well covered up with a rug. She turned her head rather carefully.
“Good Heavens! you don’t mean to say you feel this?”
“Not as long as I keep still. But to see you going so joyfully up and down the deck . . .” Dr. Lane shuddered.
“I say, I am sorry . . . let me get you something.” Hugh Keymer’s delightful face was instantly all sympathy.
“No, no; I’m perfectly all right, really. But when you’ve stood swaying for twenty minutes in front of a glass trying to do your hair, all you crave for is to lie still. Don’t talk about it. I’ve only just come upstairs, and I shall feel better in half an hour or so.”
“Have you had any breakfast?”
“Breakfast!”—there was a world of horror in the word.
“And you a doctor! Oh, you women! No, I won’t get you anything you won’t like, but a dry biscuit or two you are to have,” and Hugh Keymer heaved himself out of the sagging canvas of his chair and made his way down the deck, hands buried deep in his pockets, collar hunched up high under his ears. For although the early October sun made everything look glorious, there was a decided nip in the air. But how glorious it did look! And Hugh, after his rapidly delivered order to the deck steward, stood leaning up against the companion door staring out to sea. Nothing but grey heaving water all around them, not a particle of land in sight. And ahead the great stem of the liner, engulfed one moment and the next flung high, scooping up with it volumes of white churned-up water and flinging it with a clatter of artillery on to the lower deck. And above them, seen very white against the blue sky, seagulls, crying hoarsely and beating up against the wind with outstretched, powerful wings. Hugh, withdrawing his eyes from the glory round him, came to the conclusion that only man is vile. Every element conspiring to make the day a gorgeous one, and yet the whole deck strewn with nothing but mummified figures, blind and deaf to everything but their own stupid discomfort. Hugh, for the moment, felt the wild intolerance of the excellent sailor for the indifferent one.
But his voice was just as kind as ever as he stooped over Dr. Lane with the plate of biscuits. “Not a word,” he said, “until you have eaten at least three.”
“Tyrant!” But Dr. Lane ate, notwithstanding. Everyone always did do what Hugh Keymer told them. And there was a streak of returning colour in her cheeks as she handed back the empty plate. “I needed that,” she said.
“Of course you did.”
“But only you could have made me eat them.”
“Ah, well, that I don’t know.” Hugh Keymer looked quickly out to sea. He always felt a little ashamed when he was with Hester Lane. She was such an absolutely top-hole character, and yet she lavished so much unselfish devotion on him. And he wasn’t fit to touch the fringe of it, really. . . .
“How is our little mad friend?” Dr. Lane laughed quietly.
“Feeling rather sorry for himself.” Hugh Keymer flung himself back in his chair and laughed. “But I made him get up and have a bath. It was a brutal thing to do, really, but I knew it would be better for him in the end. And it will be. He came back as white as a sheet, and with just about as much kick in him as a drowned rat; but he crawled into bed, and I went up to have a look at him after breakfast and he was sleeping like a baby. Also, he had lost all that pallid look. If only more people would do that—really let it have its way with them at first—I believe they would be far better.”
“You brute!” But Hester Lane’s eyes were soft.
How heavenly to be really looked after by this man! she was thinking—to be in his cabin, close to him. And yet the woman who bore his name, what was she doing at this moment? Probably staring with brooding, bloodshot eyes out of her window, cursing the day when she had consented to enter the ruinously expensive Home where the Mrs. Keymers of this world are catered for. The wife of this man! Oh, the ghastly, hideous shame of it! For Hester Lane, although religious, was never feeble. And she could never bring herself to think that a union between a man of this kind and a degraded specimen of womanhood such as he called wife was anything but a terrible disaster. Not a so-called chastening by a God of Love, Who, if He allowed such a thing, would not be worthy of the name, but a blow of Fate, out of the darkness, not to be explained in this world, but explained hereafter, and with glorious recompense.
“I’m not really a brute, you know, Hester.” Hugh Keymer had suddenly the look of a shy boy as he glanced across the small space that separated the two chairs.
Hester Lane’s eyes suddenly filled. “You need not tell me that, Hugh,” she said, and she drew a hand from under the rug and laid it on the lean brown one close to hers. And then there was a little silence. Both were thinking of the same thing: the voyage when they had got to know one another—quite a long time ago now, ten years. Hester had seemed much older than Hugh then, but he had aged more quickly than she, although, indeed, she had always been about five years his senior. But now his hair was turning white, although his face was young. It had been on the return voyage from Nairobi they had met, Hugh Keymer, the biographer, suddenly sprung into fame for his daring though sympathetic life of King Edward. He had been travelling with his wife—a little faded thing like a mouse, with lips tightly folded. They were an odd couple, never apart; for hours they would sit together on deck, he reading and she working or staring out to sea, always with the same funny, rather malignant look on her mouth. And then one day in the Red Sea he had gone down with what the ship’s doctor had pronounced to be influenza, and Mrs. Keymer had sat alone. And that night Hester, passing along the white painted corridor to her own cabin, had surprised Hugh Keymer swaying against the lintel of the door, clutching the serge curtain, his eyes blazing with fever. “My wife, where is she?” he had gasped, quite unconscious of what he was saying, except that he knew that he was speaking to the woman with quite steady eyes who was a doctor. And Hester, first depositing him safely on his berth with the steady grasp of the born physician, had promised to go and find out. And she had found out. Mrs. Keymer, the ceaseless vigilance of her husband relaxed, had signed for a bottle of whisky, and was lying dead-drunk under one of the saloon dining-tables.
And that was the beginning of a very beautiful friendship. Hester Lane felt like a mother over the agonized man, and she and the stewardess kept the secret well. Nobody knew why the lady doctor suddenly changed her place at meals and sat in the seat left temporarily vacant. And when they landed at Tilbury, the woman with serious eyes and the tall man gripped hands and promised to meet again. And they did, many times, and lately Hester had been largely instrumental in getting Mrs. Keymer into the Home in which she now was. For Hugh, with his work, had sometimes to have respite from his daily life, which had now become more or less of a hell.
“You a brute? You don’t know what brutality is,” she said, and then a long, sympathetic silence fell between the two.
“Well, how do you feel?” Hugh Keymer stood in the door of the cabin looking down at the little figure under the blankets. How could he ever have thought that this little creature was anything else but a girl? he marvelled.
“Better, much,” said Flame, and she showed two rows of tiny white teeth.
“Good! Are you going to get up?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Flame, and she twisted a little sideways on her berth and stared up doubtfully.
“I’ll help you dress, if you like,” said Hugh, suddenly getting a twinge of doubt, and wanting to be reassured.
“Oh no, thank you,” said Flame, and she became slowly scarlet up to the roots of her short hair.
Hugh Keymer averted his gaze considerately, but he was relieved. Apparently not an old hand at the game, and that was something to be thankful for. Because the situation had its dangerous side, and he suddenly felt that he was being a fool not to go at once to someone in authority and report it. After all, afterwards, if he was dragged into anything sordid, who would pity him? He would simply be laughed at as a fool for not having said anything sooner. But there was something in Hugh Keymer which seized on and chuckled over the situation; it was a racy one, and one that might develop very entertainingly. And he had emerged from the mire of his home anxious for diversion. Well, he had got it, pressed down and running over, and he was going to enjoy it. And the child was perfectly safe with him—so long, of course, as she remained the child she appeared. If she started to show her hand, then, of course, she must take her chance.
“Well,” he said, “I advise you to get up, anyhow. And I shall be doing my mile up and down the deck. Give me a shout if you want any help.”
“All right,” said Flame, and she smiled fleetingly. “Will you tie my tie?”
“I will, certainly.”
“All right then; I’ll call you when I have got to that,” said Flame, and very, very shyly she began to struggle her feet from under the sheet. After all, as she thought swiftly, she must behave as if she didn’t think anything of having a man in her cabin.
But Hugh had gone, backing swiftly through the curtain the moment she began to move.
Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was a member of that pathetic class of women who, growing old, will not submit to it gracefully—pathetic, above all, because if there is one thing that will not be eluded, it is the approach of middle age. It stands and waits for you: it hides like a mischievous schoolboy behind a wall and throws things over at you—things that stick, like sagging cheeks and lines and greying hair. You may stand for hours before your looking-glass and do funny exercises—turning your chin with a jerk, and staring at right angles; you may sit in the middle of a bevy of empty pots, and massage until your fingers ache; you may try and imagine that you are not dyeing your hair when you use a specially medicated shampoo powder. But you are: you are really trying to dye yourself all over like an early Briton, and it deceives nobody but yourself. Also you injure your own cause by doing it, and as you never do do it, unless it is either to keep the waning affection of one man or secure the attention of another, think of the folly of it! For men are merciless, and desperately quick to detect anything of the kind.
But Mrs. Holroyd-Browne did not think of this. She had reached the age which the French very wisely recognize and label as l’âge dangereux—the age when a woman, desperately seizing at the remnants of youth that are left to her, wonders wildly why she has not got more out of the years that have passed; the age when she realizes that her heart is just as young as ever it was, but that her body has aged, and that it can only flounder stupidly along after the spirit that is racing ahead; the age when, if she has a husband who still loves her, and who still sees her as the slim girl who stole his heart many years before, she should thank God for him, and sit down and behave herself.
But Mrs. Holroyd-Browne could not do this. To begin with, after about the first year of married life her husband had ceased to care for her very much, because she was not a woman who possessed any reserves, and, the first glamour gone, there was nothing to replace it. Also, she had always had a surface attraction for the opposite sex, so that her life had been one constant series of flirtations, more or less serious. Also, and this was a reason for which we can only condemn her, she had no children. For, for the childless woman who rises above this anguish of disappointment, and who becomes, probably because of it, a finer and more selfless character, we have nothing but admiration, and we bow the knee to her; but for the woman who deliberately sets out with the intention of frustrating God’s great Plan, and who declines for frivolous reasons to have children because the bearing of them may interfere with what she is pleased to call a ‘good time,’ we have only one word. And that word is prostitute, and prostitute without excuse.
So Mrs. Holroyd-Browne at forty-seven was a very miserable woman. It is very miserable ceaselessly to crave for the excitement and zest of an illicit love affair, and to have to see the chances of it becoming more and more remote. But there is one compensation. As the serried ranks of the war-tried heroes march past and disappear into the dust, so, out of the dust set up by those swiftly marching feet, do the straggling ranks of the new recruits appear—raw, unformed and callow, but clad, nevertheless, in the uniform of their kind, searching for experience, and flattered immeasurably by any notice shed on them by a woman whom they in their inexperience take for the arch-priestess of the temple into which they are so anxious to enter.
So Mrs. Holroyd-Browne generally had a young man hanging round her, and he fetched and carried, and stared adoringly at her, and felt in the recesses of his nice young heart how horribly casual Colonel Holroyd-Browne was to his wife, and how he would like to kick him for it. And Colonel Holroyd-Browne watched, and felt sad and amused in turns, and wished from the bottom of his very nice, although elderly, heart that his wife would not make such a damned fool of herself. But then, as he thought with the gentle compassion of the nice man, if only they had not had that one cruel disappointment about the baby that really did seem on its way things would have been different. For wives do not tell their husbands everything, and Captain Holroyd-Browne had only had the gentlest pity and sympathy for the woman who lay on the narrow bed under the mosquito curtain and screamed. As a matter of fact, only the ayah knew the real facts about that little incident, although the regimental surgeon had had his suspicions.
So Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was miserable. But as misery does not attract the young, she had to keep it well concealed, and she did so with a sort of forced archness which had now become a habit. “So cheery,” as her infant admirers gurgled. And on this, her tenth voyage East, she was more cheery than usual, because she was travelling alone. Falling exchange had not allowed of a joint holiday this time. “Hallo, you sweet thing!” she hailed Flame, who had just emerged from the companion door, very rosy and trim in white flannel trousers and blue blazer. Flame had now quite got her sea-legs, and was beginning to enjoy herself terrifically. Everything was so madly exciting, and it was such terrific fun being dressed up like a boy. She had not got to know very many people yet, and she had not yet dared to put her small nose inside the smoking-room, but she was going to do that soon. Anyhow, she was loving it all; no one suspected in the very least who she really was, and the overwhelming terror of having to share a cabin with a man had turned out to be nothing at all. For Mr. Keymer never came to bed until she was asleep, and when she waked up in the morning he had generally gone to have his bath, and he only poked his head in, fully dressed, to tell her that the bathroom was vacant if she wanted to go along to have hers.
So Flame was in the wildest spirits, and she returned Mrs. Holroyd-Browne’s salutation with enthusiasm. “Hallo!” she said, and she made a little caper and jumped over a deck-chair lying flat on the deck.
“You seem very pleased with yourself,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, and she looked with what was really tragic envy at the incarnation of youth in front of her.
“I am,” said Flame, and she sat down on the white boards of the deck and crossed her legs. “Aren’t you?” she asked, glancing up quickly.
“Now I am,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne meaningly.
“Why? Because I have come to sit by you? You dear,” said Flame, and she thrilled with a wild longing to laugh as she saw that Mrs. Holroyd-Browne got exactly the same look when she said ‘you dear’ as the governess before Mincemeat had done when Nigel had said it.
“Yes, that’s why,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne.
“But how sweet of you,” said Flame, and she put out a soft young hand and gave the .rather hard one an impulsive squeeze.
“Now, now,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne warningly, and she held up a finger, the nail of which caught the sun and gleamed.
“Why, what have I said?” asked Flame, with a look of sweetest innocence. But inwardly her heart was singing. “Fun, fun, fun!” she was chuckling to herself; “oh, what frantic fun this is being!”
“Why, a boy like you must not say those things to an old woman like me,” replied Mrs. Holroyd-Browne.
“Why not? Besides, you’re not old at all, you’re quite young,” put in Flame audaciously. And then she jumped abruptly up. “Oh, I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer now,” she said, “ but I see Mr. Keymer, and I believe he is getting names for the sports.”
“Come back as soon as you can, Cupid,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne. And when she said ‘Cupid,’ her eyes filled, and she had the first little twinge of nobility that she had ever had at all. For Flame’s small lithe figure had made her think what it would be like to have a son of your own—someone to call you mother, and to forgive the lines and grey hair because they belonged naturally to a mother, and you wouldn’t be right without them. And Mrs. Holroyd-Browne dropped back into her chair and let the tears steal quietly out from under her eyelids, and suddenly wished she was dead. It was so awful to have always to be on view, so to speak, always making efforts. And then Mrs. Holroyd-Browne wiped her eyes furtively, and got out her powder-puff and forced a sort of strained smile into the little round glass set in the lid. For the tormenting thought had suddenly come to her, why did she make efforts? What earthly good were they at her age? And then another young man came and dropped easily into the empty chair at her side, and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne felt better.
Hugh Keymer was the centre of a group of very young men when Flame came up. There were a good many young civilians going out to India for the first time in the Akola, nice boys with clever faces, fresh from Oxford or Cambridge. Poor wretches, thought the elder men in their Service—men who had given their best to the country that was now doing its best to get rid of them; what chance have they under the new regime? However, they kept their feelings to themselves, as nice men do, and smiled at the eager youth that surrounded them.
“I want to go in for the sports—can I?” Flame’s eager face, on a level with his shoulder, smiled up into Hugh Keymer’s face.
“The sports! Hm—m.” Hugh was sitting at a small table, a writing-block in front of him. “Which do you want to go in for?” he asked.
“All of them!” said Flame, with a delighted kick. Hugh dropped his eyes, full of intensest merriment. Really, it was tremendous fun to see this child finding her feet. Not a soul suspected, that was obvious. For one or two of the young men were already staring rather contemptuously. Peterson was a conceited young ass, always hanging about a woman old enough to be his mother. For Mrs. Holroyd-Browne’s preference for the boy with yellow hair and black eyebrows was already beginning to be the talk of the ship. It does not take much to start tongues on a P. & O. liner, nor on any liner, for the matter of that. “How about the egg-and-spoon race?” he said.
“Why, that’s a girl’s thing!” Flame’s voice was full of contempt.
“Not entirely; you have to choose a girl for a partner, I admit, but that’s all. Yes, I’ll put you down for that,” Hugh scribbled with relief. This was going to be difficult; this child could not compete with men. But Flame was full of excitement, and burning to live up to her rôle.
“And all the other things?” she asked.
“Most of them are full up.” Hugh glanced casually down the list.
“Isn’t there any jumping?”
“What sort of jumping?” Hugh’s eyes were very clear and steady as he lifted them from the sheets of paper in front of him.
“Oh, jumping over things,” said Flame, and then for some extraordinary reason her own eyes wavered and fell before the clear ones. What was it? . . . These eyes weren’t like other people’s eyes. They had something behind them, something that made you feel made you feel . . . made you feel what? Like a girl. Flame came to the conclusion swiftly and with burning cheeks.
Hugh dropped his eyes again. Did she suspect that her secret was no longer her own? he wondered. But he need not have wondered; such a thought was miles from Flame’s mind. It had only been a funny sort of feeling that she had had, just for a minute. And now it had gone. Only a sort of thumpy feeling in her heart was still there, and that would go directly.
“Yes, jumping over things,” she went on; “put me down for that, will you?”
“No, that’s all full,” said Hugh calmly, and he began to get up, holding the flapping sheets of the block carefully together.
“But how can it be? You’ve only just sat down here to take the names of people.” Flame spoke indignantly.
“Really, that is very interesting information. But who runs the Sports Committee, you or I?” Hugh tucked the block under one arm and leant a little forward, his finger-tips on the green baize of the table.
“You do . . . but . . .” and then Flame broke off. The same look in the steady eyes. She felt the tell-tale colour stealing down from behind her ears.
“Exactly; and therefore I decide who shall compete and who shall not. And now, if I might suggest it, I should say that it would be a good thing if you would go and tidy your cabin.”
“It is tidy!” Flame was blazing.
“Not what I call tidy: you’ve left your pyjamas unfolded.” Hugh’s face was grave although his eyes were dancing.
“Have I?” And Flame’s face was scarlet again. She turned to go. And as she turned, a gentle hand touched her arm. She swung round and met a pair of faltering blue eyes.
“If you are going in for the egg-and-spoon race, may I be your partner?” said Mary Ashe, terrified out of her life at having made the first advance. But Mr. Peterson was so frightfully good-looking, and it wasn’t fair that the old lady should have him all the time.
“Oh, all right—I mean, certainly!” Flame, taken completely by surprise, tried wildly to remember how Nigel would have spoken to a young, pretty girl like this. And then it all came back to her. “Of course,” she said. “How extremely nice of you to ask me.”
“Oh no, it isn’t,” and then Mary Ashe’s courage came to an end and she choked.
“Yes, I think it is, very,” and then Flame warmed to the task. It was most frantic fun, this, making grown-up people look squirmy. Not that Mary Ashe could be more than seventeen, but then that was grown up. “Dance with me to-night, will you?” she said abruptly.
“Oh, I should love to!” and then Mary Ashe broke away and suddenly rushed down the deck. And from where Flame still stood she could see her fumbling with a book, opening it, and then shutting it up again. “Oh, what frantic, frantic fun to be a man!” thought Flame, and she went slowly down the deck and stood behind Mary’s chair.
“You haven’t told me how many dances you will let me have to-night,” she said, and she put her hand intentionally on the back of the chair, where Mary, if she leaned back, would be sure to feel it.
And Mary did lean back, and she did feel it, and she went a lovely pink colour all over her young face as she very shyly sat forward again. “As many as you like,” she said, and she spoke so quietly that Flame could hardly hear her.
A dance on board is always fun. As a rule you don’t have them until you are well on into the Mediterranean. But the Akola was full of young spirits bursting with zeal and joie de vivre, and as it was unusually calm for this stage of the voyage (they were due at Gibraltar the following day), the first officer had cheerfully conceded to the petition presented to him by a huddling crowd of young men and women that they should have a dance. And Flame was dressing for this, her first dance, filled with the wildest excitement. If only Mr. Keymer would hurry up and come up to dress; she wanted her tie tied.
“Oh, joy, I thought you weren’t ever coming!” Flame, very slim and small in trousers and pleated shirt, was standing in the middle of the tiny carpeted space as Hugh Keymer lounged into it.
“What’s the matter? Want your tie tied—or, rather, want my tie tied?” said Hugh with significant emphasis, as he took off his blazer and began to struggle it leisurely over its wooden hanger.
“Oh yes, of course; I forgot it was yours,” said Flame, rather crestfallen. “But perhaps we could get one at Gibraltar to-morrow,” she said more hopefully.
“Probably! Anyhow, we needn’t bother about that now. Come here, if you want it done, before you put your collar on,” said Hugh.
“Oh, how stupid I am!” Flame looked dismayed for a minute, and then burst out laughing. “Last night’s one wasn’t clean and I forgot to get out another,” she said. “Half a second!” and she dragged at the drawer of her locker.
Hugh watched her. Such a little white neck, and such stupid, useless little hands. What else could it be but a girl, he thought, and how could anyone mistake it for anything else? He watched, amused, as Flame, having retrieved a clean collar, started putting it round her neck from the wrong side.
“Shall I help?” he asked, after a long pause, during which Flame fought unavailingly with the heavily starched buttonhole.
“Oh, it’s desperately stiff!” Flame was despairingly red in the face. “It’s an imbecile way of dressing,” she burst out, after another prolonged tussle, and she flung the collar angrily on the ground.
“Come, come! don’t lose your temper!” But inwardly Hugh was in convulsions of laughter. Gad! this was a rag! He got up from his stool and picked up the offending strip of linen. “Now then,” he said. And then, as Flame, still breathing rather heavily, stood in front of him, he frowned. “Your back stud’s gone,” he said.
“Gone! Where?”
“I don’t know: probably either on to the floor or down your back. Try the floor first—there’s heaps of time”; and Hugh sat down on the stool again, the collar still in his hand, as Flame, dismayed, went down on her knees.
“It isn’t here!” Flame, after a prolonged search, crouched round on her heels and spoke hopelessly.
“Very well, then, I’ll try your back. Stand up straight,” and Hugh got up and towered over her.
“No, you can’t!” Flame was still crouching, and she flung out her hands.
“Can’t? Of course I can. Hurry up, there’s the first bugle.” Hugh’s eyes were inscrutable, although in the depths of them something danced.
“If you wouldn’t mind looking the other way I will just pull out my shirt, and then it may either fall out or run down my leg,” said Flame, and her breath began to come faster as she got slowly on to her feet.
“I don’t in the least mind seeing you pull out your shirt,” said Hugh, and his hand wandered up to his own tie. “But I’ll go on with my own dressing meanwhile, if you don’t mind, as it’s getting late.”
“Lord, what am I to do?” Flame stood with clenched hands and prayed. This was discovery, for she could neither let this tall man with searching eyes put a hand down her back nor go on undressing. And then God answered: something cold ran swiftly down behind her knees. “Oh, it’s come!” she almost screamed.
“Good!” and Hugh Keymer spoke with a certain amount of relief. After all, as he thought, this was hardly the moment to get it out of her, although he would have done so in another five minutes. He picked up the tiny round of mother-of-pearl from the carpet and twisted her round with a firm, lean hand.
Mary Ashe, at seventeen, had no business to be going out to India at all. But times are hard, and although Colonel Ashe drew a salary that sounded very princely in rupees, it was miserably inadequate really. Living in India is now quite three times as expensive as it was before the war, although for some obscure reason salaries are not three times as large. So when there are boys at school and a certain amount of service still to be got through to obtain the beggarly pension of a colonel of a British regiment, things have got to be made to fit somehow, and Mrs. Ashe had decided, after much misgiving, to take her elder daughter back with her to India. After all, Jack was going to Lucknow, and it would be Darjeeling in the hot weather and a heavenly climate in the cold. And Mary, who was rather a dreamy girl, had clasped her hands with joy, and had thought of the amount of poetry she would be able to write secretly, all about natives and the wonderful things they thought and did and felt, and the wonderful marble palaces they lived in.
But Mrs. Ashe was not really very happy about bringing Mary out, especially as some of the women on board, mostly wives of business men in Bombay, had expressed surprise, and had spoken of daughters still at their finishing schools in Lausanne or Vevey. So she watched Mary very closely, and when that night she found her in the cabin that they shared together excitedly diving into a trunk, still untouched, for a new evening dress, she felt a dreadful stab of anxiety pass through her soul.
“Why do you particularly want to wear a new evening dress to-night, darling?” she asked.
“Oh, mother, it’s going to be a dance!” Mary’s blue eyes were excitedly shining.
“Yes, well, I know. But there will be many others. Keep the new dress for the Canal, or one of those places later on when it will be warm.”
“Mother!”
“But what is the frantic anxiety about, Mary?” Mrs. Ashe sat down on her berth and drew her daughter towards her with two soft hands clasped round her knees.
“Someone rather special has asked me to dance with him,” said Mary, sweetly frank and with a heavenly flush on her wild-flower face.
“And who is this very special person?” Mrs. Ashe spoke very gently and with not a sign of the anxiety that was consuming her soul. Mary must marry someone fairly well off! She herself had married her husband when he was still a subaltern, and they were still paying off the debts contracted during those early years of arriving babies and hot weather in the Hills.
“Why, it’s Mr. Peterson,” said Mary, and she sat down very close to her mother on the narrow white berth.
“Darling, that boy! I don’t think he deserves a new dress.” Mrs. Ashe spoke very gently and sensibly, but her heart contracted. If Mary, with her idealistic nature, became involved even with anyone as ludicrously young as the Peterson boy, it would be hopeless. Mary had a dreadful way of hanging on to things, like a young puppy with a skirt between its teeth. “Darling,” she said again, and then she stopped. After all, what was the good of interfering with a girl? She must learn by experience.
“Mother, let me!” Mary’s eyes were beseeching.
“Very well, darling.” Mrs. Ashe loosed the soft hand clinging to hers, patted it, and stood up.
So Flame, when she emerged from the companion door after an excellent dinner, found Mary very shyly leaning up against the rail of the ship, staring down into the sea. And she felt a thrill of wild excitement pass through her. This really was living: if you stared in a certain way at a woman she squirmed. Flame knew Mrs. Holroyd-Browne did, because she could feel the squirm come back and squirm about in her! So, of course, the thing to do was to make as many people squirm as you could, and Mary would be easy. So she came up very quietly behind her and slid her arm very gently round her waist.
“Mr. Peterson!” Mary gave a great jump, and caught her breath with a gasp.
“Yes—well, Mr. Peterson, and what about it?” Unconsciously Flame began to imagine what Mr. Keymer would say if she were in Mary’s place, and she tried to say it in the same sort of furry voice.
“You mustn’t.”
“Why not? I will! And later on I will do it much more. You shall give me every dance, and then I will take you away into a corner and kiss you until you die.”
“No, no!” And then Flame did begin to get a little alarmed. For through the shaded light Mary’s eyes looked absolutely black. But why didn’t she get really angry? wondered Flame vaguely. Did women let men speak to them like that without objecting? And then there was a touch on her shoulder and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne spoke caressingly:
“Little Cupid, how many dances do you want me to keep for you?” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne looked very alluring in a beaded tunic, and she smiled slowly.
“Four,” replied Flame promptly, and then she turned back to Mary. “How many dances will you give me?” she said.
But Mary was silent. And then she tossed up her head. “Not any, because you like that ugly old woman best,” she said, and her soft mouth quivered.
“No, I don’t, really; I like you much the best,” asserted Flame fiercely. And then her heart sank, and she suddenly wished that she needn’t keep up this stupid pretence with this awfully nice girl. How she would adore to be able to take her up to her cabin and pour it all out to her . . . all about her dreadful love affair at home, and Nigel and Waterton. And to have her advice . . . someone of her own age. But Flame very soon choked back the foolish thought. It would be the beginning of the end if she did that; girls could hardly ever keep a secret. So she put on the furry voice again. “I will show you presently how very much I do like you the best,” she said.
“Oh!” And then Mary became quite speechless, and the two just stood and watched the scene, which was beginning to be a very gay one. The deck was hung with flags, and all the usually unshaded lights were shaded with pink. And then, as they stood and watched, the most heavenly band struck up—a band that, with the reedy sounds of the violins, sounded as if it were, a very, very long way away. “Where is it?” said Mary, with a sweetly shy side-glance at the boy beside her.
“It isn’t a band; it’s the most gorgeous, huge gramophone,” said Flame, who with her small hands stuck in her trousers-pockets was feeling almost beside herself with excitement. Music always had that effect on her; it made her feel absolutely mad—sort of demented, as if she could say and do all sorts of things that she would never dream of saying or doing at any other time. “Come on, let’s dance,” she said, and she caught the girl beside her in her arms.
Hugh Keymer, leaning against the rail, a cigarette between his lips, watched the two young figures with distaste. There was something horrible about it, he was thinking. For the last three days he had seen that little soft Ashe child following Peterson about with her eyes, and now there was that Holroyd-Browne woman making a fool of herself over him. It had got to be stopped, and at once, before anything worse happened.
Mrs. Holroyd-Browne’s four dances with Flame were over. Rather dull, thought Flame. Mrs. Holroyd- Browne was heavy, and she smelt very much of scent, and also, to Flame’s dismay, she had suggested a drink after the third dance. So Flame had had to sign for something called a “Billy Williams,” and all the fourth dance she had been angrily wondering what it was and how much it would cost. So she left Mrs. Holroyd-Browne with relief and went off to find Mary, whom she had left, sweetly tremulous, sitting on a coil of rope in the dark. “Stay there till I come back,” she had said in a very loud, masterful voice, and to her joy and triumph Mary had hung her head and quivered, and said that she would.
So now she stooped very tenderly and raised Mary to her feet. And in the darkness she could see the sweet, confiding face raised a very little to her. And the gramophone began and sent the faint sobbing sounds of a beautiful valse along the deck, and Flame completely lost her head and caught the slip of a girl in her arms. “Oh, you darling, darling thing!” she breathed, “how I wish I could have you for my greatest, greatest friend, and tell you every mortal thing!” and then she kissed the soft face again and again.
“Hallo, here you are!” The girls had not heard the quiet step beside them, and they sprang apart in consternation.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Keymer!” Flame’s voice was choked with terror.
“Yes, it is. Come along with me, Peterson, will you, please? Or, rather, wait here for me, while I take Miss Ashe back to her mother. Don’t move from here.”
Flame waited, her heart beating in anguish. What had she done to make him angry? she asked herself. And very soon the tall figure was back again, breathing a little quickly, too. For Hugh liked both Mary and her mother, the little he had seen of them, and he had deeply resented the look he had surprised on the young girl’s face. “Come along up to the cabin,” he said roughly.
Flame followed him, terrified. One or two people watched them go with a certain amount of satisfaction on their faces. Peterson had got swelled head, and it was time it was taken out of him. Several young men had resented that evening’s appropriation of quite the prettiest girl in the ship. But Keymer would give it to him all right. There were grins of satisfaction passing about the main deck for the next quarter of an hour.
Hugh Keymer dragged the curtain across behind him with a fierce hand, and fumbled in the bag of golf clubs standing in the corner.
“What are you going to do?” Flame had turned absolutely white.
“Give you what you deserve. Men don’t kiss young girls in the dark after three days’ acquaintanceship. Take off your coat.” Hugh stood, coatless himself, a thin cane in his hand.
“But she half asked me to.” Flame’s eyes were dark with fear.
“Don’t make it worse, you horrible little beast. Take off your coat,” he said again.
Flame took it off with hands almost paralysed with fear. What should she do? What should she do? She was at the mercy of this dreadful man, with teeth that showed like an angry dog’s. And what had she done? What had she done so frightful, anyhow? “Will you hit me very hard?” she quavered.
“Probably,” and Hugh took a couple of steps forward; his face was like stone. She was going too far, with this pretence of hers. Well, he would have the truth out of her now.
“But—but you can’t,” she gasped.
“And why not?” he retorted.
“Because—because——” and then Flame’s control broke down, and she flung herself on her berth in a storm of sobs.
Hugh waited for a minute or two and then spoke. “Stop it,” he said harshly.
“I can’t!” Flame stuffed a corner of the pillow into her mouth.
“Yes, you can. Stop it!” he said again.
“I can’t, oh Lord, I can’t!” sobbed Flame, and she crouched up on her knees on the narrow berth. “You don’t understand,” she cried, and then she got slowly off the berth. “I’m not a boy at all, I’m a girl,” she sobbed, and she fell on her knees at Hugh’s feet and caught hold of his legs.
“I knew that before you’d been in this ship twelve hours,” said Hugh Keymer, and he spoke dryly and stared with hard eyes at Flame’s bath-gown that swung out a little on the brass hook.
“You knew it!” Flame’s swollen eyes were wide with fear, and she clutched Hugh’s knees with fingers that shook.
“Of course I did. Let go of me and get up.”
“Now you’ll tell somebody.”
“Probably! I ought to have done so long ago.”
“No, no, don’t! Nigel said that they would put me in prison or a reformatory or something. Promise me, promise me!”
“Tell me who you are, then, and tell me without lying about it.” Hugh’s eyes had softened a little, but he still spoke harshly.
“I will, I will!” Flame struggled up on to her feet. “I will tell you everything,” she cried, “only let me tell you quietly, and not with you looking at me like that. Otherwise I can’t get it all straight in my head.”
“Very well, begin,” said Hugh, and then he hesitated. “No, wait a minute. It will be better for me to go back again and come up later. You get undressed and get into bed, and I’ll come back in about half an hour.”
But Flame hung her head, and over her face a very deep flush slowly spread. “It makes it rather different undressing, now that you know I’m a girl,” she said.
Hugh’s reply came in a very still, icy voice: “I don’t see that,” he said; “it makes not the faintest difference to me what you are, provided you behave yourself. Besides, I am a married man.”
“Oh, are you?” exclaimed Flame eagerly. “Have you got any children then about my age?”
“No,” replied Hugh stonily.
Long after midnight they were still talking, Flame sitting up on her berth, her little thin arms round her pyjamaed legs, and Hugh still in evening clothes, a pipe between his teeth and his eyes incredulous.
“But what about your people?” he said. “They will surely raise Cain when they find you have gone. . . . Your mother. . . .”
“Mother will be glad,” said Flame.
“But does nobody but your brother and your butler know?”
“Gerald knows,” said Flame.
“And who is Gerald?”
“Gerald is Colonel Forsythe,” said Flame, “and I adore him.”
“Oh, really,” and Hugh’s voice suddenly went cold. This, then, was at the bottom of the broken engagement with the elderly peer; he thought there was something that did not ring quite true about that.
“Yes,” said Flame fervently, “I owe almost everything in the world to Gerald.”
“Really!” and then for some inscrutable reason Hugh Keymer suddenly felt annoyed. Silly little fool, she had obviously fallen in love with someone old enough to be her father. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stuffed the glowing ashes a little farther in with a quick, irritable finger.
“Yes, he saved me,” went on Flame. “Shall I tell you about it?” she asked abruptly, raising her fair cropped head.
“Do.” And Hugh resigned himself to listen, one long leg crossed over the other. This should be the last; he would change his cabin to-morrow.
“Well, it was like this,” said Flame. “When Lord Lovegrove asked me to marry him we were in the summer-house, a place not fearfully easy to get out of when you are shut up with a person who does not want you to get out. And he got hold of me and gave me the most awful spready kisses, sort of swallowy kisses; I don’t expect you’ve ever had them. And afterwards I got the most awful fear that perhaps I should have a baby because of them. Don’t you know, there is always something rather vague and mysterious about a baby; it doesn’t seem to depend on being married in church whether you have them or not. So this got most fearfully on my mind, don’t you know; I could sort of see myself having a baby, with no one really to account for it, don’t you know, not even engaged to anyone. So because of that I told Lord Lovegrove that I would marry him after all; and I would have kept on with it, only one night, very late, Gerald found me crying frightfully in bed, and he found out why I was keeping on with my engagement; and then he told me what absolutely killed me with joy to hear, that kisses, however spready or swallowy, can’t bring a baby. So that made it all easy . . .” finished Flame joyfully. And then her face suddenly clouded. “Why do you stare? she said.
Hugh was silent for a minute or two. Then he spoke. “Come here,” he said.
“Not to beat me?” Flame spoke breathlessly.
“No. Stand here, close, where I can see you. That’s it,” as Flame advanced timorously across the cabin. “Now then,” and he took hold of the little white chin and held it—“now, then, look straight up into my eyes until I tell you that you may move.”
“How much longer?” faltered Flame, after a quivering silence.
“No longer; that’s enough.” Hugh dropped his lean fingers to his side. It was innocence: unmistakable; what on earth was he to do? Confide in Hester; it was the only thing to be done. And meanwhile. . . .” Hop into bed,” he said, “and goodnight.”
“Oh—why, aren’t you coming back?” Flame, dismayed, stood in the middle of the carpeted space, her hands clasped dejectedly in front of her. “Why, I love feeling you close to me,” she said; “it makes me feel so absolutely safe.”
“Does it? Well, I’m glad,” said Hugh dryly. “But I’m afraid it isn’t possible any more. You see, the P. & O. has old-fashioned ideas about people sharing cabins, and it likes to keep its men and women separate.”
“But then, are you going to tell anybody?” said Flame, and she made a wild little rush across the floor.
“No, not really,” said Hugh, and he caught the two trembling little hands and held them close. “Anyhow, not anyone who will interfere. Now then: into bed, and don’t worry. And look here, I’m sorry I gave you a fright; only, you see, I thought it was about time to end your little game, at any rate as far as we were concerned.”
“Oh, I see.” Flame dropped her head, and then lifted it again. “I suppose you couldn’t kiss me to show that you are really sorry, could you?” she said. “It’s something about your eyes and the way you hold my hands that makes me feel most heavenly all over. Do you know the feeling you get when you are in a very hot bath, all sort of tingly? Well, it’s like that.”
Hugh shook his head. “Nothing doing,” he said, but his lips were twitching uncontrollably. “Hop into bed, Master Nigel. The P. & O. would have us flung overboard if they found that we were kissing in their precious cabins.”
“Would they? Oh, I see!” Flame was suddenly grave. “Better not do it then. Only call me by my proper name—please do, just once for good-night. ‘Flame’ my name is, do you like it?”
“Very much indeed,” said Hugh gravely; “ good-night, Miss Flame.”
“Good-night,” said Flame, all her innocent heart shining out of her grey eyes.
Hester Lane was incensed—incensed and outraged. A girl masquerading as a boy and sharing a cabin with a man; it was disgusting!” Hugh, you must report it instantly,” she cried.
“Must I?” Hugh Keymer suddenly got a funny obstinate look on his nice mouth.
“Yes, of course you must! Why, I can’t understand why you haven’t done it long ago. It’s—it’s . . . awful. Hugh! what has come over you? Why, I should have thought you would have been the first person to have seen the utter unsuitability of it. Unsuitability . . . that doesn’t express it at all; why, it’s—it’s revolting.” Dr. Lane’s usually serene face was all furrowed.
“Why revolting?” Hugh spoke with a quiet smile.
“Well, of course it is. Undressing and dressing in a cabin with a man. Even saying it makes me feel revolted.”
“But she doesn’t; she waits until I go away,” Hugh laughed.
“Don’t laugh, you make me furious.” Hester Lane half got up and then sat down again.
“Then I’m sorry I told you.” Hugh began to fumble in his pocket for his pipe, stretching out a long leg to do so. “But I thought you’d see things with rather a broader view. I admit that the situation lacks regularity, but when you’ve said that you’ve said all. Miss Flame—rather a sweet name, by the way—is perfectly safe with me,” and Hugh stopped, and unrolling his oilskin tobacco-pouch, he began to fill his pipe.
Hester Lane sat back in her deck-chair and tried to subdue the extraordinary turmoil of sensation in which she was engulfed. Fury, that was the feeling that she caught hold of first: fury! Not gentle pity for the poor little distracted creature who had sought refuge in flight, but fury that she should have had the good fortune to be thrown into this man’s arms. For that was what it was going to end in; Dr. Lane suddenly knew it, as surely as she had known about nine years before this that her life and soul belonged to the man who now sat beside her. Hugh would fall in love with her, with this designing little minx who had thrust herself in his way . . . he should not, and Hester Lane closed her lips with a look on them that only one person had ever seen, and that had been a native assistant-surgeon who had once been called in in an emergency to help Dr. Lane in an operation and who had begun to cry in the middle of it.
“I will arrange it for you,” she said hurriedly. “Miss Rae and I have a sofa berth in our cabin, and we will have it made up as a proper berth and take Miss Peterson in with us. Of course, people will know, but then they will have to know anyhow, and it will only be for as far as Marseilles. Then, of course, she will be sent home to her people.”
“Really! you seem to have got it all excellently fixed up,” said Hugh lazily, but from between his thick eyelashes there gleamed a look that was not in the least lazy. Hester was going to interfere; like all women, she must have a finger in the pie. He had been a damned fool to tell her anything about it.
“Of course I must arrange for you; men can never do these things for themselves.” Hester Lane spoke with a sharpness in her voice that Hugh had never heard there before. But he could not know the torment of misery that was surging under the rather school-marmy exterior. Hester was fighting—fighting as an animal fights to protect its young from injury or capture. Hugh belonged to her; he had always belonged to her since that time when he had been flung on her protection, and she was not going to relinquish him to someone else now.
“Don’t worry.” Hugh’s voice was very cold. “I am perfectly well able to manage this affair myself, Hester, and I am extremely sorry now that I told you anything about it. So let’s consider it at an end. I am responsible for Miss Peterson, and her welfare concerns nobody else but me. All I ask is this, that you shall respect my confidence and not tell a soul what I have just told you. I very much dislike having put myself in the position of having to ask you to do this, but there it is. I was a fool to be so expansive.”
“Don’t, Hugh.”
“Well, I was, and there is no getting away from it. Just let me have your promise, please; they’re waiting for me at a committee meeting for these cursed sports, and I must go.”
“Supposing I refuse?” Hester spoke almost wildly.
“You won’t.” Hugh’s glance was steady.
“But perhaps I shall.” Hester Lane’s heart was beating tumultuously, and she was wrenching her hands in her lap. Anything to make this man show some sort of emotion towards her! Always the same steady unemotional friendship, it was killing her. Constant association with him, and never a stir of his pulses. And there she was, her whole heart and soul aglow for him and he never even stopping to wonder what she was feeling. Cheated . . . done out of the best in life . . . jeered at by Fate! . . . All Hester Lane’s barren years of spinsterhood suddenly rose up and mocked at her. A career! . . . What was the good of it—-what was the good of it? One fierce caress from a man’s hungry lips. . . . “Take my career and do what you like with it. This is Life, and nothing else will satisfy me. . . .”
“Well?” Hugh was wondering why Hester had suddenly got so white. Surely she couldn’t be feeling the motion of the ship, it was like a mill pond. He suddenly felt irritated with her; the scarf wound round her head was the wrong colour and made her look so old. “Well,” he said again, and this time impatiently.
“Yes, very well, Hugh, I won’t say a word,” but there was a sort of bleached pallor on Hester’s face that made Hugh Keymer ashamed of his impatience. Hester Lane had been the truest friend to him.
“Thanks most awfully,” he said, and as he got up he laid a gentle hand on the shoulder of the rather old-fashioned woolly coat.
But Hester shrank. There it was again, the steady touch of friendship. Stones for bread, so easy to give and so satisfying when you are starving! She forced a funny crooked smile that made Hugh wince. Surely Hester . . . but he choked back the thought.
“Thanks most awfully,” he said again, and he swung off down the deck.
Marseilles had come and gone. Cloudless skies and a sea without a ripple, everyone in the highest good humour. Only two people looked miserable—Flame and Mary Ashe. But Flame’s obvious misery only added to the hilarity of the rest of the young men on the Akola. Young Peterson, poisonous, conceited young ass, had met his match in Mr. Hugh Keymer, and it was something to be thankful for. Cupid, forsooth! that Holroyd-Browne woman had made herself the laughing-stock of the ship over him; but, mercifully, now she seemed to have seen her folly and had transferred her affections to somebody else. Miss Ashe still sat about and moped, but still there were other awfully nice girls on board . . . so that didn’t matter.
But Flame met the young sad eyes with a twinge of awful despair in her heart. She would give her soul, her head, to be able to tell Mary that she was only a girl. She craved, she anguished, she perished for a confidante. “I must have one, I must have one!” she cried the words aloud as she lay in her deep, beautifully hot salt bath.
But Hugh only gave her the quick glance that she had learnt to dread, when very, very timidly she faltered out her longing to him. “Of course not,” he said decidedly; “it is out of the question.’
“Why is it?” Flame put the question with terrified determination.
“Because I say so.” And that had to be enough. This man had her utterly in his power; she dared not dispute his decisions. He had taken her completely under his control, that was what filled the youth of the Akola with such rapture. All day long Cupid sat in a chair close to Mr. Keymer’s side. He either read a book or lay and stared out to sea. No sports, no dancing, no theatricals, nothing. His seat at meals had been moved too; he sat between Mr. Keymer and Dr. Lane. Dr. Lane never spoke to him—the youth of the Akola noted that with joy—and Mr. Keymer very rarely.
“I’m just like a slave!” Flame’s soft breast heaved. Hugh had looked into the cabin on his way to the bathroom, not even turning to say good-morning to the little figure in bed.
“Are you?” Hugh’s voice was cynical. Very tall, with ruffled hair, and wrapped in a towelling dressing-gown, he stood collecting his shaving tackle.
“Yes, I am,” and Flame stared at the tall figure with something in her eyes very akin to the look that had leapt from the depth of Hester’s eyes. This man . . . he would not take any notice of her; not any real notice, that was. . . .
But Hugh, back turned, was laughing. Eternal woman—anything but indifference! He swung round. “What do you want me to do?” he said.
“To look at me sometimes,” said Flame, all her little face immediately aglow.
“Very well,” and into Hugh’s eyes there crept something inscrutable: something that after half a minute sent the blood surging to Flame’s head.
“No, no!” she flung her hands over her face.
“I thought you wouldn’t like it!” Hugh turned round again, but not before his own pulses had begun to beat a little faster. And he collected the rest of his things in silence; this wouldn’t do at all, he thought, as he wended his way to his bath.
But after a long, practically silent day Flame was very near the end of her tether. No one had spoken to her; the whole of the first-class passengers had grasped that the boy with fair hair and black eyebrows had done something or other disgraceful, and that Mr. Keymer had undertaken to see that he didn’t do it again. So he was more or less ignored, and only Mary Ashe stared at him from time to time with limpid anguished eyes. And Flame met the anguished eyes with almost equal anguish in her own; she must, she must somehow get speech with this girl of her own age.
So that night, as the saloon passengers were coming out from dinner, she slipped a little ahead of Dr. Lane. Dr. Lane always walked out beside her if Mr. Keymer didn’t. Flame was beginning to hate the quiet controlled face. She touched Mary Ashe swiftly on her bare elbow. “I want to say something to you,” she said.
“Mother says I’m not to speak to you,” Mary Ashe replied at once, but her mouth trembled as she met the pleading grey eyes.
“I must: I shall go mad if I can’t.”
“But how can I? Mother will find out and be furious.”
“Come along, Nigel”—it was Dr. Lane’s voice, very quiet and resolved, and it roused every atom of opposition in Flame. This was slavery; somehow it wasn’t so bad to do what a man told you, but a woman! No!
“Meet me outside my cabin in half an hour, she whispered, and she slipped her hand down and took Mary Ashe’s hand firmly in her own equally soft and small one.
“All right,” and Mary Ashe had gone, burrowing, like a frightened rabbit, into the little crowd ahead of her.
So a little later Flame, strolling up and down outside her cabin, heard a soft hesitating step, and she flung round and caught the soft hands in hers. There was no one about. Flame drew the little figure down on to a seat and flung her arm round it. “Oh, Mary,” she said, “how I love you for coming! Don’t tremble like that; there’s nothing to tremble at. I want to tell you something most frantically, frantically secret; can you keep a secret?”
“Yes,” said Mary.
“Well, I’m not a boy at all—I’m a girl,” said Flame abruptly.
There was a little silence. Then Mary seemed to stiffen, and she drew herself away. “But——” she stammered, “but—I thought—I—oh, how could you!— how could you!” She tore herself from Flame’s encircling arm, and broke into dreadful, rending sobs.
“Mary darling,” said Flame; “listen, you must listen. You must. When I’ve told you everything you’ll see I simply couldn’t have done anything else. Really I couldn’t.”
“All right,” said Mary, beginning to control herself; “but I shall never, never forgive you.”
But when Flame had told her story, looking so terribly young and innocent and unprotected, Mary’s soft little heart melted after all.
“Now you know everything” Flame ended up; “it does make a difference, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I rather think it does,” said Mary, after a very long, tremulous pause.
“Joy!” all Flame’s usual elasticity returned. “And now I feel much happier because I have told you. Oh, it’s joy to be able to confide in someone!” and in her exuberance of spirit she clasped the little figure in her arms. “Vow, vow you will never tell a soul. You said you could keep a secret: can you really?”
“Yes, I really can,” said Mary, and she spoke the truth. “But oh, Nigel, do tell me more about it; where did you get the clothes and everything?”
“I will tell you, only call me Flame, not Nigel—that’s my name. Oh, I’m dying to tell you: come closer and I will. Only I’m going to tell you the end part first, because that’s the most heavenly part. Well. . . .” Flame flung a gentle arm round the soft waist, “you know I have a cabin up here—just along that passage it is. Well, I share it with a man. . . .”
“Mr. Keymer?” breathed Mary.
“Yes.”
“Oh, how I envy you!” Mary’s breath came from between parted lips.
“Yes. . . . I knew you’d understand: isn’t it bliss? Heavenly, heavenly bliss!” Flame rocked herself a little and made a soft cooing noise in her throat.
“Does he think it’s bliss too?” asked Mary.
“No; I don’t know that he does,” replied Flame, and her soft face fell in the darkness.
“I expect he does,” said Mary staunchly, all aglow for this wonderful new friend of hers.
“No; I don’t believe he does, because if he did he’d have to show it sometimes,” said Flame, and she caught her breath a little. Saying that he didn’t like it seemed to make it more real that he didn’t. And oh, if only he could! That would be too much joy. How could she make him?
“I am sure he must like it,” repeated Mary staunchly. “There is something about you that any man would like—something cuddly and soft. Your hands are soft and rather trembly, and your eyes are sort of simple; do you know what I mean? And your mouth is so red. . . . Oh, Flame! do tell me how you came to dress up like a boy, and all about it— will you?”
“Yes, I will some time, but not now. Now, I only want to tell you about how I feel about Mr. Keymer. It’s the most extraordinary feeling. . . .” Flame propped her chin on her hands and stared out into the darkness. “It’s the sort of feeling that when I see him when I don’t expect to all my inside sort of jumps up—do you know? Then just about here. . . .” Mary, watching, saw two small hands falter to each side of the black roll collar, “I feel a sort of creeping feeling. Then I get a sort of empty feeling, do you know, like when you’ve been out in the garden before breakfast. And then, if he looks at me, I get a sort of dying feeling, a sort of feeling as if I should like to roll on his boot—do you know. . .?”
“Go on,” breathed Mary.
“Well, it’s awful,” went on Flame. “It’s awful because it’s always going on, and it makes me so tired. And it isn’t as if he ever smiled at me, or anything like that; he only just is—do you know what I mean? not friendly or interested or anything, only just ordinary nothing. And all the time something inside me is surging out to try and make him take some sort of kind notice of me, don’t you know? and he won’t, he won’t,” and Flame broke down and began to cry.
“Don’t cry, darling Flame!” Mary’s sweet face was tender through the darkness.
“I must cry, because I am so frightfully, frightfully wretched,” sobbed Flame. “Besides, all the time I’ve got a sort of creeping terror all over me that when we get to Port Said he is going to have me sent home. I heard something. . . . Dr. Lane knows about my being a girl. I feel she does, and she is making him. I know, I know she is. . . . I loathe her, I simply loathe her. . . .”
“But don’t you want to go home?” said Mary wonderingly.
“No, of course I don’t . . . how can I? I only want to be with him.” Flame wept anew.
“But haven’t you got a mother?” Mary’s voice was wondering.
“Yes, I have; but I don’t care for her very much,” sobbed Flame.
“Oh, poor Flame, how awful!” This roused all Mary’s tenderest sympathy. Not to care for your mother, how perfectly frightful! She gathered the sobbing figure closer to her.
“I love my brother, but somehow, now it all seems so feeble compared to this new feeling.” Flame was still sobbing hopelessly. “This feeling makes me feel mad and frantic; I want to crawl out of my berth and get into his and have him hold me tight in his arms. But he isn’t in his berth now; he’s gone away to sleep somewhere else. . . .” and Flame’s voice was a wail of despair.
“Perhaps he knows you feel like that,” breathed Mary, awestruck.
“Yes, perhaps he does . . . anyhow, I do, I do, and I can’t help it!” and Flame got up, and struck one small clenched fist against the other.
Mary Ashe also got up. She was a little more versed in the ways of the world than Flame, although only a very little more. But her gentle heart was anxious. Flame must not prejudice her chances with this very nice man by doing anything funny like getting into his berth. People didn’t do that . . . at least, Mary felt pretty sure that they didn’t.
“And he has a wife . . . that makes me feel more frantic than anything,” stormed on Flame, making funny little running steps up and down the deck.
“A wife! Oh, Flame!” Mary went suddenly rigid. A wife! but then it was deadly, deadly sin, all this. “Flame, if he has a wife you must stop thinking about him at once,” she said frantically.
“Stop thinking about him!” Flame stood suddenly stock-still. “Stop thinking about him, Mary? But I love him. . . . I tell you that I love him!” And as Flame said this the most heavenly radiance spread all over her face. That was it, then, this glorious feeling that swept you off your feet and left you quivering in the air; it was love. Love! “Mary, I have fallen in love,” she said, and her voice was a benediction.
“You can’t fall in love with a married man,” said Mary indignantly.
“But I have done,” said Flame, and she laid two trembling hands on her bursting throat.
It was the flash of crossed swords that passed between the two chairs: then Hester Lane got up.
“Then there is nothing more to be said,” she said, and her voice was trembling.
“Yes, there is; a great deal: sit down again, Hester.” Hugh’s voice was steady, although the hands, thrust deep into his pockets, were not. “Sustain your argument with something tangible; you haven’t done so yet. All you reiterate is that it is my duty to have Miss Peterson sent home from Port Said. Well . . .”
“You know it is your duty, Hugh!” Hester Lane’s eyes were blazing.
“How do I know it?” Hugh Keymer’s voice was intentionally lazy.
“Because everything that is decent within you ought to tell you so,” replied Hester furiously, and she dropped eyes dark with misery to the neglected knitting on her lap.
The man by her side settled himself a little lower in the yielding canvas, and then crossed one long leg over the other. “Decency and I parted company long since,” he said slowly. “I want diversion, Hester. And here it is, pressed down and running over and offered to me. Can you blame me if I take advantage of it?”
“Hugh, you make me . . . you make me . . .” Hester’s voice was strangled.
“Yes, of course I do, because you have no idea really of a man’s true nature. Decency, as you reckon it, in a man is only a veneer. Underneath we’re all alike—wild animals,” and Hugh laughed shortly.
“Miss Peterson has a mother . . . her proper place is with her,” Hester Lane’s rather large, hard hands were twisted painfully together.
“No; there I think you’re wrong.” Hugh slipped a brown hand into the inner pocket of his blazer. “Look here . . . it was Marconied from Malta.” And he handed across the paper of badly-printed Reuter’s telegrams. “It may be only a coincidence, of course, but the name is not a common one.”
Hester Lane read swiftly. A very ordinary occurrence really; an overdose of veronal at a London hotel. But how hideous . . . and in connection with Flame, seeming to infect her with its hideousness. She returned the paper silently.
“Well?”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Well, you had better let me tell her.” Hester spoke with an effort.
“No. Why? I will. Besides, we don’t know yet if it is her mother at all.” Hugh replaced the paper, carefully folded, in his pocket.
“Why should you concern yourself? . . .” and then Hester Lane broke off, as the utter uselessness of argument forced itself in on her. Flame was young—young and ingratiating—and had a neck that rose from the soft collar like a young stalk, soft hands, and cheeks with bloom on them. And she herself was elderly; elderly and uncompromising, with morality that stuck out from her—Early Victorian morality; what more unappetizing? What chance had she? Give it up! And certain passages from Hugh Keymer’s Life of King Edward came back to her. He had those ideas too; he had clothed King Edward in a cloak of romance. From a setting of stiff oil-paintings and mahogany furniture set back square against the wall, that man had stood out immortal. And why? Because all the world loves a lover. Dr. Lane suddenly got up.
“Very well; do what you like,” she said, and her voice was strained and old. “But I warn you, Hugh, that if you persist in this, to me, inexplicably lax way of thinking, I shall feel it my duty to inform the authorities in this ship of Miss Peterson’s true identity.”
“You will do nothing of the kind!” Hugh turned his head sharply, and there was a fierce look on his nice mouth.
“I shall. I ought to have done it long ago.” Dr. Lane held her head high.
“The secret was mine . . . and, like a fool, I confided it to you . . . trusting you.” Hugh had got up, and his shaking hands were driven deep into his pockets.
“I don’t care; I mean to save you from yourself.” Hester’s eyes were steady.
“Pah, don’t be a fool! Save me from myself—what do you mean? You speak as if I was in love with Miss Peterson.” Hugh had forced a careless laugh on to his lips, and he also forced himself to stare steadily at the woman opposite him.
“You are . . . you know you are.” Hester made one dying clutch at self-control and common sense and then let them go, once and for all. “I can see it in the way you look at her, speak to her, speak of her. She has wormed herself into your heart: under the guise of innocence and immaturity, she has infatuated you. All this pretended reticence about sharing a cabin with you . . . it is put on. What does she care, what does she care if you do go in while she is half undressed? She likes it . . . probably that is what she is aiming at, to get you to do it so that she . . .”
“Be quiet, Hester.”
“No, I shall not be quiet. Hugh, you are a married man, and this is all most deadly sin. Pull yourself together before it is too late.” Hester’s eyes had begun to stream.
“Sit down and be quiet.” Hugh Keymer cast a swift glance around him. No; mercifully they were fairly isolated. “Look here, you’ve got this all wrong,” he said kindly, and he sat down and took the shaking hands in his. “Leave me to manage my own affairs, Hester. If according to your particular code I am in danger of hell-fire because I choose to befriend a charming and innocent child, leave me to burn. It doesn’t affect you, after all, does it?”
“Ah, but it does, it does!” And then Hester Lane dropped her face into her hands and shed the bitterest tears that had ever scorched their way out from between her eyelids.
But Hugh had dropped the rather heavy hands and had stood up. No; this was beyond a joke. He suddenly felt a wild desire to stop Hester from saying what she would probably spend the rest of her life in regretting. And Hester Lane heard him get on to his feet and stood up, too, facing him. And she bit back the words that had so nearly forced utterance. But the biting back had bred bitterness, and she spoke without an atom of relenting in her voice.
“I shall feel it my duty to inform the commander of what I know,” she said.
“You are not to do it.” Hugh’s voice was furious.
“I am sorry, but I feel I must.”
“If you do it, it is absolutely the end of everything in the way of friendship between us.” Hugh’s voice was steadier now, and he only looked quietly at the woman facing him.
“I don’t care if it is; I must do what I think right.” Hester’s voice held a dull, parched misery in it. So it meant so much to him, did it? Already, too, ten days against ten years . . .
“Right? . . . Pah!” and Hugh shrugged his shoulders, still staring. “It’s simply the same thing over again,” he said; “women simply cannot show mercy towards one of their own sex.”
But Hester was already turning, and she stooped to collect her work from the canvas of her deck-chair and then started to walk away from him down the long, deserted deck. And Hugh watched her go, hardness gathering in his eyes. Very well, then; if that was her game, he would get in first. But, by Gad! he would never forgive her . . . and he swung away, long and lean, straight for the purser’s cabin.
Apart from his genius for detail, the purser was not a particularly powerful man, so the news curtly imparted by Mr. Keymer left him gaping and bewildered.
“But am I to understand that Miss Peterson has been occupying your cabin since the departure from Tilbury?” he said.
“Yes.” Hugh was amused by the little man’s obvious discomfiture, and was determined to make the most of it.
“But this will mean a very serious scandal, Mr. Keymer.”
“Yes, I know; that is why I have kept it quiet up till now. But now I can keep it quiet no longer; someone else has got hold of it.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” The purser sat down at his littered desk and rested his head in his hands. He had had a harassing morning. A disgruntled second-class passenger had brought in a plate of ham for his inspection. To the purser the ham had seemed all right, but to the second-class passenger, not accustomed to ham except as an enormous treat, it had seemed not quite up to the mark, considering the fare he had paid. Also he had had two angry women in his cabin both complaining of the loss of their children’s toys, and both inferring that the other woman’s child had got them. Also he had had bad news at Marseilles: he had been obliged to leave his wife on the eve of the birth of their first child, and the terror of what he might hear at Port Said had begun to get badly on his nerves. So his face, when he lifted it to the tall man beside, him who sat astride the carpet-stool, was furrowed with anxiety.
“If, as you say, Miss Peterson has friends awaiting her arrival in Bombay, would it not be better to say nothing about it until we arrive there?” he said, and there was almost a look of pleading in the pale eyes.
Hugh shrugged his shoulders a little and raised his hands. “I should say so, decidedly,” he said; “but unfortunately, the only other person who shares this secret decides otherwise. I myself am all for silence. Miss Peterson has put herself entirely under my care, and not a soul in this ship has the ghost of an idea who she really is; in fact, they cannot possibly have, because I never give her a chance of mixing with the other passengers. She has practically the uninterrupted use of the cabin. Having found out everything, as I did, early on, I was able to arrange that. So it seems to me useless in the extreme to have the ship by the ears for practically nothing. . . . However, there it is; you know what women are . . .”
“But . . .” and then the purser raised his eyes. For Dr. Lane was standing in the door of the cabin.
Hugh stood up, his mouth setting rather hardly. So she had really meant it, had she? What a darned sell to find that he had got in first. He stood a little aside. “Come in,” he said quietly.
Hester Lane went first darkly red and then white. Death, this, to everything that had made life worth living. But she held up her head bravely, notwithstanding. “I needn’t interrupt you,” she said, “because I gather that the purser has already been told what I came to tell him.”
“You had better say what you came to say.” Hugh was shutting up the carpet-stool and settling it back in its corner. “Thanks, Martin,” he said shortly, and went out.
“You wanted, doctor?”—the purser sat down again at his desk. If Dr. Lane once sat down she would never go, he decided, so the carpet-stool had better remain where it was.
“Has Mr. Keymer told you that the so-called boy in his cabin is a girl?” asked Hester Lane, wondering dully why anything that came under the heading of duty was always so detestable.
“He has,” returned the purser.
“Well . . .” Dr. Lane paused.
“Yes, that’s just the point”—the purser began to twist and untwist the top of his Swan pen. “You see, Dr. Lane . . . sit down, by the way,” and the purser propped the Swan pen against a photograph frame and hurried to the corner. It was worth half an hour or so, this, he decided, for he would be able to persuade Dr. Lane to keep quiet: he knew he would, after seeing her face when she had come in and found Mr. Keymer there.
“You see. Dr. Lane,” he went on, raising himself after adjusting the carpet-stool, “this is a matter that requires very careful handling. Had Mr. Keymer come straight to me the moment he discovered Miss Peterson’s true identity, it would have been a very different matter. Then she could have been put in the sick-bay, and kept there practically a prisoner until we reached Gibraltar, when she could have been put under the care of the Girls’ Friendly Society and sent home. Now the scandal will be very great . . . everyone in the ship will be indignant that the deception has been kept up for so long; Mr. Keymer will come in for a great deal of extremely uncomfortable censure; Miss Peterson will have to be left in a foreign port to be repatriated, and that all means endless difficulty. And altogether we shall be faced with a very awkward and unpleasant situation. Whereas if we, who know how things stand, simply keep our own counsel, there need be no scandal at all. Miss Peterson will be met in Bombay by her friends, who, Mr. Keymer tells me, know exactly how things stand. Very well, then; there our responsibility ceases. Miss Peterson lands, or rather Master Peterson lands,” the purser smiled; to his jaded soul the situation held a certain amount of humour, “and there we leave her. Whether she remains Miss or Master Peterson concerns us not at all—we have conveyed her safely to her destination, and there our responsibility ceases.”
“You don’t take at all into consideration the scandal and disgrace of the whole thing,” said Dr. Lane heatedly.
The purser smiled. “I admit that the situation is irregular,” he said, “and in the hands of anyone less scrupulous than Mr. Keymer I admit that it would have its dangerous side. But he has spoken very freely to me, and I am convinced that he has behaved with the utmost delicacy throughout. Miss Peterson has the uninterrupted use of the cabin, Mr. Keymer sleeps in the music saloon . . . what more could you have? There are now only two more days until we reach Port Said—there, of course, the whole aspect of the affair may be changed by letters from her people. Well, then, let us leave it at any rate until then to make the affair public.”
“How little the right or wrong of a question affects a man, provided it concerns a young and pretty woman,” said Dr. Lane contemptuously.
The purser was angry, and he showed it. He twisted round in his revolving chair, and his pale eyes gleamed. “You have no right to attribute our reluctance to make public this affair to our natural indulgence for Miss Peterson’s youth and sex,” he said. “You in your position have no conception what publicity will mean. Endless formalities at this end, endless inquiries at the other. Difficulty with the Passport Office in Whitehall. Censure, probably, from the India Office. However, if you are determined to bring the affair to the notice of the higher authorities, I have nothing more to say,” and the purser, trying not to show how deadly concerned he was in whatever Dr. Lane might decide to do, stood up.
“Then you think that the matter ought to be left as it is until Port Said?”
“I do, most decidedly,” replied the purser. After all, Port Said might be the end of life for him, as he thought dully. So what happened after they had reached it really did not very much matter, at any rate to him. Which is not a right way to look at life, but a very common one.
“Very well, then, I will let matters stand as they are until after the mail is delivered at Port Said,” said Dr. Lane, and she got up and turned to the door. And as she turned, she caught sight of her reflection in the oval bevelled looking-glass let into the cupboard of the purser’s folding wash-hand-stand. What a fool she had been ever to interfere, she thought dully, as she pushed back the straight bits of hair that stuck out over her rather prominent ears. She had irrevocably alienated Hugh: she had represented herself to this rather feeble official as a straight-laced prude, and she had got nothing out of it. She stumbled a little over the brass step of the door as she went out.
“Oh, how long you have been!” Flame’s eyes, heavy with sleep, and kept open only by an effort, stared reproachfully over the edge of the white blanket.
“I told you the other day that you were not to keep awake until I came up.” Hugh put a quick hand on the electric switch and flooded the cabin with light.
“I know, but I feel I have to.” Flame’s white eyelids dropped and she pressed the backs of her hands against them.
“Why?” But as Hugh asked the question he felt the derisive nudge of the Devil at his elbow. Yes, he was being a fool; no one knew it better than he, but there it was . . . he could not help it.
“Why, because I adore seeing you the very, very last thing,” said Flame. “I adore the sort of heavenly smiling way you say good-night. I adore your voice—it’s a furry, cuddly voice. I adore the feeling of having you near me . . . simply adore it.”
“In fact, I am a very adorable being altogether, evidently,” said Hugh, and he came a little nearer to the narrow berth and stared down on to it.
“Perfect,” said Flame simply, and she took her hands away from her eyes.
Hugh looked on for a second or two, and then he swung round on his heel. “Well, I must collect my kit,” he said, in a voice that he strove to make natural. “Here they are—pyjamas, sponge, toothbrush. Good. Now to put out the light. That’s it. Good-night!”
“Wait one minute!” Flame, in the half-darkness, was struggling out from under the coverings. “Wait one minute. You remember you said once that it wouldn’t do for you to kiss me, because the P. & O. people might find out? Well, but I was thinking, supposing I was to kiss you. That couldn’t matter. Besides, no one could know or see. Put down your things just for one minute and let me. It might help to stop this awful feeling that’s always going on inside me; it’s a frightful, frightful feeling. You don’t know what it is,” and Flame crouched back on her heels and began to cry.
“What sort of feeling?” and as Hugh asked the question he almost turned to meet the grin at his elbow. But It was gone; this man could be left with safety now, It had decided gaily.
“Why, the feeling that I want you, want you, want you! Want you to have some sort of a feeling for me. Not any sort of a feeling really, because I know you couldn’t, but just something. Not only just dull, not taking any notice, and telling me what to do and where to sit, but a sort of loving notice. You had it more at first, and don’t you remember, even as lately as last week, when I had that tiny toothache, you were kind: you sat by my berth, and when I took hold of your hand you held it tight down on your knee, and I loved it. But now it’s all altered. You don’t look at me at all; and if you do just happen to, because you’ve got to, it’s a sort of stony look, a sort of frightful, freezing look. . . .”
“And how do you want me to look?” Hugh had thrust his shaking hands deep down into his pockets.
“As if you liked me a little,” sobbed Flame, and she fell forward on her knees and gathered the blanket up to her face with fingers that were damp and clutching.
There was a long silence. Hugh stood with his dark, well-brushed head a little bent. Not a sound, except from the engine-room far, far below them. Men on the alert there, though, and on the bridge a sleepless, watching figure. Ceaseless vigilance . . . a line from a well-known hymn darted inconsequently through Hugh’s mind: “Ambushed lies the Evil One.” How did it go on? Oh, some tosh; hymns as a rule were the last word . . . And why did he think of it then? . . . and then he started a little, as a soft wind stirred the curtain at the doorway and rattled the rings on the brass rod.
“You’ve gone!” and Flame raised her head with a little cry.
“No, no, I haven’t;” and then Hugh took one hand slowly out of his pocket and laid it very gently on the close-cropped yellow head.
“I thought you had,” and then Flame reached up and lifted the brown hand from her head, and with a passionate little murmur she buried her mouth in the palm of it.
“Here, steady on.” Hugh spoke after a palpitating silence. “Let me go, Flame . . you must. I don’t want to unfasten your fingers, it seems so . . . Darling . . .” and then Hugh cursed himself for something worse than a fool as his hand fell free.
“You’ve said it!” Flame’s voice came out on a sobbing breath. “Oh, you’ve said it, what I always imagined you saying, and what I’ve died and perished to hear you say. And now I know that you do like me rather. Only rather, I know, but still it is something to sort of live on . . .” and Flame struggled back into a sitting position, dragged the blankets up round her neck, and flung herself down on her face.
Hugh still remained standing. His pulses were racing and his mind was awhirl. This child his for the taking. This child, inexpressibly dear to him—even Hester Lane had been able to see that. And then the face of his wife, bloated and sodden, floating into the blackness in front of him. His wife, standing grinning sheepishly in front of the dining-room sideboard, a key in her flaccid hand. And the hideous humiliation of the subsequent interview with the recently appointed footman. “Well, sir, it places me in a very awkward position when Mrs. Keymer practically demands the keys from me; if you don’t mind, sir, I should prefer . . .” And then another vision . . . camels, rocking their way across a sandy desert to the green cluster seen vaguely through the twilight. Folded tents unfolded. A little figure lifted lightly to the ground, held tightly perhaps for a moment in the lifting. And then a heavenly meal together, sacrament of sacraments when two who really love break bread together . . . Hugh closed his eyes swiftly.
“I’ve made you angry.” Flame had turned over again.
“No, no, you haven’t”—Hugh had the backs of his hands to his eyes. “No, no, you haven’t; don’t think that . . .”
“Say ‘darling’ again!”
“No, I can’t,” and Hugh’s voice was the voice of a boy in distress.
“Why? Oh, Mr. Keymer, why can’t you?” Flame was sitting up.
“Because I can’t, and that’s all it’s good for you to know.” Hugh had got his self-control back again, and Flame could not see the lines round his mouth, left there by the almost superhuman struggle. “Besides, it’s time you were asleep; it’s nearly one o’clock”—Hugh carried the faintly shimmering circle to his eyes.
“How can I sleep when you go away with things only said in halves?” sobbed Flame, stretching out fiercely anguished hands. “It’s not fair—it’s not fair. You said ‘darling’; you ought to go on.”
“Go on to what?” And as Hugh took a step nearer to the berth, the Devil, who had been sitting with hunched shoulders disgustedly listening, pricked up his pointed ears again. This man was putting up too good a fight for his liking; however, this sounded more hopeful.
“Just one weeny kiss,” pleaded Flame, trembling with the fierceness of her longing.
“I’m not good at weeny kisses.” Hugh was standing very still.
“Well, I don’t mind what sort of a kiss it is as long as it is a kiss,” said Flame, wondering why her heart was thundering in her ears.
“Very well, then; you’ve asked for it, and you must put up with the consequences. Get out of bed and stand just in front of me. . . .” Hugh spoke with a catch in his throat.
“On your feet may I stand?” Flame was agitatedly buttoning up the top button of her pyjama coat.
“If you like,” and Hugh forced himself to stand rigid while the soft little toes fastened themselves into his long instep.
“Oh! . . .” it was a breath of rapture that came from Flame as her arms stole round the stiff white collar.
“Now, then,” and Hugh suddenly laughed quietly aloud. This child, his entirely to break into love as he wished. His utterly, the droop of Flame’s little figure told him that. Gone, blotted out, the hideous sordid years of the past. . . . He stooped his head. . . . Flame was speaking:
“When you hold me like this, I sort of see you like I did in Westminster Abbey,” she said. “Don’t you know even though its dark I can see your darling angel mouth. And even though I’m just a little afraid—don’t you know I’m hardly dressed to be held very tight—yet there’s a sort of heavenly joy in being afraid with you. Because you’re so good . . . so heavenly, heavenly good,” and Flame lifted her face.
“Ah I . . .” and the red glow at the back of Hugh’s eyes died down abruptly. ‘Out of the mouths of babes’ . . . he let go of her very gently. “You think too well of me, darling,” he said, and as he spoke there was a something in his voice that had not been there before, and Flame heard it and trembled.
“Don’t let go of me,” she breathed.
“Only just for a minute: and not let go, only take hold of you rather differently.” Hugh still had his arm round the slender shoulders.
“But what about the kissing?” Flame’s trembling voice had tears in it.
“I’ll explain about that. Now, look, let go of me just for a minute while I sit down on my berth. That’s it. Now come and get on my knee like a nice little girl, and we’ll talk quietly.” Hugh’s white shirtfront showed vaguely through the darkness as he held out his arms.
“But it’s suddenly all altered . . . and what about the kissing?” Flame’s voice dragged.
The blessed relief of humour came to Hugh’s rescue, and he laughed noiselessly. Flame was not going to let her kiss go without a struggle, evidently! Ah! and he wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a trembling hand.
“You see,” he said after a little pause, “this is all wrong, and it’s entirely my fault. I won’t explain exactly how it’s wrong—I expect you know really, although you are such a baby. I’m frightfully to blame . . . desperately, and I’m deadly ashamed of myself. See?” and Hugh stooped his well-brushed head and stared down at the little figure lying close up against his coat.
“It’s something to do with my having said that you were good,” lamented Flame; “why, oh why did I say it?”
Hugh’s white teeth gleamed for an instant, and then he went suddenly grave. “Don’t regret it,” he said. “After all, I like you to think I am good, although I’m not in the least, really. And now, it’s bed for you; it’s frightfully late. Get off my knee and I’ll tuck you up like I always do.”
“Oh, how soon over! and it was going to be so heavenly!” and Flame slid miserably on to the carpet.
“No; not over really; you’ll see me again in the morning. Besides, heavenly things that aren’t right always end up wrong. Now, then . . . all serene?” and Hugh tucked in the stray end of blanket with a hand that he forced to be businesslike.
“Oh, you’re going!” Flame was clutching at the lean fingers.
“Yes, of course I am; it’s nearly time to get up! Let go of me, dear; I’m frightfully tired.” Hugh’s voice came weary and flat.
“Yes, all right, of course I will.” Flame dropped the hand she held with a little stab at her heart. He was unhappy, this man she adored; she was tiring him. “Good-night, darling and most precious”—she breathed the words into the soft folds of her pillow.
“Good-night,” and Hugh went quickly out of the door, and dragged the curtain across roughly behind him. Roughly, because the whole of his being was screaming out in protest at the decision he had just come to. Flame must be sent home from Port Said; there was no longer any doubt about that in his mind.
“Flame!” Mary Ashe’s gentle blue eyes stood out from a face absolutely white, and she was breathing heavily.
“Yes, what is it? Don’t roar out my name like that, somebody will hear.” Flame turned rather wearily from her contemplation of the distant wavering coastline, rapidly becoming clearer. They were due in to Port Said at four o’clock that afternoon, and it was just two. A heavenly still afternoon; the Mediterranean a translucent greeny blue; blue sky overhead, just flecked with soft white clouds sailing high—everything looking at its most beautiful, peaceful, and untroubled.
“They’re going to send you home from here.” Mary Ashe’s lips were trembling.
“How do you know?” Flame stood suddenly stock-still, and set her back rigid against the rail.
“I’ve heard. They’re talking down in the dining saloon. Mr. Keymer and Dr. Lane. It was before lunch I heard it really, only I couldn’t get to you to tell you then, because of lunch. I was out on the alleyway with Mrs. Smith’s baby—you know, the fat one that walks about in reins. I said I’d take care of it for a little while, while she made the other one’s bottle. And I stood underneath the port-hole at the end and they must have been just underneath it inside. It’s all settled . . . the purser knows, and they are only going to wait until the mail has been delivered, and then send on shore and have you handed over to someone to take care of and then sent home.”
“Whose idea is it?” Flame was very pale.
“Dr. Lane’s, I should think, because she’s talking far the most. Mr. Keymer only says ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”
“Oh!” and the dreadful sick anguish in Flame’s soul receded a little. It was not his idea then. And they were not at Port Said yet; there was still time. The colour began to steal slowly back to her lips as her mind began to ferret and scurry under the short hair.
“What will you do?” Mary Ashe’s voice was pregnant with anxiety.
“I don’t know yet—probably nothing.” Flame spoke with a sort of studied carelessness. For in the midst of the torment of fear that was sending alternate waves of hot and cold from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and was making her tongue feel too large for her mouth, one thought stood out paramount. Anything that she did decide to do must be kept a deadly secret from everyone. Not even this very faithful and dear friend of hers must know it.
“You seem to take it very calmly.” Mary Ashe spoke with a certain amount of flatness in her voice. She had expected something very different. Flame’s one cry, her one frankly expressed fear in their long intimate conversations, had been the terror of separation from the man she adored. And now she seemed not to think very much of it, now that it had almost become an accomplished fact. How odd! And Mary Ashe stared, puzzled. “You don’t seem to mind,” she said again.
“What’s the use, if I can’t do anything?” responded Flame, and she turned again to stare at the coast coming nearer, white minarets and tall houses beginning to be seen. White breakers, and a thin wavering golden line of what must be a sandy shore. Port Said, a town with an outline like a golden sword—a sword waiting to sever her from the man she worshipped . . . “Never!” and Flame’s mind began to ferret and scurry again.
“I’ve got Miss Peterson’s letters; where is she? I’ll get this damned business over.” Hugh Keymer spoke with the irritation of extreme misery. He loathed the whole of this affair more than he could express, for apart from his feelings at parting with Flame, feelings that he had stamped down and muzzled so far as he could, he dreaded unspeakably the telling of her, firstly that she was going to be sent home, and secondly that she had lost her mother. And he felt he loathed Hester for having made both these things necessary. Flame was only an innocent child; why couldn’t this woman of forty-five realize it and behave accordingly?
“Shall I look for her and break the news to her?” Hester’s eyes had dark lines underneath them. She had long since bitterly regretted her action in bringing the affair to the notice of the purser, and when Hugh, the morning before, had come to her with the news, curtly delivered, that he intended to go again to that individual and tell him that he had decided, after a good deal of thought, that it would be better after all for Miss Peterson to go home from Port Said, she had even tried to dissuade him.
“No, thanks; I will.” Hugh turned on his heel and went upstairs. In the cabin . . . no; and not on the hurricane deck, either. He came down again. “She’s not upstairs,” he said; “you go down below and look for her, will you, and I’ll go through the saloons.”
“Very well.” Dr. Lane passed quickly through the excitedly chattering groups of people busily wending their way down to the lower deck, from which, with peals of laughter, they descended shaky steps to the flat-bottomed boats plying for hire. Port Said, the first glimpse of the East, holding in her dusty embrace all the romance of Asia for the novice. And even to the old stager there is something attractive about her reckless disregard of appearances. Rakish and rickety gaily-coloured houses; huge barouches plying for hire, two-horse affairs with broken harness tied up with string. All the shoddiness of the East, and yet all the gaiety of the East. Sun, sun, and yet again sun. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die”—there is something in the sun that breeds such thoughts.
“No luck.” Hugh was back again, before Dr. Lane this time.
She came up in a minute or two, rather breathless and in a hat. “I’d forgotten that I had promised to go on shore with my stable companion,” she said. “What shall I do? Give it up? I will, gladly, if you would like me to stay.”
“Oh, no; you go, if you’ve arranged to. Miss Peterson is sure to turn up in a minute or two; probably she’s having a bath or something. Was she downstairs?”
“No.”
“Oh, well, don’t you wait; I’ll carry on; and as a matter of fact, the fewer of us there are mixed up in this affair the better. I’ll tell her everything, and help her to pack and see her properly handed over to someone. And directly she knows, the purser is going to the commander. He thought it better to wait until the last moment; apparently he’s a peppery old chap and may cut up rough. And it’s better that Miss Peterson should be out of his way before he gets going. It simply is only a matter of having her put in the charge of the Girls’ Friendly Society; the British Consul will do all the rest.”
“I see; very well, then, I’ll go,” but there was a sort of leaden hopelessness in the look of Hester’s back as she turned from Hugh’s quiet nod. And yet, as she thought, clutching the unstable balustrade, why should she feel hopeless? Wasn’t she doing right? And didn’t rectitude bring its own reward? No, it didn’t, she thought, sick with misery, and straining her steady grey eyes back to where she could see a tall, narrow-hipped figure leaning against the rail.
It was not until the sun had sunk a good way down towards the clear-cut line of white breakers that Hugh began to get really anxious. And then he went down the stairs two at a time. A second investigation of his cabin had revealed a half-open but empty steel helmet case, and staring at it, his tongue had suddenly dried in his mouth. Two precious hours wasted! He dragged the curtain outside the purser’s cabin unceremoniously aside.
“I say, Miss Peterson has managed to get off this ship, somehow,” he said, and then he stopped abruptly. The purser was down on his knees by his berth.
“I beg your pardon.” The purser got up, and stared like a drunken man. “I have just heard that my wife is dead,” he said, and he smiled feebly.
“I say, I am sorry.” Hugh, in the midst of his own anxiety, was wrung with pity for the figure opposite him. What was he to do? It seemed absolutely heartless to thrust his own particular worry upon this broken man at this particular time. But still, he must; it concerned others besides himself. “I say, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said, “and I hate to worry you now, but something must be done. Miss Peterson has cleared; she must have got wind somehow that we were going to have her sent home.”
“But the officer on watch would have seen her go down the ladder.” The purser’s dulled eyes were beginning to clear a little.
“Not if she had changed her clothes, which I believe she has done. Look here, what are we going to do?” Hugh’s voice was sharp with anxiety.
The purser smiled a little. “Mr. Keymer, I think you are unduly anxious,” he said; “to my mind the whole thing is now perfectly clear. Miss Peterson disguises herself as a boy and gets on board a ship to Port Said. She gets off at Port Said, a city that we all know to be notorious. Her business is here—the oldest profession in the world, Mr. Keymer, unless I am very much mistaken. We will lodge information with the police, and leave it at that.”
“How dare you, sir!” Hugh Keymer’s face was white with rage.
The purser stared quietly. “We will go up to the bridge and inform the commander,” he said, “and I think you will find that he will confirm what I say.”
The commander was elderly and peppery and on the eve of retirement. And although he held Mr. Keymer in esteem, because of his literary reputation, he was furiously angry. “You have done grossly wrong to conceal the affair from the beginning,” he said. “Mr. Martin is undoubtedly right. You have been hoodwinked by an unscrupulous and designing woman, Mr. Keymer, and you will be fortunate if you get out of it at that. It is not by any means the first time it has happened on this line. We will inform the police, and leave it at that.”
“You don’t mean to say that you are going simply to leave a young girl like that in a place like Port Said?” Hugh’s eyes were incredulous.
The commander laughed shortly. “Miss Peterson has long since gone to earth, Mr. Keymer,” he said, and his eyes were contemptuous.
“But there are letters for her; I have them.”
“You may have. Women of Miss Peterson’s profession are adepts at covering their tracks,” said the commander, and he began to drag a blotting-pad towards him. A shady affair altogether, he thought, as he wrote. Keymer was a fool, but a man of that age often went a mucker over a young girl.
“I shall also leave the ship here.” Hugh spoke with a world of anger in his voice.
“I would beg of you to do nothing so foolish, Mr. Keymer,” said the commander, and, an imposing enough figure, with his white uniform and snowy hair, he turned a little in his revolving chair. “Miss Peterson, whose name is probably no more Peterson than yours is, by the way, is by now miles away in the most disreputable part of Port Said. The dregs of the world congregate here. Leave the affair where it stands, and I will do my best not to have your name brought into it if there are any questions asked from Whitehall.”
“Kindly give orders for my baggage to be put on shore.” Hugh Keymer turned to the purser with two deep furrows between his eyes.
The commander raised his shoulders a little and resumed his writing. “Come back here, Martin, when you have finished,” he said over his shoulder, not taking any more notice of Hugh.
And Hugh went out, trembling with passion. “A more damned filthy exhibition of callous officialdom I have never seen in my life,” he stormed, as he and the purser walked in single file down the narrow steps from the bridge.
But the purser only raised his shoulders a little and went on walking. It was to have been called John after him, and he was to have been back just about in time for the christening. And she had been afraid to go through it without him, only in these days of retrenchment he had not dared to ask for leave. She was alone now in a strange country, wandering, only she had the baby. What had he got? . . . And then the purser missed a step or two and nearly went headlong.
Port Said has rightly been named the foulest city in the world. It has the foulness of a grating over a sink; everything horrible catches in it, and stays there and breeds more foulness. Casual passers-by have no idea of it: they step blithely off the Eastward-bound liners, and wearing strange topis, throng the very excellent shops in the two main thoroughfares, and come away enchanted with their first glimpse of the East. The old stager is rather more reserved; he calls it a filthy hole, but even he gets off the ship, of which he is probably deadly sick, and walks up and down the two main thoroughfares; he has heard ugly stories of those who have wandered, and he does not want to find himself in like case. But Flame did not know all this, and when, shaking with excitement, she landed on the rickety landing-stage, and pressed half-a-crown into the hand of the inexpressibly evil-looking Egyptian boatman, he only winked in his turn to an inexpressibly filthy Egyptian gharrywallah lounging on the box of a battered pair-horse landau, which lumbered up to Flame in a cloud of dust.
“Carrige, miss!” he said, and his red fez was insolently cocked over one eye.
“Oh yes, please,” said Flame breathlessly, and she clambered rapidly up the high step, badly hampered by her skirt. After the neat abbreviation of her disguise it was awful, she thought, depositing the parcel she carried on the opposite seat. But it had been the only thing to be done to ensure easy escape, to change into her girl’s clothes, and she had done it without the faintest thought of what was to happen next. If she stayed on that ship she was going to be sent home, so the only thing was to get off it. And off it she now was, clattering up a wide street with houses on each side of it. A road full of blazing white sunlight, and strange-looking people in things like bath-gowns with turbans on their heads; Flame stared about her, vastly entertained. This was fun, and she had twenty pounds in her bag, heaps for things to eat and a hotel . . . And by to-morrow Mr. Keymer and Dr. Lane would be so mad with fright at her having gone that they would be only glad when she came back, not fussing about sending her home any more. So Flame beamed, showing all her small, square teeth, and a couple of petty officers on shore from a tramp beamed back, which frightened Flame, and she dragged her little bonnety-shaped straw hat lower over her eyes and fumbled nervously with her bag.
They had been driving for about twenty minutes when Flame began to look about her rather more critically. The roads had altered; they were much narrower. They were much more crowded too; there was only just room for the big, unwieldy carriage to lumber along them. Dust hung in the air, and in some of the tiny dark shop-fronts there were little lamps alight—little lamps with wavery blue flames that turned the dust motes into diamonds. The air was heavy with the unmistakable smell of the East—a smell of incense and wood smoke mixed together; a smell that made you blink and rub your eyes. Natives jostled the carriage—natives with heavy slumbrous eyes and gay wrappings. The evening was closing in and it was chilly. Flame began to get alarmed, she was so very much alone: she had not seen a white face for ages. She shouted to the Egyptian on the box.
“What missie want?” he turned without stopping the horses and grinned.
“This can’t be the way to a hotel. You must have taken the wrong turning. Go back to where there are shops.”
But the man on the box only turned round again, and struck the sweating horses between the ears, and they leapt forward so that Flame had to clutch on to one of the rickety straps to keep her balance. And then just as a dreadful cold chill of terror was settling down on her, so that she felt she must scream aloud to relieve the hollow empty feeling in her throat, the big carriage turned a corner, and they were in a much wider street; still a very nativy-looking street, because all the houses had gaily painted verandahs, but a very much quieter, street. There was hardly anyone about; in fact, only a big carriage like her own drawn up in front of one of the houses, the horses nosing leisurely in a heap of grass piled on the curb, and a couple of what looked like ships’ officers in white uniform rapidly turning a corner at the other end of the street. At least, they looked like ships’ officers, only it was really too dark to see properly.
“Stop at that house with the blue verandah.” Flame half stood up and pointed, and then, as she sat down again, she screamed in a wild paroxysm of terror. An Egyptian had stepped quietly up into the carriage behind her, and had slid his long brown arm round her waist.
“Let go of me at once”—Flame hit out and was struggling. “Coachman, coachman!” But the coachman did not even turn. He was busily engaged in getting down from the box, and when he had got down he started to lead the horses to the side of the road.
“Come now, miss.” The Egyptian, who was dressed in European clothes with the exception of his headgear, which was a little red fez, spoke ingratiatingly and in excellent English.
“Get out, I tell you!” Flame was shouting. “I’m on my way to a hotel. Get out!”
The Egyptian laughed and lolled easily back in the carriage. “You have then come considerably out of your way,” he said; “but wait, I will inquire from the coachman,” and he got out and went to the horses’ heads. After a little while he came back and held out a hand for Flame. “All is well,” he said; “ your hotel will be the third house from the end. I will conduct you to it.”
“I would rather go by myself,” said Flame, gathering up her rather unwieldy parcel and staring over it in an angry fright. “How much do I pay the coachman? Please tell me that, and then go away.”
“The coachman has been paid,” said the Egyptian, smiling.
“How can he have been?” But Flame got out, nevertheless, without waiting for an answer. Perhaps this awful man had paid, she thought, and in that case it was better not to know. “Good evening,” she said, and she began to walk rapidly down the road, staring up at the houses as she went. She would go into the one where she first saw a white face, she thought; then she could shake off this man, whom she could still hear walking quietly along behind her. Ah, she almost cried out with relief and joy; a white face, a woman, staring down at her from the verandah almost above her head. Not speaking, only staring, seeming to be one with the extraordinary quietness of the road.
“Is this a hotel?” said Flame, tipping back her head so that all her white throat showed.
“Yes, it is; come up, dearie.” The woman spoke rapidly, and as she spoke she dodged back, and then there was a rush of something flying through the air, and Flame started as with a volley of oaths behind her the Egyptian flung his hands over his face, and staggered back, spluttering.
“Clear out . . . you . . .!” the woman leant far out over the road and swore.
“You . . .” Mercifully Flame could not hear the retort, delivered in the vernacular.
“Further down for the likes of you”—the woman was shaking her fist. “Come up, ducky,” she said to Flame, who stood shivering with her parcel and bag held close to her, still staring upwards.
“Are you sure it is a hotel?” Flame was very near to tears. It was quite dark now; why had she some so far? Mr. Keymer would be angry with her if he could see her now. Where was he? Wondering where she was, perhaps . . . and at that the tears stole out from underneath the white eyelids.
“I’ll send down the ‘boy’;” and as Flame still stood, a native in white clothes came out of an open door at the side of the house, and taking her parcel from her, made signs that she was to follow him up the stairs.
This all seemed more ordinary, and Flame, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, followed him with relief. The stairs were brightly lighted, and there were large mirrors let into the walls. They arrived at a wide landing with curtained doors opening off it. The boy stood outside one and coughed.
“Show the lady in.” In the midst of almost uncanny silence the voice sounded very clear and loud, and it made Flame jump. Generally, hotels were loud and bustly . . . the Strand Palace, for instance, with its swinging doors and ceaseless flow of people coming and going. But here it was almost like the silence of a church; even the road was quiet.
The Lady of the Verandah was lying back in a large velvet deck-chair. Flame flushed up to her eyes, for she had hardly anything on. On the verandah in the dark it had not showed, but here . . . and with a native servant. But when she turned uneasily the servant had gone.
“Sit down, dearie.” The lady made a gesture towards another velvet chair.
But Flame stood stiffly erect. There was something all wrong about this, she thought; utterly innocent as she was, she could feel that. Something seemed to be lurking in the shadows, something awful. She had come to the wrong place evidently . . . “I am afraid I have made a mistake,” she said, and she stared with round eyes full of fear into the eyes that were carelessly taking her in. “I have just got off one of the ships, and I wanted to go to a hotel. But this isn’t the sort of place I meant: please tell me how to get back to where I came from.”
“And why did you get off a ship?” asked the Lady of the Verandah.
“It’s too long to tell you now,” faltered Flame.
“Tell me, dearie; it’s very important that I should know all about you.” The lady crossed her feet, and Flame saw, to her relief, that she had on long black stockings—long black stockings and a princess petticoat.
But somehow the stockings seemed to make the princess petticoat less undressed-looking.
“I was tired of the ship,” faltered Flame.
The Lady of the Verandah made an impatient noise with her mouth. “Ever been to Port Said before?”
“No.”
“Ever been to London?”
“Oh yes, often,” Flame beamed.
“Know M——’s?” The Lady of the Verandah mentioned a notorious house.
“Is it that place near Piccadilly where you can have tea and choose your own cake?” asked Flame timidly.
The Lady of the Verandah was in sudden convulsions of laughter. “It’s not the place you mean, duckie,” she cried, “but you’ve described it damned well!” and she laughed until Flame thought she would choke.
But Flame was rigid. This undressed woman was swearing. This was a hopelessly wrong place to be in. She turned and fled to the curtained door. But before she had reached the curtain the Lady of the Verandah had her by the wrist. “Where do you think you’re going to, you silly little fool?” she said; “sit down and let’s talk things over quietly. I’m not going to do you any harm.”
“No; let me get back to the ship!” Flame was now beside herself with fright. “I thought I wanted to get off it, but now I know that I don’t,” she cried. “I expect I could walk; anyhow, perhaps you would allow that servant of yours to fetch me a carriage.”
“Which is your ship?” The Lady of the Verandah, looking dreadfully tousled and unkempt now that she was standing up, was standing with her hands on her hips.
“The Akola.”
“She was sailing at seven,” said the Lady of the Verandah, showing beautiful regular white teeth.
“Sailing at seven . . . why, what is the time now, then?” said Flame, suddenly white to the lips.
“Five minutes past.”
“But, but . . . how do you know she was sailing then?” stammered Flame, staring round wildly.
“Oh, well, I just happen to know,” said the Lady of the Verandah, and she cast rather a curious glance at Flame. “Anyhow, sit down now; you’ve got all the evening in front of you. I’ll be back in half a minute,” and the Lady of the Verandah walked to the curtain, brushed it aside, and vanished.
She was back again before Flame had had time to do more than stand and stare with a heart that felt as if it would burst with misery and terror. The Akola gone . . . then Mr. Keymer had gone. And all her clothes had gone, everything but the nightdress and brush and comb and washing things that she had in the brown-paper parcel with her. She was utterly alone in a strange country. The tears began to stream down her face.
“Don’t give it up, ducky.” The Lady of the Verandah was back again, more dressed this time, in a corduroy velvet dressing-gown, with a rather rubbed fur collar. “Thank your blooming stars you happened to blow in here, and not a few doors lower down. Now then, let’s have it, and don’t you tell me anything that isn’t true, or you’ll bitterly regret it, my dear.”
Flame told stammeringly and as meagrely as she could what had brought her to her present pass, and the Lady of the Verandah listened attentively, every now and then pursing up her very red lips into a round O. “And where’s the Keymer man now?” she queried, as Flame stopped speaking.
“Gone on in the ship,” sobbed Flame.
“I doubt it,” said the Lady of the Verandah, with an odd smile. And then she raised her head as the native servant, with a subdued cough, drew the curtain aside. And underneath the curtain Flame saw white shoes and the ends of white duck trousers.
“Tell him I’m engaged,” said the Lady of the Verandah, scowling.
The curtain fell again, and there was a prolonged colloquy. Then the curtain was drawn aside again and the servant came in.
“Half a minute, duckie.” The Lady of the Verandah went out and did not come back for about ten minutes. And when she did come back her face was very red, and her hands were trembling. “You little devil,” she said, “you’ve set the police on the house! I’ll tear your guts out!”
“What do you mean?” Flame was terrified.
“What I say; there’s a police officer here, asking for you. And me as rescued you from the dirty scum down below. I’ll make you suffer for it, you little bitch, you,” and the Lady of the Verandah turned a deep purple.
“But I swear I didn’t; policemen are the one people I am afraid of,” sobbed Flame, wild with fright and terror. That was what Nigel had said: policemen meant prison or a reformatory. “Stop him from coming in somehow, I beseech you to.”
The Lady of the Verandah was mollified and partially convinced, and she darted to a chair. “Sit down there,” she hissed, “and drop that old parcel of yours”—she flung it into a corner. “Pull up your skirt a bit, and shove your hat over your eyes. And when he asks what you are doing here, say that you like it and I am your aunt. Now then, ready,” and she gave a long low whistle.
The tall Egyptian policeman, who had been directed to the house by another Egyptian, with a dripping fez and a distorted angry face, came in humming. He glanced from the Lady of the Verandah to Flame, and then walked up to her with an open notebook in his hand. “Your name,” he said, and he spoke with a foreign accent.
“Mary Jones.” Presumably terror and a certain sense of the dramatic came to Flame’s rescue in this first really serious adventure, and she looked up with her head a little on one side.
“Where have you come from?”
“Cairo.”
“H’m.” The police-sergeant was scribbling.
“This lady any relation of yours?”
“Yes, my aunt,” said Flame, suddenly turning white with the thought of the awful untruths she was telling.
“H’m. She’s a pretty little thing!” The sergeant had put away his notebook and had gone a little nearer to the Lady of the Verandah. “May drop in later,” he said with a meaning glance into the heavily lashed eyes.
“Do so, and I’ll be here.” The Lady of the Verandah burst into laughter indescribably coarse. “See you later, then,” she said, and she wriggled herself out of her chair, showing a great deal of black stocking, and walked with the tall sergeant to the door. And as the curtain fell behind him, she turned and walked back to her own chair, sat down in it again, and dropped her head in her hands. “That’s torn it,” she said, after a prolonged pause, staring across at Flame.
“Why? What!”
“Why, he’s coming back; you must clear. Get your parcel and put on your hat. Half a second to let him turn the corner. Now then. . . .”
They went quickly down the stairs together. Flame saw herself white, and with her hat on crooked, in one of the long glasses. The Lady of the Verandah was hatless. What did it all mean? She tried to ask.
“Oh, shut up; this is serious, this is.” The Lady of the Verandah was in no mood for explanations. She jerked her chin at the native servant squatting on his haunches at the foot of the stairs and spoke in some foreign language, and he settled the turban on his head and darted out. In a minute or two he was back, standing on the iron step of a taxi. “L’Hôtel de Palais Marine,” the Lady of the Verandah spoke in French to the olive-coloured man at the wheel, and then she added something under her breath that Flame could not hear.
“But where am I going to now?” Flame, breathless at the rapid march of events, was more bewildered than ever. First this strange boarding-house place, and now despatched to somewhere else. “Where is this place that you told the taxi man?” she asked, turning on the step to ask the question.
“Oh, get in and keep quiet.” The Lady of the Verandah was turning her head to look up and down the street. “Got your parcel? That’s it. Ta-ta, then,” and Flame was off with the jar of a clutch hurriedly and carelessly let in.
The journey back did not take long. Flame knew it was back because of certain landmarks. Narrow, crowded streets full of natives; more lights now, the front of one place, evidently a cinema, a blaze of light. Music, and in one place that looked like a hall, people dancing. People sitting round little green tables on the pavement drinking out of tall tumblers with straws in them. Flame suddenly realized that she too was thirsty, and ravenously hungry into the bargain. Would there be food at this hotel she was going to? Probably. But a hotel alone—how could she bear it? And alone for weeks or even months, because the Akola, with all the people she knew on board, had gone on? People she knew!—why, that wasn’t it at all. It was only one person she wanted, and by her own mad act she had cut herself off from him for ever. And as the taxi turned into a wide gate and slid along a beautiful smooth drive edged with shrubs, and began to slacken preparatory to drawing up at a wide door out of which bright light was pouring, Flame cast herself back into the corner of the taxi and flung her hands over her face.
Hugh was standing in the hall of the Marine Palace Hotel as Flame’s taxi drew up—standing staring at the Reuter’s telegrams hanging from their nail and seeing nothing of them at all. Since five o’clock he had been pacing up and down this hall, pacing up and down, with intervals of roving through the various reception-rooms, half mad with anxiety. He had left the ship with Flame’s luggage and his own at half-past four, and had driven straight to the Marine Palace Hotel. She would be there, probably, he thought, but she was not. “No sign of any young lady answering to that description,” the polite man in the office had said regretfully. But perhaps mademoiselle would arrive shortly. Would monsieur not be wise to engage rooms in readiness?
Hugh had engaged them; it seemed to dull the torment of anxiety a little to feel that these hotel officials thought that Flame was coming. Very soon he would have to go to the police, he knew, and to the British Consul. But he would give it a little longer first. And just as he had come to the conclusion that he could put it off no longer, he heard the swish of slackening tires on gravel and turned to meet Flame’s eyes.
“Oh!”—the brown paper parcel fell to the ground.
“All right; I’ll pay the taxi.” Hugh came quietly down the steps. “Oh, my God, where have you been?” he said, and his face went white with relief from almost unbearable anxiety.
“Oh, I’ve been miles,” said Flame, and her face too was white, only with rapture.
“Well! . . . Yes, that’s all right.” Hugh nodded pleasantly as the taxi-man touched his hat gratefully. “Well, come along in.” He spoke carelessly; a group of hotel servants was watching them, and the polite man in the office was getting up preparatory to coming out of it. “You’ll be glad to go to your room and have a wash and change. Yes, show madame to her room,” he said, as the hotel official in his red fez came forward bowing and rubbing his hands.
“I haven’t anything to change into.” Flame spoke in an agitated whisper, staring upwards.
“Lost your luggage? Careless, careless!” Hugh smiled in response to the official’s rapidly averted but sympathetic glance. “Well, we’ll soon put that right. Come along upstairs first, anyhow.” Hugh spoke in a passionate anxiety to get Flame out of the way before she gave the whole thing more hopelessly away.
But the polite official had already strolled back to the office well satisfied. Here was one of those delightful little Port Said idylls that meant so much excellent profit to the hotel. Monsieur et madame—especial stress must be laid upon the ‘madame,’ he would impress that on Gaston, the head-waiter.
Above, Hugh and Flame walked along the wide matted corridor side by side. Flame’s heart was beating in great throbs in her throat. He was here, beside her, all by himself. The ship had gone, carrying with it all the people who got in the way and interfered. At least, not exactly interfered, except Dr. Lane, but people who made the man she adored have to think about things, whether he could do them or not. Like sleeping in her cabin. But had the ship gone? She put the question very timidly.
“Hours ago.” Hugh spoke shortly. The servant had opened one door and was walking along to the next. He left both open, salaamed, and withdrew.
Flame went in, and Hugh followed her and shut the door. He glanced swiftly round, and then went out again, shutting the door behind him. Flame caught her breath. Not angry with her, so soon?
But he was back again, and this time from another door, which he left open behind him. The two rooms joined one another then. Oh, heavenly bliss! Flame caught her breath, and then, suddenly trembling with a strange shyness, began to fumble with her parcel.
“How dared you try to run away from me?” Hugh had walked across the floor, and was standing tall and lean, looking down on the little figure in front of him.
“Did you mind?” Flame’s eyes, upturned, were wide with joy.
“Mind? Yes, of course I minded.” Hugh caught his lower lip between his teeth. “Tell me why you did it?” he said.
“Because I found out that you and Dr. Lane had settled to send me home from here. Mary Ashe told me. And I don’t want to go home—I want to be with you always.” Flame’s breast began to heave.
“How did Mary Ashe find out?” Hugh was frowning a little, although far away in some remote part of him something had begun to sing.
“She heard you and Dr. Lane talking about it in the dining saloon.”
“Oh, I see! And how did you get off the ship without being seen?”
“I dressed up in my girl’s clothes again. That was Waterton’s idea, to put some in the helmet-case, in case I might want them. And no one thought of stopping me: I just walked off in the middle of a crowd—heaps of second-class people as well as first. Don’t be angry with me”—Flame clasped her hands together.
“No; I’m not angry. But——” and Hugh smiled. “Did you ever think,” he said, “that if the ship had gone on without you, with me still in it, you would have been very much farther away from me than if you had just gone quietly back to England like a good child?”
“No; I never thought of anything except that I didn’t want to go away from you,” faltered Flame, hanging her head.
“Well!” Hugh took a long breath. “Go, and take off your hat,” he said, “and then come back to me. There’s a great deal I want to hear yet—where you have been since you left the ship, for instance.”
“I will,” said Flame, and she heaved a deep sigh of joy as the tall figure swung round and walked away into the next room again. With him, and no one to interfere—it was too heavenly! She ran to the looking-glass.
Back in his own room, Hugh set his back against the communicating door and shut it with a quick shove. Now, could he trust himself to play the game or could he not? He had with him Flame’s mail, two letters and a cable. The cable was to announce the death of her mother; he felt pretty certain of that. The letters could not have left London early enough to bring that news with them. He walked out on to the verandah. If Flame knew that her mother was dead she would probably not in the least mind going home again. Hugh put his two elbows on to the green iron railing of the verandah and dropped his head in his hands. Could he, or could he not, risk the chance of losing all this new wonderful happiness at one fell swoop? . . . No, he could not—he came to the conclusion swiftly, raising his head and staring defiantly out to sea.
“I’m ready!” Flame had come quietly up behind him. “Oh, doesn’t it look glorious!” she said, standing very close to him. “What a lovely verandah!”
“Yes; it’s nice, isn’t it? We’ll have dinner out here in a few minutes. You must be ravenously hungry, by the way. But tell me first all about what you have been doing since you left the ship.”
“Oh, it will make you angry again!”
“No, it won’t. Not if you tell me quickly and absolutely truthfully, that is. Carry on, and I’ll smoke a pipe to keep me in a good temper! Sit down here . . and Hugh gave Flame a little shove towards a low chair.
“Well, it was like this . . .” and then Flame told the whole story, looking like a frightened child in her soft grey dress with the frill round the neck. “What sort of a place do you think it can have been?” she ended up shyly.
“I can’t conceive,” said Hugh, speaking rather shortly and huskily. “Anyhow . . .” and he got up and began to knock out his pipe on the green rail—” anyhow, I’ll find out to-morrow,” he said; “I should like to thank that woman for looking after you.”
“Oh, so should I!” said Flame impulsively; “let’s go together, shall we?”
“We’ll see.” Hugh put his pipe in his pocket.
“Not angry, are you?” queried Flame anxiously.
“Not in the least!” Hugh swallowed. What reward could he give that would be adequate? That woman, probably sunk in depths of vice beyond imagination, and yet with enough of the Divine still left in her to spare the child who had stumbled unawares on the threshold of hell. He felt the tears burn behind his eyelids.
“You are angry?” Flame was looking anxiously up at him.
“I am not, you little goose!” Hugh spoke with the gentlest reassurance, but with a sort of fierceness in his voice.
Dinner was over. Very perfect and noiselessly served by two native servants in snowy coats and baggy trousers. Gaston, the French head-waiter, appeared twice during this wonderful meal, firstly to inquire what monsieur and madame would drink, and lastly to bring the exquisitely made Turkish coffee with the flickering blue-flamed cigar-lighter on the brass tray.
“He thinks I’m your wife . . . he calls me ‘madame.’” Flame, who had been dreadfully hungry before, was now in the wildest spirits, and she sat blowing the smoke through her nose and staring across at the man who sat leaning back, one long leg crossed over the other.
“Does he?” Hugh closed his eyes abruptly as a vision of the woman who bore his name fled across him. Drunkenness has many ugly phases, and a drunken woman is God’s image defaced almost beyond recognition. “How would you like to be?” he asked abruptly, opening his eyes again.
“But you have one.”
“Yes, I know; but supposing I hadn’t.” Hugh was looking at the greying end of his cigarette.
“Well, I should love it,” said Flame, speaking rather breathlessly. Why did her heart suddenly begin to beat so madly? she wondered.
“Would you? I wonder.” Hugh suddenly got up and walked to the rail of the verandah. “Give her those letters and cable”—his conscience was screaming out the words as his eyes, rather haggard, rested on the divine panorama spread out in front of him. The Mediterranean literally washes the steps of the Marine Palace Hotel, and the tiny waves broke on the sand just below him with a soft splash, leaving a tiny line of white foam in their wake. He turned round abruptly.
“I say, I’ve got some letters and a cable for you,” he said, and his voice was quick and hard.
“Have you? Well, then, I don’t want them.” Flame’s response was instant, and she half got up out of her chair. “Don’t get them,” she cried, and she flung out her hands.
“Why not?” Hugh turned from the door into his room.
“Why, because they’re sure to be scolding, dreadful letters. Mother will say I’m to go back . . . or Gerald will have written . . . or Nigel. Don’t spoil this heavenly, heavenly evening, please, please don’t!” Flame came nearer, with eyes full of anguished pleading.
“Mother will say I’m to go back.” Hugh caught his breath. That that cable contained the news of that mother’s death, he had not the faintest doubt. And that that would alter the whole of this child’s outlook on life he had not the faintest doubt either. The beloved brother would succeed: the beautiful ancestral home would be shared by brother and sister alike. “You’d better have them,” he said hoarsely.
“No, no; I tell you I don’t want them!” Flame had begun to cry. “It’s because you want to get rid of me,” she sobbed, “I know it is. You think that it will be a bother, or expensive or something, to have me with you. But it won’t—I have got twenty pounds—that will go a long way!”
“Flame!” In spite of his tumult of feeling, Hugh’s teeth flashed white. “Look here,” he said, “ =stop crying, and listen to me. How can you stay with me? Tell me now! Come on to my knee, you silly little child, and tell me.” But in spite of his bantering words Hugh’s breath was coming heavily as he dropped into a low wicker-chair, and held out his arms.
“Oh, you’ve got that heavenly smoky, manny smell in your neck—I adore it!” Flame had flung back her head and was squashing her face into the brown throat. “Oh, what a blissful evening this is being!” and Flame caught her breath with a little contented sob.
“Look here . . . stop for a minute, dear.” With almost superhuman self-control Hugh put his hand under Flame’s head and drew it away from him a little. “This is all very well,” he said, “but it doesn’t lead to anything. We’ve got to face things, talk things out.”
“You’re shaking all over,” said Flame curiously.
“Am I?” Hugh laughed shortly. Then he suddenly let her slip quietly off his knee. “Oh, my God!” he said, and he got up and put a finger inside his collar.
“What is it?” Flame stared, panic-stricken.
“Nothing,” Hugh had walked to the rail, put both elbows down on it and buried his well-brushed head in his hands.
“There must be something,” said Flame timidly, coming nearer.
“No, there isn’t. Look here, you cut off to bed.” Hugh spoke without raising his head from his hands, but the tips of his fingers and his knuckles showed white against the dark hair.
“Oh, you’re getting like you used to on board.” Flame’s face began slowly to turn white. “And here we are, all by ourselves, no dreadful person like Dr. Lane to interfere. And yet, though you know that I simply adore you, worship you, you won’t even begin to be loving. I put my face in your neck and you only push it out again,” and Flame’s wide-open eyes began to stream.
Hugh swung round. “Look here, you have no conception what you are talking about,” he said roughly, and his eyes had a dreadful look in their depths. “Go to bed, before it is too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“For me to remember . . .” and then Hugh stopped. Flame’s face lifted like a little flower. And that other face—red-veined and swollen, smiling stupidly.
“Remember what?”
“Nothing.” Hugh laughed rather wildly.
“I don’t want to remember anything except that I adore you,” said Flame, and she came a little nearer and looked up, smiling tremulously.
“Ah . . .” and then Hugh flung conscience, honour, everything to the winds. This child loved him, and here they were miles away from everyone. She was his, this little sweet thing; his, every atom of her. He stooped and gathered her up to his heart.
“Now are you going to kiss me?” asked Flame tremulously.
“Yes, I am,” said Hugh, and he lifted her from the floor. “In that big chair over there. Put your arms round my neck, you little sweet—you little sweet! . . .”
“Oh, kissing is the most heavenly thing!” Flame drew a long breath and lifted her arms slowly above her head.
“Do you think so?” Hugh was stooping over his cupped hands. “That’s it,” he blew out a cloud of smoke and flicked the still burning match over the green rail. “I’m glad you like it,” he said, as he leant back again, and there was a note of exultation in his voice.
“But I couldn’t bear it from anyone but you,” said Flame soberly.
“No, that’s as it should be,” said Hugh, and he gathered the little figure rather closer to him.
“It makes me feel all sort of seethy and mad inside,” said Flame after a little pause.
“Does it?” said Hugh, and his eyes were fixed on a moth blundering up and down the globe of the electric light.
“Yes, frightfully mad inside,” said Flame, and she stirred a little uncomfortably. “Will it go off?” she asked, after a pause.
“Probably,” said Hugh quietly, and he drew a long draught of smoke deep down into his lungs, and then let it out through slightly dilated nostrils.
“Oh! In a way, I like it,” said Flame shyly, and then she laughed rather apologetically.
“Do you? Well, I’m glad,” said Hugh, and he caught in another long breath of smoke. “But it’s time for little girls to go to bed,” he said, after a pause, during which Flame lay and stared at the keen profile above her.
“Oh no; I don’t want to. Do you know, you’ve got a face just like one of those carved knights that you see on tombs—sort of peaceful, and yet frantically determined.”
“Have I?” Hugh smiled. Flame was trying to divert him from the subject in hand, namely bedtime. But it was late, and she had had a very agitating day. And she was his, so he could afford to wait. Also she was a child, and a child must be led tenderly and sympathetically into the wilderness of love. He moved his knees. “Up you get,” he said.
“Oh, but I shan’t see you for such ages!” Flame stood with quivering chin.
“Yes, you will, exactly eight hours from now. I’ll bring in your tea in the morning, and if you’re good— I said good,” repeated Hugh, his eyes on the quivering chin, “I’ll kiss you awake. But if you make a fuss, now, I shall not—I shall only drop a drop of boiling tea on your funny little nose.”
“Oh!” Flame swallowed once or twice, and then smiled bravely. “Could we have the door in between our rooms open?” she said.
“Yes, certainly,” said Hugh, and his eyes were inscrutable. “Give me a shout when you’re in bed, and I’ll open it.”
“Oh, joy.” Flame hesitated. “And could you come and give me just a tiny, tiny kiss in bed?” She hesitated.
“No, not to-night, darling.” Hugh spoke quietly but very decidedly, but Flame’s face fell in an anguish of disappointment.
“When then?” she asked, turning away a little.
“To-morrow,” said Hugh, and he stood very still, his shaking hands driven deep into his pockets.
“Oh, I say!” Flame, blinking long eyelashes, stared bewildered for a moment or two. Where was she?
No tiny white cabin and serge curtain blowing in the doorway, but a wide, sun-filled room, and a tall figure in striped pyjamas standing by her bed. “Oh!” and she burrowed, suddenly shy, under the sheet.
“Come along out; your tea will get cold!” Hugh was laughing like a boy. Every scruple, every twinge of conscience gone, he had slept dreamlessly and waked with a wild feeling of exhilaration.
A man of means, the world lay before him. Thrust behind him the ugly years of constant association with a woman degraded beyond imagination. Flung at his feet the most heavenly unspoilt love; he had laughed with purest happiness as he scrubbed his teeth in front of the little glass in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom, and swilled the cold water out of the shallow gurrah round his face and neck. This was going to make up for a good deal; and the woman staring bloated from behind slender wrought-iron tracery—for bars in Homes for the Mrs. Keymers of this world are apt to arouse suspicion—would divorce him. And if she didn’t, then he and Flame would vanish . . . India . . . Kashmir. . . . Tents pitched beside a foaming torrent, the eternal snows standing quietly by. Nights cold and steely, with huge logs flung on the leaping wood fires, and Flame with her yellow head close pressed into his side. His entirely, this child; for Hugh’s love for her had become part of his very life. She was more than twenty years his junior: she was probably everything that the casual observer would pronounce most unsuitable, but she had crept into his heart, and there she would remain for the rest of life—Hugh knew it as surely as he knew that his own reflection looked out at him from the little looking-glass above his head.
“I must brush my teeth first”—Flame was looking out again, the sheet held close up under her chin.
“All right; I’ll clear off till you’re ready. Put on your dressing-gown and come out on to the verandah; they’ve put the tea there.”
Hugh turned and swung away. Flame, watching him go, with her heart in her eyes, trembled. Even to see him gave her the wildest, maddest thrill of rapture all over her; what when he kissed her again, which he probably would when she had washed and brushed her hair and put on her dressing-gown?
“There you are!” Hugh turned at the soft footfall. “Come and look out: did you ever see anything lovelier?” He flung out a quiet arm and drew her close to his side. The Mediterranean lay still and deeply blue below them—like a sheet of coldest thickest ice, as Flame said, glancing shyly up as she said it, in case it might be a silly thing to say.
“Yes, I remember ice like that in the winter of 1888, before you were even thought of. I used to go and skate on one of the ponds on Clapham Common, and there were fishes frozen into it. Now, then, let’s have tea,” and Hugh turned. “Slept well?” He looked down at her.
“Yes, very.” Flame’s heart was beating very hard. Now for the kiss.
Hugh was smiling. Flame was looking up at him like a dog looks at its master. His little dove, what a shame! He held out his arms.
Flame was in them, clinging desperately. “I thought you weren’t going to,” she breathed.
“Did you? Well, you were mistaken. Beloved—dearest little thing; oh you, you . . .” Hugh laid his mouth on each soft shut eye in turn.
“You what?” Flame was quivering with joy.
“You joy of my very soul.” Hugh set her down gently. “Now, that’s enough for this hour of the morning,” he said; “this is the time for chota hazeri. You sit over there and pour out, and I’ll sit here and see how badly you do it.”
“How do you know I shall do it badly?” Flame’s small teeth were showing in two jubilant little rows as she took the low wicker-chair that Hugh pointed out.
“You’re sure to, because you’re so young. No, that’s not so bad,” as Flame’s small hands moved deftly among the flowered china. “Quite good. Now I’ll butter the toast—one piece for each of us and a plantain each, too. Don’t speak with your mouth full—it’s bad manners.”
“I wasn’t going to!” Flame spoke indignantly.
“But you are: one side of your funny little face is all stuffed out like a monkey’s.” Hugh flung back his head and laughed tumultuously. Then he went suddenly grave. “Oh, God, I’m so happy I can’t help making a fool of myself!” he said, and he got up and walked round the table.
“Is it because you’ve got me you’re so happy?” said Flame, catching one of the lean brown hands in hers and holding it to her face.
“Yes, it is. Tell me you’re happy too, and then I shall be happier still.” Hugh was standing, one hand on the cropped head, staring out to sea.
“I’m so happy that I feel I shall die with happiness. I’m so happy that I feel absolutely mad with happiness. Oh, Hugh! take me in your arms, or else I can’t believe it,” and Flame suddenly dropped the brown hand she was holding, and burst out crying.
“Darling!” In a second she was in his arms, held passionately close. “Darling, what is it? . . . not tears at this hour of the morning! Come, cheer up! What’s it all about?” Hugh held her a little way away from him, and then drew her close again, pressing her head against his heart. But he stared over her head with eyes that were tender and exultant at the same time. Flame was taking it hard; the passionate little mouth had not lied. Ah! but he would be good to her, he would. She had nothing to fear . . . with him. “Better?” he spoke very tenderly.
“Yes, thank you.” Flame was wiping her eyes rather tremulously. “I don’t know why I suddenly go off like that,” she said. “I think it is because I get a sort of mad feeling inside, and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Probably.” But Hugh’s eyes were fixed on the straight blue line of horizon. Was he being an unutterable cad? he suddenly wondered. Supposing he was suddenly to say to Flame that he had decided that after all the best thing was for her to return to England, what would she do? Supposing he was to insist upon her seeing the letters and cable, what would she do? And suddenly his conscience took him by the throat. “You hound! you know perfectly well that if you are ever to know an instant’s happiness in the future you must show her those letters and cable, now, this instant,” and he swung round and walked quickly into his room to get them.
“Why must I read them now?” Flame was holding them in her hand.
“Because I want you to. There are only two and the cable. Read the cable first.” Hugh’s heart was beating heavily in his throat, and he felt a little sick.
“All right.” Flame tore the white Eastern Telegraph envelope across. “’Something has happened; wait till you get my letter at Colaba. Nigel.’ Oh I whatever can it be?” she exclaimed.
“Read the letters.” Hugh’s hands were in his pockets. Reprieve!
“They’re only quite short.” Flame’s eyes were running down the small, neat writing. “Gerald says, ‘Be good, and go straight to Waterton’s daughter at Colaba,’ and I shall be all right. And Nigel says . . .” Flame tore the envelope across; “Nigel says that Waterton writes to say that Mincemeat had hysterics when she found we had gone, but that when Waterton explained, she was all right, and she went to spend the rest of the day with a friend, and Waterton let her have the Rolls to keep her quiet. And that the stable cat has had three more kittens. That’s a positive mania with the stable cat,” ended Flame thoughtfully.
“And who is Mincemeat?” Hugh was leaning back, looking across the small space that separated them.
“My governess.” Flame was replacing the letters in their envelopes. “I wonder what the thing is that Nigel wants to tell me,” she ruminated thoughtfully.
“What do you think it could be?”
“Something about Falaise.” Flame suddenly looked up. “Oh! if only I could be there with you,” she said suddenly.
“Why?”
“Because Falaise sort of gets into my soul, like you do,” said Flame. “Like when you come close to me and put your arms round me. It sort of warms me all through and through.”
Hugh got up. “Come here,” he said.
“What, have I said something to make you angry?” Flame stood up abruptly, letting the letters on her lap slip on to the floor.
“No, not angry. Look here”—Hugh had his hands on the soft shoulders below him. “Supposing your being with me meant that you could never see Falaise again, would you think it was worth it?”
“Could it mean that?”
“Quite easily.”
“That I couldn’t see Nigel either?”
“Yes; possibly not Nigel either.”
Flame stood still for a minute. “But why should it?” she said uneasily.
“Because, darling, a man of my age and a child of your age are not supposed to go about together. . . . Oh, how ridiculous that sounds! Flame, it is so difficult to explain to you. Look here, I must try and make it clearer.” Hugh sank his head into his hands.
“Wait a minute. Will you always want me with you?” Flame interrupted eagerly.
“Always”—Hugh’s voice was muffled.
“Shall we be able to go where people won’t interfere?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, I don’t care about anything but you—I don’t want anyone but you. I only want to be where I can see your darling, darling mouth, so heavenly and understanding, and feel your precious, precious arms round me. Hugh, I love you, I love you! don’t send me away from you!” Flame was weeping wildly.
“Ah! but I ought not to, I ought not to!” Hugh’s conscience was suddenly desperately awake., This child, innocent almost beyond imagination, clinging to him in purest love and trust—what was he going to do to her . . . supposing she turned and bitterly reproached him afterwards? “No; look here, I must think . . .” He tried to unfasten the clinging fingers.
“You’ll kill me. I tell you, if you send me home! shall throw myself overboard.” Flame took a couple of steps backward. “You’re tired of me, that’s what it is; you think I shall be a bother when you want to write.” The soft mouth was set suddenly in a hard line.
“Be quiet. I don’t think anything of the kind.” Hugh was breathing heavily.
“Well, what is it, then? There must be something. Last night you loved me and kissed me; to-day you only keep on thinking of things that might make you want to send me away from you. Hugh, don’t you love me? Tell me, has anything come to make you not love me? Tell me, I must know. . . .”
“My God, no. No; it’s only that . . . Flame, you don’t in the least understand what it means. And I feel now that perhaps I’m taking a ghastly advantage of you—a cowardly, dastardly advantage that I shall regret all the rest of my life. Perhaps one day you will reproach me, and that would absolutely finish me.” And Hugh’s face suddenly went pale and old.
“But I love you.” Flame came quietly nearer.
“Yes, I know you do now; but perhaps when you find out. . . .” Hugh stopped abruptly and took the little upturned face between his hands.
“Find out what?”
“Well . . . nothing.” Hugh took a long breath. No; this settled it. It was too much to expect from any man. “Curse you . . . haven’t you had enough out of me?” he flung the challenge to the One who stood quietly at his elbow. “Nothing but a life of filthiest hell! No; this happiness is mine,” and he stooped and lifted the little figure in his arms.
“All that awful misery for nothing,” whispered Flame, wiping her eyes on the lapel of the striped coat.
“Yes; but it had to be. Now, then, wipe your dearest face on my hanky and let’s start chola hazeri all over again. You sit on my knee, and then I can see that you don’t fill your mouth too full,” and Hugh laughed rather wildly.
“Oh, Hugh!” Flame drew a long sobbing breath.
“Beloved!” Hugh stooped and buried his mouth in the little white throat turned up to him.
A very perfect day was very near to its close. Flame was alone, curled up in a big chair on the verandah, thinking about it. Hugh was out; almost directly after tea he had gone out not saying where he was going, but only laying his hand gently on her head and saying that he would not be away for long. And Flame had caught the brown hand to her mouth, and had not let it go until he had taken her chin in the other hand and lifted it gently away.
And now it was nearly dark. Twilight in the East comes in very quickly, and although the sun had only just set below the blue line of sea, the glory left behind was already stabbed with stars. Flame, going over in her head the events of the day, looked at the stars wonderingly. So many of them, and each one set in its proper place, there must be Some One managing it all. Yes; the day had been perfect—a succession of heavenly happenings. Shopping most of the morning, for Flame, not accustomed to a curtailed wardrobe, had confided to the bronzed, smiling man, flung in a deck-chair, pipe in mouth and feet on the topmost rail of the verandah, that she had hardly any clothes.
“Good heavens, then we must certainly go out and buy some.” Hugh took his pipe out of his mouth with one hand, and drew Flame to him with the other.
“Will twenty pounds buy dresses as well as underclothes?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Although it rather depends on the underclothes,” Hugh laughed quietly.
“Silk ones. Since I have been grown up I have always had those,” said Flame, rather shyly though, because in the depths of her heart she was wondering whether it was all right to talk about underclothes to a man, even though you did adore him madly.
“Well, when the twenty pounds is exhausted you can begin to draw on me,” said Hugh.
“Oh, I see.” Flame hesitated. “Is it all right, then, for me not to have to keep anything to pay for the hotel?” she asked shyly.
“Perfectly all right.” And then Hugh got up, heaving his long length carefully out of the striped canvas. “You belong to me now, dear,” he said, and he stood very still.
“Yes, I know. But I have been wondering about that. What will you tell people that I am, if they ask you?” said Flame, taking one of the black buttons of the blue blazer in her small hand and twisting it round.
Hugh was silent; then he spoke with a sort of suppressed fierceness: “I shall tell them to go to hell,” he said.
“What! angrily like that, just for asking you a simple question. Why?” Flame got suddenly pink.
“Because it’s nobody’s business but mine who you are,” said Hugh, and he frowned heavily.
“I am afraid of you when you look like that.” Flame let go of the button and stepped back a pace or two.
“Don’t be.” Hugh’s face cleared abruptly. “Darling, don’t be,” he said, and he stooped and took the faintly flushing face between his hands. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing in the world. Only it always annoys me when I think that people are going to interfere with me. Don’t suggest it, there’s a dear. See?”
“All right, I won’t; “ but Flame’s hands were still trembling as she walked back into her room to get her hat.
However, when she returned, everything was just as it always had been with the man she loved. He was smiling, his brown face all alert and cheerful under the white Hawkes topi. And in the whirl of shopping and choosing delicious embroidered underclothing for the supply of silk underclothing in Port Said proved to be woefully limited—she soon forgot her momentary disquiet. Hugh was a perfect person to go shopping with; he was never in a hurry, and always ready to give an opinion. He sat, one long leg crossed over the other, and watched her as she walked out of the little trying-on place with a different frock on each time.
“Have the lot,” he said cheerfully, as she consulted him in an anxious undertone as to choice.
“Oh, no”—Flame was shocked. That would be desperate extravagance. She walked away to the heaped counter and had a long discussion with the really very intelligent proprietress of the shop. Eventually she came back, her small face alight with satisfaction.
“I’ve chosen four,” she said; “three rather plain ones and one rather grander one that will do for the evening. And with the underclothes it comes to what she says in this funny money is equal to twenty-five pounds. Would you mind lending me five pounds?”
Hugh drew his leather note-case out of the inner pocket of his tussore coat with a very tender look on his mouth. “I’ll settle with her,” he said; “she’ll get muddled if we both do it. Sure you’ve got everything you want?”
“Positive,” said Flame, and she stood and watched Hugh towering over the counter with a lump in her throat. How different to well-remembered shoppings with Mummy, this. Mummy had always seemed to speak so cruelly to the people serving them; so hardly. The tall man in the silk suit was smiling, and he had taken off his topi. And the lady of the shop was smiling and bowing too, and she smiled and bowed till Hugh and the little figure with him were safely installed in the carriage again. And even when they had gone she was still smiling; that was a charming little idyll, monsieur so good-looking and with such charming manners. And probably soon he would remember to remedy the lack of a wedding-ring . . .
So the morning had been a perfect success, and back again at the hotel, lunch had been served in a beautiful little private sitting-room adjoining Flame’s bedroom. And then there had been a long, dreamless sleep on the big chesterfield sofa covered with grey linen. Hugh had insisted on that.
“But it’s such a waste.” Flame’s lower lip had trembled.
“No, it’s not; that’s what I took this sitting-room for, so that you should be able to snooze in the afternoons. Now!” And Hugh held up a warning finger.
“Oh . . .” But Flame had had to give way. And she was far more tired than she knew, for she slept until half-past four. And then there had been tea—tea out on the verandah this time, for the sun had sunk low on the horizon, and the long rays only came lazily through the green chinks.
And now it was nearly seven, and Hugh had been out some time. And Flame sat up in the big chair and linked her hands round her knees. What heavenly bliss this was all being . . . heavenly bliss beyond anything that she had ever even imagined. Because, as well as all the fun of it, frantic exciting fun like staying in an hotel with native servants with bare feet padding about the rooms, there was something else—something that Flame suddenly began to try to analyse. A wondrous, trembling glory round the solitude of it. Alone in the world with one man. Fear . . . in some mysterious way, fear. Fear, not of the man exactly, but of something else . . . Fear of what? . . . and Flame got out of her chair, and stood, her hands clutched close round her neck. And then the door swung quietly open and Hugh came in.
“Hallo! . . . all in the dark! Why didn’t you light up, darling?” Hugh walked quickly to a switch, and the room was flooded with a soft, rose-coloured light.
“I didn’t think about it.” Flame’s frightened eyes gleamed over her hands.
“What’s happened?” Hugh’s eyes suddenly narrowed, and he looked half-unconsciously round the room.
“Nothing . . . only suddenly I got a sort of feeling . . . a sort of feeling . . .”
“Well, come over here and tell me about it.” Hugh tossed his soft felt hat on to a distant chair. “That’s it . . .” He drew her quietly into his arms and then abruptly lifted her from the floor. “Baby, you don’t eat enough,” he said, and he carried her to the sofa and sat down on it. “Now then, for the feeling,” he said.
“It’s gone,” said Flame, after an instant’s hurried probing of her sensations.
“Good! That is to say, good, if you didn’t like it. If you did, bad!”
“I didn’t like it very much. It was a sort of terrified feeling. A sort of looming feeling. A sort of feeling as if something was coming dreadful, and I couldn’t get away from it.”
“Ah! . . .” Hugh drew in his breath swiftly. Divinely armed! And people talked tosh about telling girls everything. “Sweet, you are not afraid now that you are in my arms, are you?” he said.
“No.”
“Not a little bit.”
“Not a little bit . . . Except . . .”
“Well?”
“Except that I can’t get close enough into your arms,” whispered Flame, pressing her soft chin into the brown throat.
“Beloved I . . .” and Hugh bent his head almost reverently. This child . . . his very own . . . God was good . . .
“Let’s be quite quiet like this for a little while, shall we?” whispered Flame. “I like it like that: sort of being able to breathe it all in and know it’s true.”
“Yes, we will.” Hugh hooked a low cane footstool towards him and crossed his narrow feet on it. Then he settled Flame a little more comfortably in his arms, and then he laid back his head and stared up at the circle of pale light above the standard lamp. Peace, this. And since that lighthearted tea, only a couple of hours ago, what horrors had he not been through. For, piecing together Flame’s rather incoherent description of where she had been driven the night before, he had set out to find it, and reward the woman who had delivered her to him in safety. And he had found a house in disorder, a French chef de police, and a couple of understrappers. “Monsieur is acquainted with madame la proprietaire?” “No; certainly not.” But it had needed all Hugh’s command of the language—and mercifully he was extremely good at it—to get him out of an extremely uncomfortable situation. Madame had been found murdered in the early hours of that morning; could monsieur perhaps not shed any light on the matter?
Monsieur could not. But Hugh had been thankful when he had at last been able to get back into his taxi and drive feverishly away. He had the clue to the whole thing in his possession, he felt perfectly sure of it. The woman had been done to death by the police officer who had come back expecting to find Flame and who had not found her. But, being a police officer and the place Port Said, the affair would probably be allowed to drop, and Hugh, although he was ashamed of the feeling, was glad of it.
But it had saddened him and he was also glad to be able to lie back quietly and regain the serenity with which he had started out from the hotel. That woman . . . an outcast, and yet fit to rank with the first among the Heavenly Host. “Greater love hath no man than this . . .” Thank God, that at the last the scales would be held by a Hand that knew how to mete out justice.
“I was nearly asleep”—Flame stirred and spoke in a drowsy whisper.
“Were you, darling? Well, wake up, because I hear them coming to lay dinner. I shall change to-night, and you can put on that fluffy garment you bought this morning.” . . .
Dinner was over—nicer even than the dinner of the night before. There was champagne, and it frothed and gleamed goldenly from Hugh’s wide-mouthed glass.
“Mayn’t I have any?” Flame’s voice was rather subdued.
“Well, I’m not sure. Are you accustomed to it?” Hugh’s eyes gleamed very blue between his dark lashes.
“Oh, yes; at least, no, not very,” said Flame. “But I’ve had it about twice, and it always gives me the most heavenly cheerful feeling in my head.”
“Well, then, I think I’d rather you didn’t have it,” said Hugh, and although he smiled, there was an inscrutable look on his mouth. Flame was his, certainly, but it must be with her fullest consciousness.
“Oh, well, then I’ll have lemonade. At least one of those lime squashy things like I had last night.” Flame spoke rather quickly, to hide the quaver in her voice. How funny of him, when really and truly this was being more like a party than anything else.
But Hugh heard the quaver, and as the native servant left the room he leaned across the table and took her hand. “Beloved!” he said.
“Oh!” Flame’s breath suddenly left her. “Don’t say it,” she cried, and she stared at him out of wide eyes.
“And why not?”
“Because it gives me the most desperate, maddest feeling in my soul,” said Flame, and she flung her hands over her mouth as the servant came back into the room.
Hugh tipped back the glass into his mouth with a hand that was shaking a little. Flame’s eyes were black in her small, white face. He ate in silence for a moment or two, then he spoke cheerfully.
“Well,” he said, “let’s have our coffee outside. It’s divine; there’s a huge moon, like a big balloon sailing about.”
“No, I don’t want to.” Flame spoke with a sort of sudden obstinacy in her voice. “I suddenly feel that I don’t want anything. I only want to go somewhere where I can’t be seen by anybody. I don’t even want you; I only want to be alone . . . to be alone . . .” and Flame began to cry wildly.
Hugh pushed his chair back from the table with a jerk. There was the pad of bare feet on the matting again; Abdul already in the room with the coffee, and Gaston with the brass tray and the flickering blue flame.
But Abdul did not see, and Gaston only saw with the fullest understanding. Mademoiselle was overcome with the emotional strain of the situation; surely monsieur would grasp that. But Hugh did not grasp anything. Flame was in tears, and she had looked at him as if she hated him—that was enough for him. He got up, absolutely white, and walked out on to the verandah.
Gaston made a funny little cluck in his throat. “Tut, tut . . . these two, only children really, both of them,” for Gaston was an old man, only for some years now he had dyed his hair and moustache. “Mademoiselle will take a cigarette?” He looked at Flame with his head on one side like a wise old bird.
“No, no; I should die if I smoked,” and Flame was gone from the room, flying, her hands clenched over her ears. What had happened? All her happiness crashing about her. Hugh angry . . . for his face had been set and white as he got up from the table. She flung herself downwards on to the bed.
And there, after about half an hour’s agonized speculation, Hugh found her. Agonized, because his conscience was badly awake this time. He had paced up and down the verandah, his chin sunk on his white shirt-front and his hands clenched in his pockets. Should he let her go . . . should he insist on her going? He would see how she was. And he stood at the^P^end of the white bed and spoke very quietly.
But Flame had heard him come, and she flung herself down at his feet. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry!” she cried, and weeping, she laid her face on the black-silk instep. “Take me up in your arms again; it’s that that makes me feel so frantic when you say things like ‘Beloved’ and I can’t get at you. Hugh, Hugh!” Flame’s little body was writhing on the matting.
“Oh, my darling!” Hugh’s eyes were wet as he stooped. “Come on, and don’t be a beloved little goose,” he said. “We’ll talk about nice things like what we are going to do to-morrow,” and he picked her up in his arms and carried her out on to the verandah. And there he talked cheerfully and tenderly to her until she lay passive on his heart, only feeling his face from time to time with a soft, wandering hand. And then Hugh fell silent, wondering rather bitterly why he had not been created the complete villain, so that he could do the thing that he meant to do without the faintest compunction.
“Your chin is all scratchy”—Flame’s small hand was still wandering.
“Yes, I know; I ought to have shaved again.” Hugh caught the little hand and held it to his mouth.
“It doesn’t make any difference . . . I mean . . .” and Flame stopped suddenly.
Hugh’s teeth shone abruptly white. “You mean that you would rather I didn’t kiss you again,” he said, wilfully misunderstanding.
“Oh, no!” Flame stirred in the arms that held her.
“Well, what do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything about that; at least, I mean I only said that because I just happened to feel your chin. But about kissing . . . I wish I could explain what I feel about that . . .”
“Try.”
“No; I don’t think I can . . . at least, perhaps I can. Now look . . .” Flame half sat up, then sank back again. “No; I can’t,” she said.
“Yes, you can . . . you can say anything to me.” Hugh cleared his throat.
“Well! No; you’ll think me most awful”—it came out with a burst.
“Never!” Hugh laughed in his throat. “Come along . . . out with it.”
“Well, supposing you put your hand like that,” Flame was fumbling shyly with the lean wrist. “Now, like that . . . there, just on my heart . . . then . . .”
“Well?” Hugh caught his lower lip between his teeth.
“Then I feel absolutely mad for you to kiss me,” said Flame, and she suddenly thrust the lean fingers away.
“Do you?” and Hugh’s voice suddenly came hoarsely. “Well, then, hold up your face and let me. No; it’s utterly . . . utterly . . . utterly useless to struggle”—he punctuated each word with a little laugh. “Lie still . . . I tell you, Flame, lie still.”
“Oh dear!” The big moon had sailed right across the star-sprinkled dome of blue before Flame found herself in her room again. Her hands were trembling as she slipped off the soft, fluffy dinner garment. The evening had been in some way dreadful. Not really dreadful, but sort of terrific. Hugh was different in some inscrutable way. He had suddenly turned fierce as he had never been before. It was like telling a person to pretend to be something alarming, and then to find that he was it. Hugh was it . . . all the sort of protecting, fatherly part of him had gone, giving place to something else. And he had said good-night to her fiercely too, and as he had turned on his heel, Flame had thought that she saw him smile. What did it mean? Flame, combing the short yellow hair that was just beginning to show the tiniest atom of wave over her ears, wondered. And wondering she was seized with a wild flood of homesickness. It was heavenly to be kissed . . . bewilderingly blissfully heavenly to be kissed, especially as she had been kissed that evening. But it was frightening too. And if she had been at home there would be nothing to frighten; only Mincemeat, maddeningly fussy and irritating, certainly, but not alarming. Ah, but wouldn’t there, though? What about that slow smile from the red mouth set in the white face? Flame flung her hands over her face in a wild revulsion of feeling. Of course, this was heaven compared to that: in fact, this was heaven not compared to anything, and she smiled as she ran into the little bathroom and brushed her teeth and washed, and then slipped her soft little body into the crêpe de Chine nightdress—the nightdress she had brought with her, far better than the Port Said ones—because Hugh was coming in to kiss her good-night in bed.
“Ready?” It was Hugh, very tall and lean in striped pyjamas, who was standing in the door giving on to the verandah. He looked quite black against the silvery pathway to the moon, and he stood with his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, I say, I’m not in bed!” Flame faltered a little and shrank back against the wall.
“Never mind. What does it matter? . . . you’re quite dressed. Come over here!” Hugh leant back against the wall and held out his arms.
“No.” Flame took hold of both her ears like a frightened child.
“But I say yes! . . . come here.” Hugh made a little beckoning motion with his arms.
Flame dared not disobey, but she went laggingly and with her chin on her neck. He was different, there was no doubt about it. Just as heavenly—Flame felt the same little soft thrill run over her as he spoke—but without the sort of tender heavenliness that made his arms a shelter.
“Now then . . . say you’re sorry for keeping me waiting.” Hugh put a hand on each side of the soft face and drew Flame close to him.
“I am very, very sorry”—Flame’s breast was heaving. This was certainly being most awful. The kiss in bed was going to be a failure: she ought not to have suggested it. “Oh . . .” she caught her breath suddenly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why, it’s the feeling of not having very much on . . . and knowing that you can feel me through. Hugh . . .” Flame caught hold of the lean fingers.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing really . . . only . . .” Flame’s colour was coming and going swiftly.
“Why . . . what is it?” Hugh spoke caressingly, although there was something in his eyes that was not caressing.
“I don’t know . . . only I feel somehow as if I . . . Hugh! No, don’t . . . no, don’t!” Flame suddenly stood still and wrung her hands.
“Don’t what? I thought you didn’t like me to hold you so close?” Hugh laughed, a funny laugh in which there was no mirth.
“Yes, but I do . . . I do. It’s only that . . . and the rest of the sentence was lost in a strangled cry as Flame was swept up into savage arms.
It was only a very little movement, but it waked the man who had only just dropped off to sleep. Conscience keeps her own particular shafts for the very early morning, and Hugh had had his full mead of them since Flame, with little inarticulate murmurings of love, had dropped off to sleep in his arms. Hers was the sleep of youth, deep and quiescent.
“Beloved, what is it?” He did not move his chin from the little head.
“You did shave again, after all”—Flame’s small hand was wandering.
“Oh, Flame!” In the midst of his torment of thought Hugh laughed aloud. The vagaries of a woman’s mind, who could follow them? “Yes, I did,” he said. “Why, do you mind?”
“No; I love you because you are so polite in those ways,” said Flame, and then, sleepily, a fuller consciousness came back to her and she suddenly shrank away from him.
“Ah . . .!” Hugh caught in his breath with a dreadful stab at his heart. “No!” he said, and he drew her fiercely back to him.
“You’ll think less of me . . . you’ll think less of me!” Flame had begun wildly to sob.
“I shall not.” Hugh’s voice died in an awful despair. Already? Then common sense came to his aid. “Beloved and most precious, I shall not,” he said, and very gently he drew the little cowering figure up from under the sheet. “And if you say that, Flame, you will kill me—do you hear? You will kill me,” and Hugh’s chest heaved with something perilously like a groan.
“Are you sure?” Flame had struggled up into a sitting position, and Hugh could see her round eyes searching his through the darkness.
“Absolutely sure.” Hugh, up on his elbow, spoke with clenched hands.
“Oh,” and Flame sat perfectly still for a minute or two. And Hugh, with his head dropped in his hands, sat still too. Flame must fight this out herself; it was not fair to weaken her defences as he knew he could weaken them if he liked.
“I still love you most frightfully . . . most frightfully. In fact, I think I love you much more now.” Flame spoke in a fierce whisper, although a whisper heavy with shame.
“Do you? Thank God for that.” Hugh spoke simply and he raised his head from his hands with a long, halting sigh.
“And now, shall we go to sleep again?” said Flame, in a voice from which all hint of tragedy had gone, and which only held a sort of childish satisfaction in its tones.
And the haggard line of blue between the dark eyelashes suddenly narrowed in laughter. This child! He gathered her closely into his arms. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be by yourself?” he said tenderly.
“Oh, no! I think this is the most blissful part, to be absolutely, absolutely close to you in the dark,” breathed Flame; and then she leant back and searched the vaguely seen face anxiously, “that is, if you are sure that you like it too,” she said.
Hugh did not reply, and Flame, after a little silence, put out an anxious hand. “You’re shaking all over,” she said.
“Am I?”
And then Flame’s wandering hand came in contact with something white and faintly gleaming and she drew back shyly. “You’re laughing at me,” she said.
“And if I am, never mind, most precious, and most dear,” said Hugh, and he drew the little confiding head back into the hollow of his shoulder again.
It was the next night that he told her, lying out in a long chair on the verandah, the big moon making the yellow hair a puddle of gold against the black dinner-jacket. “I want to tell you something”— Hugh’s free hand was gripped damply down by his side.
“What sort of a thing?” asked Flame, nestling closer.
“This,” said Hugh, and then he told her.
There was a very long silence. Then Flame sat up. “Then mother actually isn’t there?”
“No.”
“Only Waterton and Nigel.”
“Yes.”
“What did she die of, do you know?” asked Flame, pushing the short hair back from her forehead.
“Something sudden, I gather,” said Hugh briefly. It was not necessary to tell this child the true horror of the thing.
“Oh!” and then there was another long silence. And then Flame turned and took the brown face between her hands. “When did you know, Hughie?” she said, and Hugh could see the rather round eyes searching his.
“I knew about two days out from Marseilles,” said Hugh, and in the agony of the confession he let his eyelids drop over his haggard eyes.
“Oh!” and then there was another long silence, and then Flame, with a little halting sigh, let herself drop back on to the pleated shirt-front. “What a mercy I didn’t know before!” she said.
“Why?” asked Hugh, knowing exactly what the answer would be and yet fiercely desirous of hearing his death-warrant spoken aloud.
“Why, because perhaps if I had known I might have felt that I ought to go back,” said Flame simply.
And at that Hugh moved his long stretched-out legs. “Let me get up, dear,” he said quietly, and he let Flame slip very gently off his knee, struggled up out of the sagging canvas, and walked in out of the moonlight. And there, in the darkened sitting-room, Flame found him—after about half an hour’s gentle wondering what could have become of him—flung out straight on his face, gripping one rounded end of the grey linen sofa.
“Oh, Hughie, you’ve got a pain!” Flame was down on her knees on the soft grass matting.
Hugh drew a long halting sigh. “No,” he said, and he rolled over on to his side. “Flame,” he said, and Flame trembled at the funny altered voice—“Flame, tell me that you love me. You are to! I can’t stand it! Say that you would have come even if you had known that your mother wasn’t there. You are to say it!” Hugh sat up, and against the pale silvery oblong of the verandah door Flame could see the disordered hair.
“Are you positive that you haven’t got a pain?” asked Flame tremblingly. This was something so absolutely different in the way of a Hugh. Generally he was so sort of omnipotent; here he was imploring, agonized. And then Flame’s mind leaped to the true solution of the thing.
“Beloved and most precious, I should never have gone back,” she said, and with a little loving catch in her voice she dropped down on to the couch beside the seated figure. “Dearest and most heavenly, how could I have lived without you? How could I have lived? Hughie—Hughie!” and Flame suddenly began to cry.
“Say it again”—Hugh had his mouth pressed to the wet eyelids.
“I will, I will!” Flame was frantically anxious to comfort. “I never could have gone,” she cried “Hughie, Hughie! And you say, too, that you are glad you’ve got me,” cried Flame, suddenly shaken and terrified with the strange turn that things were taking, and craving to be reassured.
“Glad I’ve got you!” Hugh stood up, and there was a funny steely sound in his voice. “Glad I’ve got you? My God! Flame, Flame!” and Flame was swept to a thundering heart.
“I like it best like this,” said Flame, with a little sobbing, satisfied sigh, as out under the stars again they lay quietly spread out in the deck-chair.
“Then you shall always have it like this, Flame,” said Hugh, with his mouth on the soft hair.
“Always exactly what I want?”
“Always so long as it is possible,” said Hugh tenderly, staring out to sea.
“You and Nigel, and Falaise and Waterton,” said Flame, feeling round the beloved face with a small wandering hand.
“If God is good,” said Hugh, wondering stupidly how he dare take that sacred Name on his lips.
“But He is,” said Flame reproachfully.
“Then perhaps He will help us,” said Hugh, and his heart cried out: “Oh, God, do . . . do!” Hugh was on his knees like a supplicating child.
But the Man of Sorrows turned away His face. This man had known better. He could not escape the suffering due to him.
The bungalow and outbuildings belonging to the Jarnagar Medical and Educational Mission stood all by themselves in a very large compound, surrounded by fields. The Mission was some distance away from the little railway-station of Jarnagar, and still farther away from the civil and military station of the same name. Many people who had been stationed in Jarnagar for quite a long time hardly knew the Mission was there. The bungalow was large and of course one-storied, and if you had been able to take the roof off and look in, you would have seen, what you nearly always see in Indian bungalows, a collection of square rooms, each room containing at least four long lean doors, and a further collection of smaller square rooms, also with doors, all opening one into the other. The redeeming feature of this really rather desolate building was its verandah, which was quite six feet wide and ran all the way round the house. The hospital lay about three hundred feet to the right of the bungalow, and it consisted of two long wards, joined by a little office, an operating theatre, recently added, a dispensary, and the same beautiful wide verandah. The educational part of the Mission was catered for farther to the rear; there a long two-storied building stood in the middle of a large compound, flanked with a six-foot wall; the wall was topped with cement, from which bristled a formidable array of broken glass.
“At what time does the rail-gharry bring from Bombay the doctor miss-sahib?” Simon, the wrinkled old chuprassie attached to the Mission, spoke from his string-bed, on which he was crouched like a venerable old monkey, sunning himself in the fierce midday sun.
“At five o’clock,” returned the Surtee butler, who in déshabillé, and without his puggaree, also looked extraordinarily like a monkey.
“Even so! And the miss-sahib with the face of a quail will meet the train?”
“Assuredly,” and the Surtee butler, who was engaged in the complicated process of turning a sufficiently browned chupattie, wagged his head comprehensively “An ugly face,” he said, without raising his head.
“Assuredly: otherwise long since sought in marriage,” returned Simon complacently, and he drew a long bubbling draught of smoke from his hookah.
Jeewan, the Surtee butler, smiled down into the glowing charcoal. “Three miss-sahibs, and all unwed,” he said; “a sorry business indeed.”
“But who will wed the dried and shrivelled?” returned Simon, and he spoke with an air of authority. For had he not just successfully placed his last and youngest daughter, and was he not now thousands of rupees in debt on account of their dowries and wedding festivities? For the native on twenty-five rupees a month will think nothing of spending five hundred rupees on a single wedding, and he will borrow at extortionate rates to enable him to do so.
“True, brother, true. And stingy into the bargain.” Jeewan spoke fiercely, for the thought of the two annas cut from his last month’s pay still rankled. The kerosene oil had run out before its time, and the quail-faced miss-sahib in charge of the bungalow housekeeping had remonstrated. Jeewan had shrugged his shoulders; did the miss-sahib not remember the extra miss-sahib who had come to spend two nights the week before?
“But the miss-sahib shared my room!” Miss Harris had stared indignantly.
“Assuredly, but she was an extra miss-sahib,” returned the native, voicing in that simple remark the unshakable conviction of the Asiatic that anything extra has got to be paid for, whether it means extra or not.
So on pay-day Jeewan’s pay was shorn of two annas. And although he had been fortunate in disposing of the defaulting oil for six annas, the loss rankled. It was an action unworthy of a sahib, he considered. In fact, in his untutored mind Miss Harris was now relegated for ever to the ranks of the kerani, or half-caste.
But Miss Harris, all unconscious of this, was at this very moment pluming herself on the thought of how she had been able to cut down expenses during the absence of her chief. Dr. Lane was so terribly weak with the natives, so wilfully blind. Miss Harris, who until she had been struck with the conviction that she was destined for a wider sphere had been a typist, thought that it was positively wrong. “Just nothing more than a whole lot of lies,” as she had said to herself that morning, facing the dignified old Mohammedan cook over the book in which he wrote his daily hisab.
“What’s this supposed to be, eh? Lamb mutton? Found a new animal, khansamah, eh?” Miss Harris laughed stridently, showing slightly protruding teeth pointed like a ferret’s.
The old Mohammedan, who had long since relegated Miss Harris to the ranks of the chota log, but who remained on at the Mission because he was devoted to Dr. Lane and knew that she would soon be coming back to take up the reins of government, only gazed back silently. But in spite of himself his henna-dyed beard quivered. For the native, like the child, is intensely sensitive to ridicule.
“Found a new way to make money, that’s more like it,” said Miss Harris sharply. “Lamb mutton! a lot of rubbish! You’ll be talking about pig beef next! Two annas off that hisab, my man; mutton’s only eight annas a seer. Lamb mutton may be nine, but if it is you may eat it yourself!” and Miss Harris made sharp underscorings in the funny narrow account-book.
But that night at dinner, the account of the great score over Abdul Hussain did not come off with the éclat that Miss Harris had wished. To begin with Dr. Lane was dead tired after her journey, and sat almost silent during the beginning of the meal. Then, when Miss Harris did begin to tell the great story she interrupted it half-way through, and glanced round to see if Jeewan was still in the room. “Better wait until we’re quite by ourselves,” she said quietly, “or rather, as my dear old father used to say, ’Prenez garde des domestiques.’”
Miss Harris, who had never been waited on at all before she came to India, and who only just knew what prenez garde meant, wondered if she should be offended and sulk. But in the end her longing to be thought smart prevailed, and she told the story, laughing shrilly.
Miss Hill, who was the soul of good temper, and always tried to do what she thought other people wanted her to, smiled obligingly (Miss Hill catered for the educational side of the Mission). But Dr. Lane did not smile; she frowned, just a very little, and spoke with a note of reserve in her voice.
“Nice old Abdul Hussain,” she said. “I am so looking forward to seeing him again.”
There was a little awkward silence. Miss Forester, who sat facing Dr. Lane, tried not to let her lips move; that was one for Miss Harris with a vengeance. But she had asked for it: during Dr. Lane’s absence she really had been awful. (Miss Forester had taken Dr. Lane’s place during the last eight months, and now her own leave being well in view, she could afford to laugh.)
“Well, I don’t hold with letting these people think that they can do what they like with you,” said Miss Harris, flushing a deep purple, and showing her pointed teeth for a moment as she moistened her top lip.
“No—quite. But that is what one has to learn out here: how to control them without fighting them on their own ground, so to speak. Well, shall we go outside, Hilda?” Dr. Lane sent a swift glance to the end of the table.
“Yes, do let us—you must be dead-tired.” Miss Forester got up. She was a pleasant-looking woman, although no longer quite young, and if her hair had not been done so atrociously badly, she might have been quite nice-looking. The two women strolled out on to the verandah together.
“Oh!” Dr. Lane put her feet up on the rest of her deck-chair with a gesture of indescribable weariness.
“Tired?” Hilda Forester sat down opposite her, and handed across a tin of American cigarettes.
“Desperately!” Hester Lane shook out a cigarette and lighted it. “Thanks.” She bent her face to the cupped hands.
“Well, let’s hear about everything.” Hilda Forester lay back in her own chair and drew in the smoke luxuriously.
“Oh, I don’t know: there’s nothing to tell. Tell me about the things that have happened here,” replied Hester Lane, and in the darkness she closed her eyes.
Hilda Forester was a woman of much discernment, and she discerned that for some reason virtue had gone out of the woman opposite her. Her leave had done her very little good, that was quite obvious. There were deep shadows round the eyes, and on the mouth the look of repression that speaks of jarring nerves. Hilda Forester sighed a little: life was difficult enough in a community entirely feminine, without the addition of a frayed temper. For the little passage of arms at dinner had shown how things were with this very dear friend of hers.
“Oh, things here are quite fairly flourishing, she replied, speaking cheerfully; “ the hospital is quite fairly full. Five babies: Miriam is in her element she does adore a stack of babies!”
“How is nice old Miriam?” Hester Lane interrupted with a faint show of interest in her voice.
“Splendid! Ah, if all natives were like that fine old woman, we shouldn’t have the bothers that we have,” said Hilda Forester enthusiastically. “Last week, for instance—Heaven, what a week!—at four o’clock one morning (as a matter of fact I had just gone to bed), a wealthy Mohammedan drove up, his wife with him. Such a pitiful little creature, so pretty, but, of course, you know what it is with these people, purdahnashin; I don’t suppose she had walked a quarter of a mile during the last nine months. Thank God, he was enlightened enough to bring her here. Anyhow, it all went off beautifully, and you ought to have seen his face when I showed him his son.”
“You’re getting quite good at those operations, Hilda,” Dr. Lane smiled. “Heaps of people at home wouldn’t believe it when I told them that they were a thing of daily occurrence out here.”
Hilda Forester laughed. “People at home wouldn’t believe a lot of things we do out here,” she said. “For instance, Miriam is a first-class anaesthetist now. And I am sure she thinks that if I were suddenly to give up, she could grab the knife and carry on!”
Dr. Lane laughed again, and this time a little less wearily. Interest in her profession was uppermost again, for the first time for many weeks. She asked several eager questions, Miss Forester replying equally eagerly.
“And how’s the school?”—the little show of interest had died down again, and Hester’s voice came flat and old.
“Doing excellently. Miss Hill is a marvel! She keeps so keen; that, to my mind, is the wonder of it. Several of the girls have passed their examinations with honours, and one if not two are quite advanced enough to take the Junior Cambridge. Two or three are ready to be married, and Mr. Carpenter, from the Walara Mission, said that he would bring over some of his young men next month.”
“Ready for market, in fact!” Dr. Lane laughed suddenly: a dreadful laugh.
“Hester!”
“Well, what else can you possibly call it? Isn’t it being made ready for market to be fed and housed and kept carefully within broken glass till a suitable young man can come along? Be honest, Hilda; what else can you possibly call it?”
“I can’t bear hearing you talk like that, Hester; it isn’t like you!” Hilda Forester was crimson in the darkness.
“No, I daresay it isn’t—at least, not like the Hester you know.” Dr. Lane turned a little on her side in the long chair and reached out a tremulous hand for a second cigarette. “But I tell you, Hilda, I have done a good deal of thinking during the last three weeks, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Society had paid my passage, and that you, dear, faithful, hard-worked thing, were waiting for your furlough, I would have cabled them from Bombay and never come back.”
“Hester!”
“Yes—well, it’s a fact.” Hilda Forester could see the lined face working in the bluish flame of the match. “The whole thing’s such rot, Hilda—such utter, utter rot!” Dr. Lane lay back on the cushions.
“My dear girl, what you want is a good night’s rest.” Hilda Forester suddenly spoke quietly and sensibly. This friend of hers was overwrought, that was very obvious; the little fracas at dinner had pointed to it. But what a cheerful beginning! The serene mouth twisted a little.
A series of hideous sleepless nights flared up suddenly in front of Hester Lane. Hugh, Hugh, and still again Hugh: Hugh with a little yellow head in the hollow of his shoulder; Hugh with his arms held out, and a laugh in his eyes; Hugh stooping, knowing himself conqueror, and yet humble enough to carry the little foot to his mouth. “Ah! God, I can’t stand another of them!” Hester Lane cried out like an animal under torture.
Hilda Forester got up. “Mind!” she said in a warning undertone, and she caught her friend’s damp hand in hers as two figures showed themselves blackly against the lighted doorway of the drawing-room.
“Hilly’s being so funny!” It was Miss Harris’s rather strident voice that spoke. “We’ve been dressing up, and I’ve put her on my kimono, and done up my Kashmir shawl like a turban, and she looks exactly like a native chief—at least, exactly like what I think a native chief would look like. Come along out, Hilly, and show yourself.” “\Miss Harris preceded her with little prancing steps.
Miss Hill stood looking like what she felt, a fool. And all unbidden there swept into Hester Lane’s mind a stricture of her sex that had once fallen from Hugh’s lips. “With all due deference to you, Hester—you know I don’t mean you—I don’t think that there is anyone who can make such an utter fool of herself as a woman without a man to sort of leaven her. She gets almost idiotic—don’t you know what I mean? Especially when she tries to be funny.” And here they were, four of them, all women, shut up to each other till the end of time. “Oh, God! it wasn’t meant to be like that: it wasn’t meant to be like that!” Dr. Lane’s lips were suddenly drawn back from her teeth and she began to laugh hysterically.
Miss Harris was highly delighted, especially when Dr. Lane’s laughter threatened to overwhelm her.
“Well done, old Hillikins!” she said, watching the two figures disappearing through the drawing-room; “but what a pity, because I wanted them to see you dance.”
“I think she looks awfully funny,” returned Miss Hill solidly, standing and watching them go.
“What sort of funny?”
“Just that. Funny,” returned Miss Hill, still speaking solidly, and listening to the high laughter.
“You know, we simply must ask those Mission people to something”—it was a voice of despair that came from the low chair in front of the writing-table.
“Oh, my sainted aunt! All right, then; give me due notice, so that I can get well out of the way first. What do you say, Benson?” There was a growl of very amused laughter from one of the long chairs in the verandah.
“Oh, I don’t know! . . . if Mrs. Seymour is very keen that we should be here,” the voice that replied was the voice of an older man, and it came with a sort of deprecating amusement.
“She isn’t; Ann does what she is told. Come on out, Ann, and tell the kind gentleman how well brought up you are.” Tony Seymour had his eyes on the bead chicks wavering slightly in the breeze.
“Don’t tease me in front of people.” Small fingers appeared slowly between the beads.
“Come on”—Tony Seymour’s eyes had begun to laugh. “Now then,” he held the small fingers captured. “Look at that, Benson, the perfect wife. Broken in . . . perfectly and completely.”
“I’m not. At least, not any more than I want to be.” Ann’s eyes were protesting and indignant.
“You are. At least, no, you aren’t.” Tony Seymour heaved himself out of his chair, and dragged another nearer. “Now, sit down there, and tell us what it is you want, Ann. I believe you want to marry Sir Herbert off to one of those ladies with funny hair. Tell me, Benson—you’re one of these psychoanalyst johnnies—why does a missionary always screw back her hair so that her eyes are starting out of her head?”
“I can’t imagine”—Sir Herbert Benson had his eyes on the faintly flushing face. It was the only time when he ever regretted his bachelordom—when he saw the Seymours together.
“Coward, you do know! Tell us now.” Tony Seymour was tapping a cigarette on the arm of his long chair.
“I’ll tell you!” Ann broke in suddenly, her hands clasped fervently together in her lap. “It’s that awful sort of feeling that you get when you want a thing most frightfully—the sort of thing that makes you rush away from it. Like when you want a person to notice you and they don’t, and you sort of get away so that they can’t, because the agony of seeing them not do it when they could is too ghastly to be borne.”
Both men were laughing with unfeigned enjoyment. The great doctor spoke first:
“But what is it that they want?” he said.
“To be married,” said Ann simply.
“Oh, Ann!” Tony Seymour showed both his rows of beautiful teeth in a great shout of laughter.
“Well, prove your case, Mrs. Seymour.” Sir Herbert’s eyes still dwelt on the beautiful little face
“Why, don’t you see? There’s a sort of feeling that everyone has that a man likes you to look nice. Well, if you don’t try to look nice, that sort of gives the impression that you don’t care what the man thinks. You do, really—madly, desperately; but it’s worse to try to look nice and find it not a bit of use, than to just give it up and not bother about your hair or your clothes or anything. Then people think you don’t care and that helps. If you try, it shows that you do care, and that must be too much agony to be borne,” finished Ann with solemnity.
“Go and get on with your invitations”—Tony spoke after a little pause, his eyes deeply tender.
“Will you be there, then, if I ask them to tennis on Friday?” Ann got up and looked from one man to the other.
“Yes, we will. At least, I will, and I’ll answer for him;” the great doctor laughed across at his host.
“Joy!” Ann vanished, and, left alone, both men fell silent.
Then the older man spoke, thoughtfully and with a thumb intent on the closer packing of his pipe. “You know, Seymour, your wife is perfectly right,” he said. “The longer I live, and the more I see of human nature, the more convinced I am that there is only one thing wrong with the civilized world, and that is that there are not enough men to go round. I can speak freely to you: you have, like I have, the greatest reverence for the opposite sex, so you won’t be likely to misunderstand me. It’s tragic: these women come to me literally in their hundreds—insomnia, phobias, you know, fears of different kinds; drugs; sometimes, but not often, drink. And I prescribe, the great doctor flicked his fingers; “well, you know the usual sort of thing; of course, in my case it is varied a little, because I am, as you express it, a ‘psycho-analyst johnny,’ but it generally whittles down to the same thing . . . change of scene, change of occupation, above all, an exhortation to avoid stimulants and keep the mind occupied. When in reality the only thing I want to say is . . .” The doctor paused.
“Well?” Tony Seymour had let his cigarette go out, and a trail of ash lay greyly across his coat.
“Go out and get a husband,” said the doctor bluntly.
“I see.” Tony Seymour flicked the cigarette ash carefully from his coat. “You know, it’s damned hard lines on them,” he said.
“I know it is . . . it’s a most cruel state of affairs. And the sad part of it is that a great deal of the responsibility lies at our door. Take, for instance, the average man: what does he look for when he’s choosing a wife? A pretty face—a well-turned ankle—a good figure. What does he care that there is nothing behind them? He will care all right a little later on, when the first glamour has worn off, but at the moment his senses are engaged and he thinks of nothing but the soft dimpled face and the soft body that goes with it. So the women of worth—and nine times out of ten they are plain rather than not—get passed over. And as they are generally the women of deep feelings, they are the ones that get hell when the time comes for them to get it, which is at the age between forty and fifty.”
“I see.” Tony Seymour pondered for a little. “Then the married woman sails through that tune all right,” he said.
“That depends. If she has had a fairly large family, yes. And if she has an affectionate husband, again yes. But if she has limited her family to one or two, because of the bother of bearing a child, and if she has sickened her husband by so doing—because the average man is a homely sort of individual and thinks that the bearing of a family is all part of the business of getting married—no. Then she will stand on a tub and roar to get into Parliament; in the old days she stood on the same tub and shrieked for votes. How I used to laugh when I saw them, literally proclaiming aloud their lack of a man!”
“I think it’s pretty ghastly to put every mortal thing down to sex, Benson,” said Tony Seymour rather disgustedly.
“It may be;” the great doctor smiled indulgently at the younger man. “But believe me, Seymour, I do know what I’m talking about. My goodness, I could go on for hours. This modern limitation of families, for instance, where is it leading us to? Nursing homes for rest-cures, crammed with women who, if they were busy trotting round saying good-night to their big families, wouldn’t want any more rest than a good night’s sleep would give them. I know there are stacks of arguments on the other side; for instance, very few women, knowing that Mrs. So-and-so isn’t going to have a baby until next December, because it’s nicer to have one in the cold weather, will consent to have one when the good God chooses, probably in the hot weather; and in a way I don’t blame them. But, all the same, it’s bad, bad!” and the doctor heaved himself abruptly out of his chair.
“You really feel that things are in a bad way?” Tony Seymour got up, and stood looking sympathetically down at his friend.
“Yes, I do. And that’s why I’ve cut myself off from it for a good long time. I live in an atmosphere of damaged nervous systems, and I shall get one myself if I’m not careful.”
“How old are you, Benson?” Tony Seymour’s eyes were charged into mischief.
“Fifty,” said the doctor innocently.
“It’s a bad age, Benson,” said Tony Seymour derisively, and his blue eyes shone wickedly through their long lashes.
An invitation to tea and tennis in Cantonments was an event in the quiet life of the Mission, and it quite unhinged Miss Harris, who ran about squealing like a child and clapping her hands.
“Stop her somehow, can’t you?” Dr. Lane, who had brought the letter in with her to tea, spoke to her friend in a suppressed undertone.
Dr. Forester smiled a little, but it was a rueful smile. Things were very bad in this community, entirely feminine, since Hester Lane’s return. Heaven knew that they were difficult enough at any time, for, for some inscrutable reason, women cannot live together in harmony unless there is a man to keep the peace between them. They can if there is one among them who partakes somewhat of the nature of a man, and who is capable of driving the whole community along lines laid down by herself. But if harmony depends on mutual tolerance, forbearance, and goodwill, then, except in exceptional cases, women invariably fight when they are left to their own society. And in the case of this community they were particularly hopeless, for the nominal ruler of it was a mass of nerves and made no effort to conceal it. She came down to breakfast with drawn brows and smiled jerkily and absently when spoken to. She got up from the table and walked out of the room, having finished; often without having spoken a word. She spent long days in hospital, working with a fierce intentness that Hilda Forester shrewdly guessed masked an entire lack of interest in what used to be the thing nearest to her heart. And now, even the little ordinary amenities of everyday life seemed to be beyond her.
“My dear, I can’t, without being positively brutal,” she said, and she laughed a laugh that was both deprecating and reproachful.
“No, well, I suppose you can’t; besides, the thing settles itself.” Hester Lane raised her eyes from the letter in her hand. “Only two of us are asked, Miss Harris,” she said, and her cold eyes were on the little common, excited face. “And I have already arranged that Miss Hill and Dr. Forester shall accept.”
“Oh!” Miss Harris spoke with the quenched flatness of acute disappointment and walked out of the room. Left alone, the two older women stared at one another. It had been rather a mean triumph, and both were conscious of it.
“My dear, you know I play tennis atrociously.” Dr. Forester spoke first.
“Yes, I know you do; but you don’t drop your h’s, Hilda.” Hester Lane spoke rather cruelly. “The Home people have no business to send out women like Miss Harris to represent us in the Mission Field. They do it, as we know to our cost, but I am not going to draw down more opprobrium on our heads in this station by allowing Miss Harris to take her position in a society of which she wouldn’t touch the fringe at home. At home she would probably, all honour to her, be bringing in Mrs. Seymour’s early tea. Well, then, out here, if I have anything to do with it, she is not going to sit down and drink Mrs. Seymour’s tea; do you see what I mean?
“Yes, I see what you mean.” Dr. Forester slipped a little lower down into her chair, and linked her hands behind her head.
“Well, don’t you agree with me?”
“To a certain extent I do,” said Dr. Forester, but she spoke rather uncertainly, notwithstanding.
“You do agree with me, Hilda. Think of Miss Harris at the Seymours’. Dressed probably absolutely wrong and screaming at every ball that came over the net. You’d loathe it even more than I should.”
“Yes; well, I suppose I should,” said Dr. Forester, and she fell abruptly silent. But a little later, as she moved about her big, bare bedroom, laying away the rather plain uncompromising washing that old Dagaroo, the Mission dhobi, had that afternoon brought back in a big bundle on his head, she sighed. It was so utterly unlike Hester Lane, this—this dreadful hard way of looking at everything. Before, she had seen things shrewdly, certainly, but not with this dreadful knife-edge precision of judgment. Certainly Miss Harris was awful—no one knew it better than herself; but still . . . did it matter so much? And Dr. Forester stopped putting away the washing, pushed the few things that remained a little to one side of the bed, and lay down on it.
India: this enormous mysterious continent—as Hilda Forester thought of it, she stared at the dim, shadowy, whitewashed ceiling. Crying out for help—was it? That was the idea, certainly. Millions of untutored human beings groping for the light. What sort of light?—the light of Christianity. But were they? Dr. Forester smiled rather grimly as she faced her thoughts. From what source did they draw most of their converts? from the ranks of the sweepers or Untouchables—people who had nothing to lose and everything to gain. ‘Untouchables’ sounded dreadful; she had heard the word mentioned with bated breath at a missionary meeting at home. But what did it mean in fact? It meant a class that led a happy, healthy life of its own, outside the city certainly, but all the healthier for that. They performed the scavenging duties of the community; in the Mission compound itself, several of them—men and women—came daily to work. They could eat the food left by the other great class of Untouchables—namely, themselves; and as Dr. Forster thought this she laughed out loud. And these were the people on whom thousands of pounds poured yearly from impoverished England! People taught to think themselves as good as their teachers—able-bodied young women boxed up inside broken glass! . . .
Dr. Forester got off the bed and stopped laughing. She took a few feverish turns up and down the room. Fatal thoughts, these! Thoughts that would paralyse effort, render endeavour useless. Besides, for her, futile thoughts; and at the swift reaction Hilda Forester laughed aloud with relief. What had it to do with her, after all, the right or wrong of bringing a Western religion and cramming it down an Eastern throat? Hers was the Mission of Healing, a Mission irrespective of caste or creed. Let others tackle the problem of the Miss Harrises; let others consider the right or wrong of taking able-bodied young women and educating them beyond their station: hers was only to do her duty, and with all the ability with which God had endowed her. And Dr. Forester’s rather ordinary face glowed with a light akin to the divine as she dropped on her knees beside the narrow iron bed.
Fortunately, Sir Herbert Benson saw Hester Lane for the first time when she was smiling. And the smile transformed the face, which in repose was almost ordinary, and lighted a similar glow in the eyes of the great neurologist. Hester was smiling at Ann; everyone always did smile at Ann; there was something in the little illumined face that made you smile.
“Mrs. Seymour, I am afraid I have come under absolutely false pretences,” she said. “I meant my colleague, Dr. Forester, to have the pleasure of this visit to you. But unfortunately she has gone down with an attack of malaria, so I have come instead. But I play tennis so shamefully that I have not even brought a racket. Do forgive me. Miss Hill plays, and plays quite well, so she will uphold the credit of the Mission.”
“I’m glad you’ve come.” Ann’s reply was instant and sincere, and she stared up into the oddly softened eyes. “I’ve always wanted to know you. I’m sorry about Miss—oh no, I mean Dr. Forester. But it’s a mercy really, because one or two of the people haven’t come and the tennis has gone rather wrong. Now it will be all right, because you will be able to talk to Sir Herbert Benson and I shan’t feel that he is being dull. Come and be introduced now, will you? He’s over there, having tea; do you see him?—talking to the fat lady in the tennis skirt.”
“Is that Sir Herbert Benson, the famous doctor?” Hester’s voice was alert and interested. What an extraordinary stroke of luck to meet a man like that at an ordinary tennis-party. She had heard at home that he was abroad somewhere, having a well-deserved holiday, but no one had seemed to know where. And here he was. Hester Lane smiled with pleasure. Perhaps he would come over and inspect the hospital. She drew herself up a little straighter as they stopped under the shade of the big banyan-tree.
“Tony, I want to introduce Dr. Lane to Sir Herbert. Get him away from Mrs. Manson, will you?” Ann tugged at the sleeve of the blue blazer, and Dr. Lane lifted her eyes to meet the quizzical gaze of Tony Seymour’s very blue ones.
“You mean, you want to introduce Sir Herbert to Dr. Lane, Ann!” Tony Seymour dropped a brown hand on the little shoulder below his. “How do you do, Dr. Lane? Excuse my wife; she goes a bit adrift with her introductions at shows of this kind. Yes, I’ll bring him along. Look after my cup, darling,” and Tony Seymour swung away.
“Had you seen him before?” Ann’s eyes were all on fire as she lifted them to the quiet face beside her.
“Do you mean your husband? No, I haven’t.”
“He’s the most perfect person, really.” Ann spoke with sudden confidence. This quiet person with a sort of solid face would understand. “I absolutely worship him,” she said, and her sensitive lower lip trembled.
“Do you? Well, I don’t wonder,” and it was as Hester Lane was saying this, with a wonderfully softened look on her face, that Sir Herbert saw her first. And his keen eyes absorbed it all—the lines at the corner of the mouth, the greying hair over the ears, the two rather deeply scored vertical lines between the eyebrows. And he sighed: you couldn’t get away from it, even in a land thousands of miles away from the place where you plied your trade!
“Sir Herbert, this is Dr. Lane. I want you to know her because you both do the same sort of thing. Dr. Lane looks after the Mission Hospital here, and does most frightfully wonderful operations. She’ll probably tell you about them,” and then Ann, overcome, made a little dive and hid herself in a cluster of chattering people. Her husband would have said that she mustn’t mention operations. But then no one would know what operation. It might be only cutting things like legs off!
But the two pair of clever eyes were laughing into one another. Sir Herbert was immensely tickled. “That child!” he said, and laughed again.
“It’s the dearest little thing.” Hester Lane spoke with an affectionately curved lip as she followed Ann with her eyes. Then she flushed a little. “I feel this a most tremendous honour, really,” she said, rather shyly. “I’ve just finished your last book. Oh dear, how ignorant it made me feel!”
“Not you!” Sir Herbert’s eyes were on the clever face. “After all, it’s only a question of what we each consider to be our own particular line. You’d very soon have me cold on any question of gynaecology, Dr. Lane. Now, admit it. Wouldn’t you?”
“No, I am sure I shouldn’t.” Dr. Lane spoke warmly. “Besides, granted that my work lies more in that direction than yours, that is easy enough; it’s only a matter of keeping oneself up to date and in practice. Whereas your work lies in a sort of untrodden realm. Mysteries! Nerves . . . the extraordinary influence that they have on our every action! Oh, don’t they!” and Hester Lane faltered and shivered a little.
Sir Herbert glanced round a little. The chattering, tea-drinking cluster of people was beginning to move off in the direction of the two hard tennis courts. There were a couple of deck-chairs side by side close under a huge waving cluster of bougainvillea.
“Let’s sit down there and talk shop,” he said cordially. “I’ve heard great things of your work, Dr. Lane, and I should be tremendously interested to hear more about it. Do tell me anything you can.”
“Would you really like to hear?” Hester Lane blushed like a girl, and gave a funny little awkward tug to her already slightly crooked hat.
But the great neurologist was accustomed to people who really had things to hide, so dissimulation did not appeal to him. Also, there was something in Hester Lane’s frank disregard of appearances that caught his fancy. She was so shamefully dressed—a muslin frock and brown shoes and stockings. But even the square-toed brown shoes could not hide the slender arched instep. And the old-fashioned hat came down low over very steadfast and beautiful eyes. Sir Herbert was attracted in a way that he found difficult to analyse when he thought it over later. However, now he was genuinely interested and he showed it, and Hester expanded and throve under the kind and tactful questioning.
“Well, perhaps you will allow me to come over and look round your hospital.” Sir Herbert spoke with his clever hands linked round his knees, and he looked with sympathetically quizzical eyes at the illumined face. One hour’s talk with a sympathetic man, and look at the difference in this rather plain woman! However, it was rather a shame to think of it in that way.
“Oh, there is nothing I should like better!” Hester Lane spoke with a glow in her voice. How the time had flown! already the sun was coming in great slanting shafts across the path in front of them, and the eight lithe figures on the distant tennis courts could be seen strolling in couples to the wicker chairs hung with coats and sweaters. She got up.
“Perhaps I had better go and talk a little to our hostess,” she said, and Sir Herbert was struck with the alteration in the pleasant voice. It was drab and dull, all the vitality gone out of it.
“Well, let us go together,” he said, and they made their way across the gravelled space dotted with pots. A couple of malis ran between the overflowing cement tank and the narrow flower-beds. The water from the clanking kerosene-oil tins ran down bare, shining brown legs. Hester glanced at them with an odd contraction in the region of her heart. Back to it all again: back to the ghastly hopeless, cramped uneventfulness of it all; back to Miss Harris and her futilities; back to the gaping, jeering, beckoning future, with its promise of nothing better than a barren, unwanted spinsterhood; back to the pretended worship of God, when you only hated Him because He had taken everything that you cared for away from you. . . . Hester stumbled.
“Mind!” Sir Herbert flung out a quick arm.
“No, don’t; I can manage quite well!” With an angry gesture, of which she repented in dust and ashes a couple of hours later, Hester Lane jerked herself away from his grasp.
“I am sorry.”
After the brief apology the great doctor fell silent. And Hester, conscious with intensest mortification of the stinging of tears behind her eyelids, stalked along in silence by his side. How hideous she must look . . . she visualized herself brutally. Probably her muslin petticoat was longer than the frock that concealed it, like Miss Hill’s; she had seen Miss Hill’s when they got out of the Mission tonga, and had told her about it. And agitatedly, in the shelter of the great banyan-tree outside, Miss Hill had made great efforts to adjust things, and had only succeeded in making them much worse. And her hat, obviously one of the year before; Hilda Forester had asked her not to wear it, when shivering with fever, she had come to her room to say that she would not be able to go that afternoon.
“Wear that nice wide-brimmed burnt straw thing that you arrived in, Hester.” Hilda’s bluish lips had tried to smile persuasively.
But Hester had frowned and stabbed old-fashioned hatpins through the strained hair as she adjusted the unbecoming hat. “Why bother?” she said; “it’s part of our equipment to be shamefully dressed. For some reason or other, it betokens a special degree of spirituality; missionaries and the average clergyman’s wife, weird hats and antiquated clothes—they go together; don’t upset it, Hilda.”
“I can’t bear to hear you talk like that.” Hilda Forester was gripping the edge of the dressing-table with burning, shaking hands.
“No, I dare say not; but that’s how I feel,” Hester Lane laughed shortly. “But now it’s five grains of aspirin and a hot-water bottle and bed with three blankets for you, you poor thing. Come along, now, and don’t you dare to move until I come back from this thrice-accursed tennis-party.”
And now the thrice-accursed tennis-party was nearly over, and Hester Lane regretted the unbecoming hat. Somehow, since her arrival the band of bitterness round her heart seemed to have relaxed a little. Things did not seem so hard, so cruel. There was a sort of friendliness in the air here. She was one of a community of people whose duty it was to make things nicer for the people round them. And she had rudely repulsed this kind and clever man, when he, with entire spontaneity, had put out a hand to prevent her from falling. She choked, and one tear detached itself from her brimming eyes and ran down her face.
“I say, did you hurt yourself when you tripped?” Sir Herbert, turning to speak to his companion, was petrified. The apparently serene face was all broken up and working; the ugly, difficult tears of middle-age beginning to stream.
“No, no . . . I shall be all right in a minute. Oh whatever shall I do . . . what must you think of a woman of my age? . . .” Hester Lane was clutching her handkerchief with agonized hands. But the dam was down, and the accumulated misery of the last month was going to have its own way at last. “They’ll see me . . . whatever shall I do?” the voice was the voice of a terror-stricken child.
“No, they won’t. Not if we make a bee-line for the vegetable garden. Come along here.”
Sir Herbert turned sharply at right angles and plunged down a little unfrequented path, Hester Lane following blindly, her handkerchief forced against her mouth. At forty-five to cry is a serious business, and it was not until about fifteen minutes later that she raised her face with a shattering sigh. And even as she raised it, she was conscious of how ugly she must be looking.
“That’s better!” Sir Herbert surveyed the havoc with an amused twinkle in his eyes. “And now, if you don’t mind borrowing my handkerchief, I’ll go back and dip a corner of it in that tank, and you shall bathe your eyes. Then another ten minutes will see you perfectly all right. Stay here till I come back.”
Left alone, Hester Lane sat very still. Not a sign from this man of the amazement that he must be feeling. That showed how used he must be to this sort of thing. Women and tears, they were probably intimately connected in his mind. Oh, the relief of not having to explain! and she sank her face in her hands and kept it there until his step beside her showed her that he was back again.
“That’s it; and now, in another five minutes, we shall be able to go back to the others.” Sir Herbert spoke cheerfully. “Our hostess asked where you were, and I said that I had been showing you the vegetable garden and that we would be along in a minute or two. So don’t worry; no one has the remotest idea that there is anything amiss.”
“You are good.” Hester’s voice betrayed a very passion of gratitude.
“Not a bit. You must remember that it’s not by any means the first time that I’ve seen a woman in tears. And I never see it without envy. What it must be to be able to get rid of one’s superfluous feelings in that way! . . .” Sir Herbert stopped abruptly.
“Yes . . .” Hester Lane raised her face. “You know, I hardly ever do cry,” she said, “and this has just seemed to put things right. I was getting to . . .” and then she broke off.
“That’s all right . . . that’s all right.” Sir Herbert spoke breezily and naturally. “And now we’ll get along back before somebody is sent along to find us. And I hope that we shall meet again. Have you any particular time for receiving visitors in your cloistered seclusion, or shall I be met with a chuprassie with a drawn sword if I venture in at an odd hour?”
“We shall be honoured by a visit from you at any hour,” said Hester Lane solemnly, and the great doctor laughed, pleased, in spite of himself.
Sir Herbert Benson did not take long to pay his first visit to the Mission Hospital. And Ann, when she heard that it was coming off, rushed in a state of mad excitement to her husband.
“Oh, I do pray that Dr. Lane will have on something nice, and not one of those funny blouses that make her look all flat in front,” she cried; “if only she could know he was coming! Do you suppose if I sent one of the puttiwallas tearing it would be in time?”
“No, of course it wouldn’t. Look, there he goes out of the gate now. Besides, you mustn’t poke your silly little nose into it.” Tony Seymour spoke affectionately. “Now go away, darling; I love having you here, but I must get on with this thing. Having Benson here takes up a lot of my spare time.”
Ann was watching the receding back disappearing through the white gate. “How much longer is he going to stay?” she said.
“About a fortnight. Why, are you tired of him?”
“No, not exactly tired of him, but tired of not having you absolutely to myself,” said Ann, turning round and staring up into the bronzed face.
“I know . . . I feel it too, sometimes.” Tony Seymour flung a strong arm round the little figure. “But, you know, we don’t want to get selfish. And Benson did a lot of the most wonderful work during the war. He was in Mesopotamia with me, and he helped me no end once, when I felt fairly rocky. So you see, if I can offer him any hospitality, I am only too glad to be able to do so; it sort of wipes off an old debt.”
“I see.” Ann spoke thoughtfully. “Will he stay on and on and on?”
“No, I don’t suppose so. That is, unless he falls in love with Dr. Lane. And if he does, we’ll suggest his shifting to the Civil and Military.” Tony began to laugh.
“You’ve begun to think he’s going to, too!” Ann’s eyes were wide and joyful.
“I haven’t! Clear out, you little owl!” Tony’s voice was full of derision.
“If he does, may we have the wedding from here?” Ann’s eyes were mischievous as she began to back to the door.
“No, we may not;” but Major Seymour’s eyes were very tender, as he drew the curtain along the rod and went back to his writing-table. Ann as wife was a very perfect little piece of creation, satisfying him beyond his wildest dreams.
And at the Mission the excitement was almost equally acute. Jeewan the butler, having ushered the visitor into the rather sparsely furnished drawing-room, dashed into the little brick hut that formed the kitchen, breathing heavily. “Sahib argir,” he announced, his turban a little on one side.
“Which sahib?” Abdul Hussain raised his venerable old eyes from the Koran on his knee, and spoke with an entire lack of interest. “Missionary-sahib! Wah,” he dropped them again.
“Nay, nay!” Jeewan spoke excitedly in the vernacular. “It is a sahib of great magnitude; he bears upon his person no sign of the missionary-sahib. His topi, his collar”—Jeewan made violent signs in the air—“all are as they should be. I hasten to summon the burra miss-sahib, whose presence he demands,” and Jeewan dashed out into the sunlight again.
Left alone, Abdul Hussain did not immediately return to his reading. A sahib, at this hour . . . he would probably then remain to drink tea with the miss-sahibs. And if so, the izzat of the house must be maintained, the collection of rather withered rock-cakes that would have served for the miss-sahibs would not suffice for a sahib. But first, to ascertain if the sahib really possessed the attributes of greatness with which the Hindu butler had endowed him; he would wait for the return of that worthy to find out.
“He speaks with the tongue of one accustomed to command.” Jeewan was back again, breathless this time. “And when I handed upon the beaten-copper tray the ticket of the sahib, the doctor miss-sahib who had but just arisen from her sleep, became speechless, and when, speech returned she bade me hasten for my life to the dhobi, and seize from him the garment that bears with it the rose-coloured ribbons.”
“Heh!” Abdul Hussain, impressed in spite of himself, closed the book upon his knee. “Then provision must be made,” he said, getting up quietly.
“Provision!—what provision do we possess?” Jeewan wrung his old monkey hands over his head. “For such a sahib nothing less than the whisky and soda is demanded. And in such a household of females, where is it to be found?”
“Peace, fool!” Abdul Hussain, being an orthodox Mohammedan, was annoyed. To him, anything in the shape of an intoxicant was anathema. “Do thou obtain from the quail-faced miss-sahib the teacloth of elaborate design, and with it the tea-cosy of costly texture,” he said, stooping over the earthenware pot of flour. “And leave provision to me, I who have once served in the household of a Lord Bishop-sahib!” And under his spotless coat the old Mohammedan blew out his chest and breathed in importantly.
With all his faults, the native servant is desperately loyal where his affections are engaged. And Abdul Hussain loved Dr. Lane with unswerving devotion. Had she not once, when the terrible pain took him in his chest, so that the drawing of every breath was a torment—had she not knelt beside him in the little brick quarter, laying upon him from time to time a boiling potion of which the smell was savoury? Abdul Hussain had never forgotten it. So that now, when with his almost uncanny Oriental intuition he sensed that great things might hang upon this sudden invasion of an unknown sahib, he was determined that all should be as his beloved mistress would have it be.
So a little later, Hester, whose attention was beginning to wander a little, because she was so dreading having to ask Sir Herbert to stay to tea, because she knew it would be all wrong, felt her heart surge up within her with relief when Jeewan came to the door and salaamed.
“Bringing tea?” he said, his funny sunken eyes twinkling with excitement.
“Very well; bring it,” but Hester’s heart sank again. For a moment she had thought that Jeewan had actually had it with him, daintily prepared. Now it would be those awful rock-cakes; why on earth hadn’t she ordered their instant destruction when they had been submitted to her judgment that morning?
Jeewan vanished, and Hester turned apologetically to the man beside her. “You know, I am afraid you will find us dreadfully primitive here,” she said; “somehow, we are so fearfully busy that the little amenities of life are neglected.”
“I am sure I shall not.” Sir Herbert spoke warmly, with his kind gaze on the clever face. An unusually intelligent woman this, and so extraordinarily modest. “I shall thoroughly enjoy a cup of tea after our interesting talk,” he said, “but I have not heard nearly enough yet. Go on with what you were telling me . . . you find——?”
But Hester’s eyes were on the tea-table that Jeewan, already back with the laden tray, was laying close at hand. Someone had been at work here. Fragrant scones, all golden, and with the butter running out of them; a flat cake with jam inside it; a plate of thinnest cut jam sandwiches, the teapot crowned with the black satin tea-cosy that she had brought out with her, and the table covered with the grass-lawn tablecloth that in a fit of wild extravagance she had once bought from a passing Chinaman.
“I say, if you call this primitive, you must have a very high standard of living!” Sir Herbert spoke with the spontaneity of a boy. New to the country, he found the eleven o’clock ‘brunch’ somewhat of a trial. By half-past three or so he was usually ravenously hungry, and the Seymours did not have tea until half-past four. Now, here it was, in front of him; he smiled broadly.
Hester decided that frankness was the best. “This is my servant’s doing,” she said. “They are probably wildly excited at your visit. We never see a man from one year’s end to the other, so they feel that the event must be suitably celebrated. Do you take sugar?” Hester’s face was flushed.
“No, thank you.” Sir Herbert’s keen eyes were on the flush. He would uncommonly like to know this woman’s history. Certainly, since he had seen her last there was a very marked improvement for the better. The mouth had lost the look of strain and the eyes the look of being stretched open.
And others more competent than Sir Herbert to express an opinion could have borne him out in this. Miss Harris made no bones about it. “It’s remarkable, that’s all I can call it; it’s just remarkable,” she said to Hilly, who was as usual the attentive and sympathetic listener. “Just one tennis-party and look at the difference!” And Dr. Forester could have said the same thing only she was too loyal to appear to criticize her friend. But she had been able to go on leave without the awful sinking of heart that she had experienced lately. And Hester herself—well, deliverance from the straining torture of nerves stretched to breaking-point is something to thank God for with every waking breath. And Hester Lane did thank God, unceasingly, for she realized that with that storm of tears something had gone out of her, that if left would have poisoned body, soul, and spirit.
“You have an entirely Christian staff of servants, I suppose?” The great neurologist, refusing a third cup of tea, leant forward and put his cup down on the table.
“Oh no!” Hester had just got up to get the tin of cigarettes down from a little shelf. “Oh, no; with the exception of our puttiwala, all our servants are either Hindus or Mohammedans. Our cook, the dearest old man, whom I have had ever since we came here, is a Mohammedan. Jeewan, the man who brought in tea, is a Hindu. Do smoke.” Hester held out the tin.
“Thanks very much, if you’re sure it’s allowed here. Don’t, please”—Sir Herbert got on to his feet.
“Oh, thank you.” Hester crimsoned again, and then suddenly felt idiotic. But how heavenly to be waited on again! She sat down awkwardly.
“But, you know, that’s very odd”—Sir Herbert was puffing vigorously between cupped hands; he walked to the open French-window and flicked the still glowing match on to the path outside. One would think that you of all people would staff your establishments from your converts.”
“Yes; but we only deal with women converts, remember,” Hester Lane smiled.
“Granted: but there must be many Missions where they only deal with men. What happens to all that promising material?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” Hester Lane spoke hesitatingly. “A great many of them become clerks; some go into Government service; a good many of them become teachers.”
“But I should have thought that a really conscientious Christian servant would have been such a tremendous asset,” Sir Herbert Benson spoke warmly. “As a matter of fact, I was only talking about the same thing to a woman I met the other day at Government House. She was lamenting about the difficulty of keeping a child out here—the English nurse so expensive, the Eurasian nurse so hopeless, and the ayah so unconscientious—and I said at once what seems to me so obvious: here is India bristling with Missions; where are the trained native women from these Missions? Surely they should be the ones to whom the children of fellow-Christians should be entrusted.”
“Yes, I know, it does seem like that,” Hester Lane spoke after a little pause. “But you know, to be perfectly frank, Sir Herbert, Christianity in that sense is a failure out here. No, not a failure”—Hester interrupted herself eagerly; “it could never be that; but there is something wrong in the way we represent it. Instead of bringing out the best in a man it seems to bring out the worst. We did try a native Christian butler once, but he drank and was impertinent. We tried a native Christian ayah too, but she was also impertinent, and I always thought she drank, but I could never catch her out. It doesn’t answer, somehow: it unfits for service.”
“But I believe the Seymours’ butler is a Christian?” Sir Herbert had sat down again and was watching the animated face beside him.
“Yes, I know; but he is a Goanese, a Roman Catholic.”
“Well — where’s the difference?” Sir Herbert reached out a long arm and knocked a little of the greying ash on to the brass tray.
“I don’t know,” said Hester Lane, and she smiled a little sadly.
“I do!” Sir Herbert laughed briefly. “It’s just this, Dr. Lane,” he said, and he sat up abruptly; “we can, for some reason or other, nowadays, neither rule nor convert with ordinary common sense. Look at our rule out here, for instance, pathetic in its weakness and failure. The native is a child, he only understands brute force. We reason with him; think of the folly of that! Think of a public school at home run entirely on lines of reasoning! Now, the Roman Catholic is more sensible—he says to his converts, ‘Now, you behave yourself, my friend, or you’ll frizzle in hell for the rest of eternity.’ Well, the native appreciates that . . . something to take hold of there—I take a certain course of action; well, then certain results will follow; all right, then, I won’t take that course of action. The same thing in government: ‘You obey that law, my man, or you’ll either be clapped into jail or get a damned good hammering.’ Well, he obeys the law! It’s sense. The native respects that sort of thing. Look at the Native States; for instance; while we’re shillying and shallying and being generally feeble all round, the Native Prince or Maharajah, or whoever it may be, knowing the material with which he’s dealing because he’s made of it himself, says, ‘Keep your filthy rag of a seditious newspaper outside my State, or bring it in and spend the rest of your life stewing in a cell five feet by six.’ And the thing’s done; the newspaper doesn’t come into the State.”
“But they’re human beings!” Hester Lane interrupted timidly.
“I know they are; but they possess the mentality of children, and always will do. That’s just it; we endow them with all the attributes of our own race—oh, don’t let’s talk about it; it makes me see red,” and Sir Herbert got up out of his chair and took two or three heated turns up and down the room.
“You think, then, that I’m only wasting my time here?” Hester Lane’s lifted eyes were questioning and clouded.
“No, no; not for one moment.” Sir Herbert stopped walking abruptly. “Although,” he said, and he held out his hands palm downwards, “what about the original commands—they were given simultaneously—‘Heal the sick and preach the Gospel’; which came first, I forget for the moment. Anyhow, equal importance was given to each. Why are you and I necessary at all?”
“I know.” And Hester Lane fell abruptly silent. Hadn’t the same thought occurred to her time after time? And yet! “Oh, what are we to do?” she spoke like a broken-hearted child.
“Do? Carry on and hope for the best,” said Sir Herbert, and he came and stood looking down on to the bowed head with its neat coils of hair. “It’s a shame for me to come and instil you with my revolutionary ideas. But you’re so—so receptive, somehow,” Sir Herbert broke off abruptly.
“I love you to talk to me; it sort of gives me new life.” Hester Lane was looking up. “You know . . .” she went on, rather awkwardly, “I’m old enough to say this without your misunderstanding me; it’s just being able to talk to a man again. I don’t know what it is, but being shut up entirely with one’s own sex—it simply . . .”
Sir Herbert Benson laughed and held out his well-kept, capable hands. “Well done, doctor,” he said; “an excellent diagnosis. We simply can’t do without one another, and the mistake lies in ignoring the obvious fact. Come along now and show me as much of this wonderful hospital of yours as may be visible to a mere man. May I help you?” and Sir Herbert drew Hester gently on to her feet.
Kashmir, land for lovers! Nature run riot in a beauty that sets your senses a-thrill. Cornfields starred with poppies, and fringed with purple irises. Pine forests standing steep and black against the blue sky, and heavenly-clear mountain streams dashing themselves over the stones with a song in their hurrying. And around it all, like a sentinel with drawn sword, the snows, stern and forbidding in their icy purity. “An emerald in a setting of platinum,” Flame exclaimed excitedly when she saw it first.
“Don’t you see what I mean?” She laid her head gently against her lover’s arm as they stood at the door of their tent.
“Yes, I do, darling.” Hugh drew her to him almost fiercely as he spoke. For the relief to be actually there was so overwhelming. For since that day nearly four months before when they had been flung into one another’s arms at Port Said, he had gone through torments of anxiety. At first it had been easy—they had wandered into the desert . . . “It’s like The Sheek, hooray!” Flame had rocked her little body from side to side as she surveyed the encampment of luxurious tents.
“The what?” Hugh had just come in from giving orders about the stabling of the horses, and he held out a tender hand.
“The Sheek—you know, that book about the girl that was carried off by someone. Mincemeat adored it; she read it over and over again. But it was such a swindle—she would never let me have it. However I got it once and read a bit, and I don’t know that I cared for it so much after all,” finished Flame more thoughtfully.
“You mean The Sheikh!” Hugh was in convulsions of laughter.
“Oh, is it ‘Shake’? I didn’t know. Hugh! I love you when you laugh like that and show all your heavenly teeth!” and Flame, in her riding-breeches, made a little run and, jumping, curled her legs round her lover’s waist like a child.
“Baby! let go of me! Sweet! are you happy?” Hugh bent his dark head.
“Happy! I can’t tell you how happy! In fact, it isn’t like being happy at all. It’s like something much more. It’s like something too much to explain . . . I can’t say it!” and Flame drew a long, gasping breath.
So Hugh was content. And he was content with a wonderful abiding peace of mind that, under the circumstances, ought not to have been his at all. But to a man of his temperament every day of his marriage had been a hell, and to emerge from it into this ecstasy of happiness was heaven. So every day and every night was a rapture, and they rode together and explored, and Hugh wrote, and Flame stooped over rolls of muslin and crêpe de Chine bought in Port Said, and made ridiculous little frocks and undergarments to replenish her wardrobe. And both were utterly and completely happy, with the happiness that generally comes before the blow that finally shatters it for ever.
And this particular blow fell one evening . . . after a day on horseback. Hugh was standing with his glass in his hand watching the little gassy bubbles wriggling up to the surface. The first drink of the day: delicious; he drew a long breath of content as he tipped back his head.
“Oh! . . .” it was a funny little swaying sigh that came from behind him.
“Sleepy, darling?” Hugh turned, laughing tenderly.
But Flame was a funny little crumpled heap on the floor behind him. And as he stooped, terrified, to lift her, Hugh’s eyes had a look in them as if they had suddenly been struck blind. ”No!” it was as if he was screaming defiance at an unseen enemy as he laid her on the couch. ”No!”—Hugh’s mind went tearing, hurrying back frantic into the recesses of memory.
But later, as he knelt beside the little camp-bed into which he had put Flame with the tenderness of a mother, he knew it with a deadly certainty. Flame was very shy.
“Put your head very close and I’ll whisper,” she said. And as she finished she laughed. “Fancy being able to tell you a thing like that,” she said again; “it’s just that that makes you so perfect: you’re like a heavenly mother and father and every perfect relation rolled into one.”
“You ought to have told me that before, beloved.” Hugh’s lips were white.
“Why? Why should I? Why does it matter? Besides, you see, I thought perhaps it was because we were in a different sort of country or something, and that perhaps. . .” But a very short time did away with any hope of that kind. And when one morning Flame waved away her chota hazeri, and sat staring blankly in front of her with her tiny handkerchief pressed to her mouth, Hugh knew that she must be told. And he took her on his knee to tell her.
Flame listened blankly. “But however do you know?” she said.
Hugh laughed shortly. “Darling, take it from me that I do know,” he said, and he carried the hand that he held to his mouth.
“But can we, when we aren’t properly married?” Flame spoke after a long pause.
Hugh felt dimly that someone was answering for him: answering with brutal frankness: “No you can’t. But unfortunately for you you’ve entrusted yourself to a criminal fool, so you can,” and as he heard he groaned.
“Do you feel ill, too?” Flame was instantly all anxiety.
“No, no!” Hugh pressed the little head back into his shoulder.
“When will it come?” Flame spoke after another long pause.
Hugh told her, and then another long silence fell between the two. Flame broke it:
“You know there’s something most terrifically rapturous about it,” she said, “I didn’t realize it at first. Your child! something that will really belong to you and me like nothing else could. Aren’t you glad?”
“Flame!” and as Hugh held her passionately close, staring blindly over her head, one great tear detached itself and ran down his face.
“Where shall I go to have it? Falaise?” Flame did not see, and spoke joyfully and ruminatively.
“No, darling; you can’t do that;” and then Hugh let her slip gently off his knee, and getting up, he walked away to the door of the tent. And Flame saw the brown hand trembling on the gay silk handkerchief.
“You mind!” In a flash she was by his side.
“No, no!” Hugh had his lower lip between his teeth.
“You do! Beloved, beloved, you are disappointed or something!” Flame was clinging to him passionately, staring upward. The darling face was all twisted. Why, oh, why? . . . She scanned it, the tears beginning to form in her own eyes.
And Hugh saw the little face through the blur of his own tears, and he made instant resolve that if it killed him Flame should never know what this awful blow was going to mean to them. It must be kept from her, somehow—the horror of disgrace; the torment of trying to keep it quiet; the terror of running up against people that they knew. She must be got away: somehow, somewhere! But how? and where? with the present-day fool precautions of passports! But he only smiled, and blew his nose with a little shaky laugh.
“Sweet, you took me so tremendously by surprise,” he said; “that’s all it is. Of course I am glad. Come along, and let us talk it all over.”
But later that night, when Flame was asleep, curled up like a little kitten in the bed drawn close to his, Hugh took his writing materials outside and wrote till the small hours of the morning. The longest letter was a letter to his lawyer; he had already written once to him, but there had not been time to get an answer. But this time the letter was a little different, and when he read it, the nice lawyer, who had known Hugh for years, had to wipe his spectacles more than once. “But it’s useless,” he said, as he went to get the Bradshaw down from the fat bookshelf. “The woman’s a devil; I saw that plainly enough the last time I went down.”
And the second letter was one to Gerald Forsythe. And it was a letter that left Hugh’s hair a little greyer than it had been when he began it. But it had to be written; there had been no answer to Flame’s first letter to her brother, and she was beginning to wonder. And when Gerald Forsythe got it, he read it twice, and then also got up to get down a Bradshaw, and having with a good deal of grunting located a train, rang for his breakfast, got heavily into a taxi, and made his way to Waterloo.
“You’ve got to be reasonable about the whole thing, my boy.” Colonel Forsythe stood with his back to the gorgeous wood fire in the old tapestry-hung hall. Falaise was full of riotous young people, all out shooting for the moment, Nigel, on the receipt of Colonel Forsythe’s telegram, having stayed at home.
“Reasonable! You ask me to be reasonable when I am dealing with the man who has seduced my sister! I tell you I won’t listen to his cursed letter.” Nigel Peterson was white with rage.
“You must, Nigel—this affair has got to be properly tackled. I hold no brief for Keymer, although here he certainly writes like a broken-hearted man: Stephens says the same; I saw him yesterday. But in the face of this new and overwhelming catastrophe something has got to be done. Mrs. Keymer must be induced to divorce him somehow; we must try and persuade her. And when we try and persuade her you must be there too.”
“As if the devil couldn’t have prevented . . .” Nigel was fingering a paperweight with a trembling hand.
“Quite so!” Colonel Forsythe shrugged his shoulders a little. “Quite so, Nigel. But it’s easy to say that now. The point now is, that something has got to be done. The time is past for harking back to what might or might not have been.”
India, although large, can be found to be a very small place, as many people have often experienced to their cost, and Hester Lane was only vaguely dismayed when one day Jeewan brought her a card on a tray.
“She would be here!” Hester dropped the card with a little groan. “All right, Jeewan; give the memsahib my salaams and tell her that I will be there in one moment;” and Hester, who had been on the eve of beginning to wash her hair, because it was a half-holiday and Hilly had promised to help her to dry it, turned back into her room with the crumply packet of shampoo-powder and cotton kimono. Mrs. Holroyd-Browne: Hester had heard vague mention of the advent of a new regiment. But that it should be just this one woman of all others who should be the wife of the arriving colonel! Hester groaned as she slipped a flowered cotton-voile frock off a hanger and carefully got herself into it.
“My dear . . . after all these months.” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was fluttery and effusive. “And really . . . I should hardly have known! . . .” She held both Hester’s hands at arms length.
“Oh, I don’t know . . . India always suits me very well.” Hester’s eyes wavered and fell.
“Yes; but for the last ten days on that dreadful voyage. My dear, will you ever forget it? And you . . . such an intimate friend of that poor dear Mr. Keymer . . . as we all said at the time, it was awful for you! . . .” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was watching Hester’s face like a lynx.
“Do sit down, won’t you?” Hester very gently detached her hands. “And you’ll have tea? Yes, do; I assure you it isn’t the faintest trouble; only one moment . . .” and Hester walked swiftly out of the room.
She was back again in less than a moment. But she had had time just outside the door to catch her handkerchief between her teeth. Courage now, when the edges of the healing wound were brutally dragged apart again; and not a sign in the face of this woman. She smiled as she crossed the floor.
“Tea will be here in just a moment,” she said, “and fortunately, both my colleagues happen to be at home, too, as it is a half-holiday. So we shall be a pleasant little party. A visitor from Cantonments is always a treat to us.”
“Really,” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne was wondering how to begin. And she would have to be quick, because apparently the party à deux was not to come off; two more of these dull women would shortly appear on the scene. But the change in this dull one really was remarkable . . . and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne’s eyes dwelt anew on the muslin frock, obviously not a local production. But wasn’t there some talk of a man . . . some famous doctor staying at the Civil and Military Hotel? . . . Anyhow . . . and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne leant forward. “My dear,” she said, “I knew you would be interested, and as a matter of fact I think you really ought to know it. I have just come back from Kashmir, where I have been spending the hot weather. And while I was at Gulmerg I met one of those very nice young men who came out with us—I don’t know if you will remember him, a Mr. Mason . . . No; well—I remember that you never had much use for young men. Well, he had been up into the wilds after bear, and one evening, just as he was pitching his camp, who should pass but that dreadful girl, dressed as a girl this time, by the way. He knew her at once, by her extraordinary black eyebrows and eyelashes. Also, she was accompanied by a man that we both know . . and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne laughed meaningly.
“Really!” Hester’s voice came dumb and faint to her ears.
“Yes;” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne spoke more sharply this time. This woman was a fool to try and dissemble, when her infatuation had been so pitifully obvious. “Yes. But of course the terrible part is yet to come. I know Mr. Mason very well,” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne simpered, “or he would never have told me what he did. But he said that it was only too obvious what——” and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne broke off, satisfied this time.
“No!” and through her misery Hester’s soul screamed denial to this anguish. Not Hugh, Hugh! Not Hugh, knowing the tragedy that it would mean.
“Yes, really! But under the circumstances . . . and Mr. Keymer being, as he is, a man of the world, wouldn’t you have thought? . . .” and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne became very involved and obscure.
Mercifully for Hester, at this moment Hilly and Miss Harris came in. So the rest of the visit passed in a sort of horrid detached nightmare, and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne had to leave without any further allusion to the matter that was occupying her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. But as she bowled down the drive in her smart turn-out—for Mrs. Holroyd-Browne fancied herself as a colonel’s wife, and always made a point of being very smart and upright and well turned-out—-she smiled under her hat. That had taken the wind out of that sanctimonious woman. She had never liked her since the first part of that voyage, when she herself had been taken in by Flame, and had therefore been a source of amusement to this pious spinster. At least, Mrs. Holroyd-Browne felt sure that she must have been a source of amusement. Although, who was Dr. Lane to judge, with her obvious and flagrant passion for the good-looking biographer and her present carryings-on. Mrs. Holroyd-Browne sniffed as she shot through the white gate, very nearly depositing the syce, who was hanging on by both hands behind her, on the ground as she did so.
Left alone, Hester pushed the hair stupidly out of her eyes. Hugh and Flame Peterson in Kashmir within touch of her really. And Flame shortly to become a mother . . . no, no, no; and Hester got up and began to pace up and down the room.
And about half an hour later Sir Herbert Benson found her there. He had met Hilly and Miss Harris in the drive, so that he knew Hester was at home, and he walked in without being announced. But when he saw her he was sorry that he had done so.
“My dear lady, what is the matter?” He walked straight up to her and held out his hands.
“No, no, don’t; I shall be all right in a minute.” Hester Lane wrenched herself to one side and stood with her face turned away.
“Look here, don’t put me off like that”—the great doctor spoke almost boyishly, and he did not let go of the hard, capable hands. “You and I have got past all this sort of thing. Tell me what is wrong. It must be something pretty bad to make you look like that; very well, then, let me share it. I hate to feel that you keep me outside . . .” and Sir Herbert broke off and walked away to the window.
Hester watched him go. Did he really care? she wondered stupidly. Hilly and Miss Harris, and even Hilda Forester had rallied her about his visits at first. But lately it had got far more ordinary; he generally came for some specific purpose . . . something in the Lancet that he wanted to show her, some book in her medical library that he wanted to refer to. Certainly he had remained in this plains stations for the whole of the hot weather . . . but still, that meant nothing—many men did not mind the heat, and the Civil and Military had electric lights and fans . . . Besides . . . love! Love demands youth. Not lines, and shadowed eyes, and a figure that has lost its first freshness. Hester Lane laughed aloud, not knowing that she did so.
Sir Herbert swung round. A nervous system in rebellion again! A case for him. He came quickly back across the floor. “Now then, your hat and stick,” he said, “and we’ll go for a walk. Away to the back up towards that tank. I prescribe it; don’t raise any objections.”
“I would really rather stay here.” Hester’s serene eyes were tormented.
“And I would rather you came out. And you are going to do what you’re told for once in your life. Now then, a hat . . . and a stick; . don’t keep me waiting.”
Hester Lane turned and went obediently. Like all strong women, she instantly responded to a touch of the lash. And Sir Herbert’s voice had carried a command with it.
So a little later they were both walking silently side by side up through the short stubbly jungle that covered the little hill at the back of the Mission-compound. There was a small tank on the top of this hill—a tank fed from a wonderful sacred spring, that bubbled up inside a little Hindu temple. Hester loved to sit on the stone wall that fringed the tank and stare down at the vaguely-seen fish sliding greyly in and out of the weeds. Sir Herbert and she had often sat there. But to-night, somehow, it all seemed different; her soul was seared. Hugh! . . . and Flame. But perhaps Mrs. Keymer was dead . . . or had she perhaps divorced him? . . .
“You are to tell me what is the matter with you.” Sir Herbert had leant forward, and his signet-ring was pressing into the back of her hand.
“I can’t. The secret is not mine to share with anyone”—Hester’s voice came hoarsely.
“Yes, it is. The man who loves you has a right to share anything with you. Tell me what is the matter with you. You shall.” Sir Herbert’s face was white.
“What do you mean?” Hester had dragged her hand away and was holding it to her mouth.
“What I say! I love you, and what troubles you to the extent that you are troubled now, troubles me equally. Tell me what it is.”
“You can’t love me”—Hester’s eyes and voice were incredulous.
“Why not?” In spite of himself the great neurologist smiled. Gone for the moment, anyhow, the immediate anguish. Hester’s eyes and general expression only betokened the wildest astonishment. “Why can’t I love you?” he asked, more gently this time.
“Why, because I am so old,” Hester extended her arms. “Look at me; you could have anyone. . . I am forty-five, and my face is all lined, and my hair . . . why, it is ridiculous,” and she let her arms fall with a little sob. If only it could have been possible! He was so . . . so splendid.
“And I am fifty, so that sweeps away the first objection, anyhow. And now what else remains?” The doctor’s voice was gently rallying.
“Don’t! I can’t, somehow . . . you can’t really mean it,” and Hester got up from the wall and looked desperately up and down. All her being was on fire—somebody wanted her. Not for what he could get exactly, or else he would have chosen somebody better looking, but because it was she . . . she flung her hands over her face.
“But I do mean it very much indeed!” Sir Herbert Benson also got up, and cast a quick look round him. “Hester, don’t be so desperately self-effacing, my dear; there are other things sometimes in a man’s mind beyond a pretty face and golden hair. I love you for what you are . . . Oh, well! I can’t go into it all now: anyhow, tell me, do you think you could love me or do you not? Because if you don’t . . .” and then there was a funny drawn look on the clever mouth.
“I can only think that you don’t really mean it, and that this is a dream.” Hester spoke over her clenched hands.
“Well, I can assure you that it is not,” and then the tension relaxed on the tightly held lips and the great doctor smiled. “Dearest,” he said, “silly child! No, don’t,” and he laughed again, “there isn’t a soul in sight, Hester; I made very sure of that first!”
“And now, what’s the great anguish?” The doctor spoke almost boyishly. He had Hester’s hand in his and they sat facing each other on the low wall. The sun had sunk behind a bank of early autumn haze, and from the little dark door of the chokidar’s quarter behind the temple a wreath of grey wood smoke curled slowly upwards.
Hester told him. She owed it to him, she told herself, terrified, all the same, lest it should make any difference.
“You loved him, then, I gather?” The doctor spoke quietly.
“Yes, I think I did.” Hester’s lower lip was quivering.
“You think you did? How can there possibly be any doubt. One doesn’t think one loves a person. One knows that one either does or one doesn’t? The doctor’s eyes were stern. Hester saw them stern, and her soul cried out. How could she make him understand? She must; she began to speak breathlessly.
The doctor listened in silence. What a child, in spite of her forty-five years. His eyes softened as she went on.
“So, you see, this happening like that—I mean his being able to care like that without any thought of his duty or anything—seemed to kill something inside me. It was almost as if I had seen him stabbed in front of my eyes; something was dead . . . something . . .”
“Your ideal,” put in the doctor quietly.
“Was that it?” Hester’s eyes were round.
“Yes, of course it was. Hester, my dear . . . don’t bother any more about that. Besides,” the doctor got up; “I’m a fool really to tell you, I suppose,” he said, “I ought to try and show the man up in the worst possible light. But I know him quite well. Yes!” as Hester got stumblingly upon her feet.
“You know him?”
“Yes; he brought Mrs. Keymer to me at the very beginning. And I saw then . . . Good God, that man’s life since must have been a hell!” Sir Herbert Benson drove his hands impetuously deep down into his pockets.
“Then do you excuse him?” Hester’s eyes were seeking.
“No, not entirely. And this last calamity, not at all,” said the doctor; and then he felt inclined to laugh as he saw Hester’s clever face flush and turn aside. He took a step forward. “Look here, my dear,” he said; “we’re not children. When will you marry me? Quick! I like things settled out of hand.”
“But do you still want to?” Hester’s eyes were stupefied.
The doctor laughed as, in spite of himself, his mind fled back over his own life. “Do I want to?” he said. “Of course I do, dear. Kiss me, Hester; no, it’s perfectly safe—it’s pitch dark to begin with, and the old johnny in the hut can’t see.”
“But supposing he could?” Hester Lane was trembling with joy.
“He’d think it was some sort of religious ceremony. That’s it! Oh, you dear!”—the great doctor’s face was radiant.
But not as radiant as the face of the woman by his side. Somebody wanted her: she was necessary to somebody’s happiness! “God, God, and I doubted You!” Hester flung out her soul in a passion of prayer and thanksgiving as she walked soberly down the little hill back to the Mission. The Mission! Transformed, transfigured, flooded with the light of an earthly love. Did God mean it to be like that? Hester wondered, as she went, stupefied with joy, about her simple dressing for the evening meal.
“The burra miss-sahib has been asked in marriage!” Jeewan, also stupefied with joy and excitement, came tearing across the little bit of courtyard that separated the kitchen from the main building.
“Wah, wah, how dost thou know?” Abdul Hussain lifted his venerable old eyes from the Koran on his lap.
“I stood behind the Kashmir curtain. And there they stood, the sahib and burra miss-sahib. And the quail-faced miss-sahib was before them. And she, fiercely embracing the burra miss-sahib, fled from the room weeping; myself I saw it,” announced Jeewan proudly.
“Aie, aie! But where one goes, so may they all,” said Abdul Hussain indulgently. “But the quail-face is a handicap. But why weep? Allah is good, and who knows?” His eyes returned again to their reading.
Jeewan lingered, fidgeting from one bare brown foot to the other. “A little cochineal upon the billymange,” he said; “it will give an air of distinction.”
“But does the sahib remain to partake of the evening meal?” Abdul Hussain got up with a jerk and let the Koran slide down upon the beaten earth floor.
“Assuredly!” Jeewan was smirking.
“Then why hast not thou already told me, thou son of an ox with one eye?” said Abdul Hussain furiously and he dashed to the little glowing charcoal stove. “What is already prepared for females will not in any sense suffice. Hence, and leave me to it.” Abdul Hussain made a fierce gesture and Jeewan fled trembling.
The Larches stood some way back from the road in a very nice garden. The road was also a very nice one, wide and shady, and situated in one of the wealthiest suburbs in South-West London. Only very respectable-looking tradesmen’s carts trundled along this road in the mornings, and nurses wheeling very large frilly perambulators, and the motor-vans of very expensive shops like Liberty’s and Jay’s. You hardly ever saw things like Carter Paterson and Pickford, for instance; for the people who lived here took their luggage with them when they went away, strapped on to the backs of expensive cars, and they did not go for a common thing like a summer holiday either: they went away at the right times of year to stay at different country houses. So that the long Rolls-Royce that one morning crept up to the gate and stopped there, breathing quietly, looked quite in keeping with the whole thing, and so did the three men who got out of it, and the young chauffeur who stood attentively holding the door open.
“Oh, my God, how I loathe this!” young Sir Nigel spoke with the exasperated agony of youth on the rack, as they walked together up the beautifully kept drive.
“Never mind, old chap; it won’t last long.” Colonel Forsythe spoke kindly, laying an unobtrusive hand on the young arm close to his.
“But it’s so——” and then Nigel Peterson caught in his breath as the front door came into view.
Such a nice front door, with plate-glass windows let into each side of it, showing a wide hall full of beautiful chrysanthemums in full bloom. A trim maid answered the door; no ordinary apron and cap here, but a dress of softest black cashmere, and a wide, flat bow on the neat hair behind.
“Yes; step this way, will you, please, sir?” The trim maid spoke to Mr. Stephens, whom she already knew by sight.
“Thank you.”
The trim maid waited a little way away while the three men shed their overcoats and laid their hats down on an old oak chest. Then Mr. Stephens breathed in a little deeply and caught the trim maid’s eye, and turning, she led them all, single file, behind her, into the drawing-room.
At first Nigel thought it was empty; then he caught his breath as a woman rose from a chair drawn up close to a writing-table. But it was the matron of the Home, whom Mr. Stephens knew and very much liked . . .
“How do you do?” She had a low, pleasant voice, and she held out a hand with several very nice rings on it. She held Nigel’s hand a little longer than the others. She had heard of the sad catastrophe that had befallen the House of which this boy was the head, and she pitied him from the bottom of her heart. But she also knew Mrs. Keymer, so her sympathy was not quite so unmixed with other emotions as it ought to have been.
But Nigel could only stare round with tormented eyes. Was that other woman perhaps lurking about here? That other woman before whom he would have to stand shamed and humiliated as the brother of the girl who had stolen away her husband. He breathed in the dusky wintry scent of the chrysanthemums with nostrils that were twitching.
“I will send for Mrs. Keymer. But I think I ought to tell you . . .” and then the gentle voice dropped a little, and with an upward glance at Mr. Stephens she walked a little away, the lawyer following her.
While they talked, Nigel and Colonel Forsythe stood together close to the fireplace, in which a bright fire was burning. It was a beautiful, chilly September day; Nigel thought resentfully of the shooting he was missing. And then something stirred at his feet, and Nigel saw a tiny pink tongue and stretching extended paws.
“Oh, you pet!” He lifted the smoke-grey kitten and held it to his face. And as Mrs. Unwin saw him like that she stopped wondering how Hugh Keymer could have done the thing that he had done. Brother and sister were exactly alike, so Mr. Stephens had told her.
“I will get Mrs. Keymer to come down,” she said, and she walked to the door, shutting it carefully behind her.
Left alone, the three men did not speak at all. Mr. Stephens had taken a small pocket diary out of his pocket and was scribbling in it. Colonel Forsythe had one hand curled round his carefully concealed pipe, wishing to God he could smoke it. And Nigel was trembling and feeling a little sick, and he had put the kitten back on the rug again. Then the door opened and shut, and as it shut there was a gleam of something white from outside. And it did not shut properly until the person who had apparently opened it was well into the room.
“How do you do . . . how do you do, Mrs. Keymer?” Mr. Stephens was genial and breezy, and he looked cheerfully over the top of his pince-nez. “May I introduce my friend Colonel Forsythe and also my young friend Sir Nigel Peterson?”
“How do you do?” and as Nigel stepped forward and held the small, weakly clinging hand, he could have sobbed with relief. This! . . . this, and he had expected something fierce and awful. This! this poor little quiet, faded thing with the gentle folded mouth. Oh, Flame, Flame, how could you!
“H-m! you’re her brother?” Mrs. Keymer’s voice was stronger than Nigel had expected it to be.
“Yes.” Nigel relinquished the flaccid hand.
“H-m, then I should say that there is some excuse for Hugh.” Mrs. Keymer had swung round with the quickness of a lizard and was addressing the lawyer.
“Well . . .” The lawyer did not return any further response to this remark, but he beamed cordially and taking off his pince-nez, he swung them a little on the cord, and then put them on again.
“Well, get it over; what have you all come down for?” Mrs. Keymer advanced a little farther into the room.
“Shall we just sit down and discuss it a little?” Mr. Stephens took command of the situation and waved his well-kept hand towards a chair. “That’s better. Sit down, Forsythe, and you too, Sir Nigel. That’s it! Now then . . .” and Mr. Stephens drew a little table towards him and leant over it a little with hands quietly clasped.
“Get on; don’t fiddle about!” Mrs. Keymer drew back her lips a little and Nigel caught sight of discoloured teeth.
“Woman, ever impatient!” Mr. Stephens voice was geniality personified. He smiled at Mrs. Keymer.
“Get on with it! What do you want?” Mrs Keymer slipped a heel out of one of her shoes and began to swing it on her toes.
“Since I came down here before with your husband’s urgent request, that you should divorce him,” began Mr. Stephens, speaking very quietly and calmly, “the situation has changed a little. He has now authorized me to offer you more generous terms. He is now prepared to settle two thousand a year upon you for life.”
“Good God, what’s making him put on the jam like that?” Mrs. Keymer spoke bluntly.
Mr. Stephens hoisted his eyebrows up a little farther, and then, lowering them, looked quietly out through his pince-nez. “He has received very favourable terms from America for the rights of his last book,” he said.
Mrs. Keymer stared for a moment or two, and then she too leant forward and spoke with horrid intuition.
“You fat old liar, he hasn’t!” she said; “he’s put that little slut in the family way, and he’s frightened out of his senses. Good job too!” and Mrs. Keymer began to laugh.
“Nigel, sit down!” It was Colonel Forsythe’s voice, and he had sent his chair back with a shove.
“She’s . . .” Nigel was up on his feet and his young hands were clenching and unclenching.
“Sit down, Sir Nigel.” Mr. Stephens’ voice came with authority, and, pale and trembling, Nigel dropped back into his chair again.
“As I was saying”—Mr. Stephens spoke with the utmost imperturbability, “Mr. Keymer is now in a position to offer you very excellent terms, Mrs. Keymer. And taking all things into consideration, I should say that you would be very well advised to accept them . . . veerry well,” and Mr. Stephens’ voice purred like a cat’s.
“And I say I’ll see him in hell first,” said Mrs. Keymer, and she drew her top lip quite back this time. “And as for you, you gutless little fool . . .” she faced Nigel, who got up, white as paper, “go back to your beastly ancestral castle, and get it ready to receive your sister with her bastard child . . .”
“Gerald, she’s not to say it!” Nigel cried out like a child, and turned from one man to another. “I’ll kill her . . . I’ll kill her!” he began to sob.
“Pull yourself together, Nigel.” Colonel Forsythe walked round the table and put an urgent hand on the heaving shoulder.
“I suppose you thought that you’d touch my heart if you brought this young thing down to intercede,” went on Mrs. Keymer, thrusting out her chin, and speaking in a sort of monotonous undertone. “But you’ve only make it harder. Let the slut starve in the gutter; let her and her nameless brat wander round to be spat on. Let that b——y husband of mine suffer—let him suffer, I tell you . . .” and Mrs. Keymer swore horribly; vile oaths dragged up from an obscene subconsciousness.
The three men stood still. There was nothing more to be done evidently. Only now to get away as quickly as possible.
“And now, good-day to you,” went on Mrs. Keymer, and she made a little bow and stood still.
“Good-day.” Mr. Stephens was the imperturbable lawyer again, and he held out his hand. So did Colonel Forsythe, but Nigel gripped his shaking hands together.
“No,” he said, and he turned to the door.
Mrs. Keymer watched them go, laughing noiselessly. And as they went she stooped to the rug.
What made Nigel turn as he held the glass door-handle in his hand he never knew. But he did, and as he did he saw what brought his heart up sick into his throat.
“Drop it, you devil!” He was across the floor again, sending the small table flying as he came.
“No; let it burn like that dirty sister of yours.” Mrs. Keymer was chuckling breathlessly as she tried to force the soft furry body into the burning coal.
“Gerald . . . here, help, somebody!” Nigel was shouting as he flung himself on the small, quietly dressed woman. “Let it go, you beast . . . you . . . he had the little hard wrists in his hands and was dragging them away from the fire. “Ah! . . .” he screamed as something small and smelling of fire was dragged clawing down his face.
“That’s spoilt your precious beauty for you!” Mrs. Keymer, released, stood gasping and laughing. “Got your eye, has it? Good! Get away, you little beast!” She flung the kitten on to the ground, where lifting one singed paw, it limped weakly away.
“Gerald, she’s put out my eye;” the two men were back in the room again, and Nigel stood with his handkerchief to his face, trembling.
“No, no, don’t; she can’t have done!” Gerald Forsythe spoke like an agonized boy. “Stephens.”
But the room was suddenly full of people, and someone with a beautiful white apron was standing close to Mrs. Keymer. “Come, come, now,” they were saying in a soothing voice; “come along now, that’s it,” and Mrs. Keymer was led out of the room, still chuckling quietly.
“Bring Sir Nigel in here”—it was Mrs. Unwin speaking this time. “Mary, go quickly to Number Seven. Dr. Hingely has just gone up there. Come along, Sir Nigel,” and Mrs. Unwin slipped her arm into the young, trembling one. “It will be quite all right, directly you have seen the doctor. Yes, I think if you will just leave us alone, Mr. Stephens, please . . .”
Dr. Hingely was young and clever and reassuring.
And Nigel, gripping his hands together to hear the verdict of partial blindness, began to weep with excitement and relief when he heard that there was nothing much more amiss than a badly torn lower eyelid.
“But I got the kitten away from her all right, and it was hardly hurt,” he said, when, white from the excruciating pain of two surgical stitches, he lay back on the hard couch, a tumbler in his young brown hands.
“Yes? Good!” Dr. Hingely was washing his hands at a shining white basin let into the wall; he flicked the water from them, and dragging the snowy towel off the nickel-plated rail, he came back to Nigel wiping his hands on it.
“Look here, I’m going to speak to you as one man to another,” he said quietly. “And I’m not going to speak from the moral standpoint, either: that lies between a man and his God. But don’t you be too hard, Sir Nigel. That has been Hugh Keymer’s life . . . that . . . the sort of thing that you have just seen. Remember it, when you feel inclined to be bitter, as of course you do feel inclined . . . naturally, you’re young . . . and a brother . . . I absolutely understand it. But that’s the life that a man of imagination and intellect has had to lead for the last fifteen years, and might have to lead for the next twenty. . . Upon my soul,” and the doctor broke off abruptly and walked back to the towel-rail.
“Won’t she die?” Nigel sat up and put the glass back on the little tiled table.
“Very little chance of it.” The doctor spoke bluntly as he hung the towel carefully over the rail. “But, of course, in these cases we can never tell . . . Now, then . . . if you are sure you feel quite all right again . . .” and the doctor walked back to the couch and stood looking down on it.
“If only she could die before the baby is born.” Nigel spoke with a trembling lower lip, as with the kind hand in his he began to struggle on to his feet.
“Well, we’ll hope that she will,” said the doctor who had not had the remotest idea that the sad state of affairs was going to be so terribly complicated.
“I suppose you can’t——” And then Nigel remembered that the spirit that he had just had was potent and that he had been going to say something terribly foolish, and he stammered and was glad when he was safely out in the hall again, the wintry smell of chrysanthemums in his nostrils and Gerald’s strong, kind arm threaded through his.
But the doctor finished the sentence for him, as he went quietly up the padded stairs.
“What a solution!” he said wistfully, as he walked down the long corridor to where two tall nurses were waiting for him. “Mrs. B. was giving trouble again; would the doctor be kind enough to come at once?” and he passed swiftly into the beautiful room with the slender bars stretched sinister behind the softly blowing curtains.
Time has a way of hurling itself along when it has anything dreadful in store for you. Before you know where you are you are deposited breathless and despairing in front of the thing that you have been trying to shut your eyes to for months and weeks. “Now then, let’s see how you’ll tackle this!” Time stands aside and waits maliciously. And it was so with Hugh. The time had come for them to leave Kashmir, where were they to go? He was wondering this one morning as he went plunging down through the aromatic undergrowth to have his morning bathe. Wondering is not the word; he was searching his soul in torment for an answer to the question that had haunted him day and night for months.
Other people were wondering too. Nedous Hotel, in Srinagar, still had a few people staying in it, and the beautiful tents in the Shalunian Bagh had come in for a good deal of comment. In the hills it had been easier; men don’t inquire as to the legality of the bond that may or may not unite the two who have flung everything to the winds and who wander hand-in-hand through the most beautiful country that God ever made. But women do, especially if the man concerned is very good-looking.
“Who are they, do you know?” The woman who was packing sat back on her heels and stared up at the woman perched on the end of the bed.
“I’m not sure. But Jack says that he’s pretty certain that it’s Hugh Keymer, the novelist man. He’s got a wife at home who drinks; at least, I think he has. I saw him in Coburn’s Agency the other day; he has a most heavenly expression.”
“But, my dear, do you know?” and the girl on the end of the bed flushed; she was shy, not having been married very long.
“Yes, I do. Jack told me. Can you imagine any human beings being so idiotic? Why, where will she go to have it? Where can she go? It’s awful!” The fair head was buried in the trunk again.
The only person who was not tormented was Flame. Wrapped in the shelter of a love that transcended anything that she had ever dreamed of, she was almost perfectly happy. The only reason that she was not quite perfectly happy was that Nigel had not answered any of her letters.
“Why won’t he write?” Curled up under a beautiful moleskin rug, Flame put the question for about the fortieth time to the man who sat smoking under the standard lamp.
“Because he is angry with me, Flame, and he vents it on you because he knows that is the way to make me suffer most.”
“But what is there to be so desperately angry about? Even if I had known that mother wasn’t there any more, I should never have gone home again.” Flame hoisted herself up on to one rounded elbow.
“You might have done.” Hugh’s voice went suddenly hard, and he got up out of his chair.
“I never should. Hugh, Hughie . . . come over here, and let me kiss your beloved angel head. Darling, beloved, it’s a whiter head.” Flame buried her mouth in the thick hair. “Hugh, Hugh, don’t, beloved! If you knew, if you only knew how I adore you, how I don’t care for anything but you! Don’t let your angel hair get white, Hugh, sweetheart . . .” Flame’s voice broke.
“I feel sometimes as if I . . .” Hugh’s face was hidden in the soft neck.
“I know you do, beloved. But don’t, because I only feel unspeakable joy that I belong to you.” Flame was staring out over the frosted head, her eyes heavy with tears. Sometimes, too, unknown to the man who lay close to her heart, she suffered torments of fear. But she would have died rather than let him know it. It was fear of the future, she felt; what was it like to have a baby? Supposing there was something funny about it, supposing that as a punishment, because they were not properly married, it was crippled or mad or something? “God, God, don’t let it be!” Flame would cry the words aloud in her soul. But even as she cried them she realized the futility of them. What was the good of crying out for mercy when you didn’t mean to alter the way you were going on? If she had made up her mind to leave Hugh, then it would have been a different matter altogether . . .
“Well, this won’t do at all.” Hugh, always tenderly mindful of the girl he loved, raised his head.
“Yes, it will; it’s what I like best, to have you close to me like this.” Flame’s little mouth had an expression of obstinacy on it. “Put your head down again; I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to tell you something that you’ve never heard before. Which is, that you’re the most heavenly good-looking man that was ever created.”
“You little idiot!” But Hugh’s nice mouth was laughing again, which was what Flame had wanted it to be.
“Yes, you are; and that’s what I can never understand—how you can go on liking me when I look—so—so—stupid.” Flame flushed scarlet.
“Don’t, darling!” Hugh lifted his head.
“Yes; well, but I must say it. For such ages now I’ve been no good—don’t you know what I mean? And yet you are so heavenly; Hugh, Hugh what shall I do if I die and we aren’t ever properly together any more?” and then the hidden terror leapt out, and Flame began to sob wildly.
As he tenderly comforted her, the terror and anxiety always raging in his own soul almost threatened to get Hugh down. They must get more within range of civilization, they must get somewhere where, in the event of anything not going absolutely right, the best medical skill would be available. But where? Under the circumstances, where?
And God, Who, in spite of our hopelessness, is always watching an opportunity to help us out of the misery in which we have landed ourselves through our own stupidity, put it into Hester Lane’s head to write to Hugh. And he got the letter one day when, after an English mail that brought with it no message of hope, he was very nearly at the end of his tether.
Hester had not written to Hugh without the most terrific heart-searchings. Was it right? that was the question that agitated her night and day.
“How do you mean, right?” Sir Herbert Benson smiled as he asked the question. How this woman had altered in appearance since he had taken her to his heart.
“Well, I mean that this is a Christian Mission. Have I any right to introduce into it a girl who . . .” and Hester stopped.
“You mean that you are afraid of her contaminating you all?”
“No, no, of course not.” Hester flushed deeply.
“Well, then, what is there to be afraid of?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t have them both.” Hester spoke hurriedly and inconsequently.
“No, no; I don’t think that under the circumstances it would be at all suitable that you should,” said Sir Herbert Benson.
“But he will never leave her to go through all that alone,” said Hester, and then, flushing, she caught hold of the great doctor’s hand and began to weep.
“My child, don’t grieve over it!” Sir Herbert’s eyes were tender. “Write to Keymer and offer to have Flame Peterson here, and leave the rest.”
“Somehow I feel that I can’t,” and then Hester broke down.
“Silly child!” said Sir Herbert tenderly. “Write your letter, and I will also speak to Seymour. We might between us be able to fix up somewhere for Keymer to go: he must be a terribly unhappy man. But, of course, the whole thing must be kept desperately quiet, otherwise the whole station will be by the ears. Write your letter, darling, and then we will talk it over again.”
So the letter was written. And Hugh took it from the postman as he started out for his walk that evening. Flame wanted some eau-de-Cologne, and Hugh was going into Srinagar to get it. But when he had read it, he sat down on a little heap of stones by the side of the road and dropped his head into his hands. For since that morning when the English mail had come with the long letter from his lawyer, he had felt utterly hopeless. But here was a ray of light for the immediate future, anyhow.
But Flame shrank and trembled when he told her. “I don’t want to go there,” she said. “She didn’t like me, and I shall be afraid. Even with you there I shall be afraid. I would rather stay here and have it.”
“You can’t do that, darling,” said Hugh, quietly.
“Why can’t I?” trembled Flame, pitifully.
“Because I say so,” said Hugh briefly. There were some things that Flame could not be told, and one was that she was a creature outcast. And by his doing: Hugh had had his punishment.
“You ought to tell me more kindly, when I am so afraid and wretched,” sobbed Flame. “It’s a most frightful thing to have a baby when you are not properly married. Why, oh why did I have one?” and Flame wrung her hands.
“Flame, don’t!” Hugh stood quite still when he had spoken, and for a moment he really thought that the physical pain in his heart would crack it across. It was true: he had brought this child to this pass himself. By his love. Love! He suddenly laughed hoarsely.
Flame stirred uneasily. “I don’t care for the way you’re laughing, Hugh,” she said; “ what is the matter with you?”
But Hugh had gone with a muttered excuse. He fastened the loop of the tent across with a hand that felt oddly numb. How Fate got her own back, he thought, stumbling stupidly out into the starlight. Flame was reproaching him now: soon she would hate him. And he loved her: loved her, and he had brought her to this pass! A funny sort of love, he thought, beginning to laugh’ with funny guttural sounds and with teeth bared widely.
Ten minutes afterwards, mercifully for Hugh, the laughter had changed to tears. And a little later, bitterly ashamed of himself, he crept quietly into the dressing-tent and began to dress for dinner.
Flame greeted him from the luxurious sofa with hands held out and a working mouth: “Hugh! I was horrible —I was horrible!” she cried. “It’s because I don’t feel well . . . that’s all it is. Love, I like to go to Dr. Lane, and I like having the baby . . . I do indeed!”
“Sweetheart! Dearest!” Hugh held the little head against him. “God get us through this time somehow and I will try and make amends!” He flung the prayer out wildly, not knowing that he prayed.
It was much easier to get out of Kashmir than it had been to get out of Port Said. But money will do most things, and this time it provided a motor—the last word in luxury—and many things to make Flame’s journey more comfortable. So Hugh did not grudge it.
“Will you be able to take me to Dr. Lane’s?” Flame was clinging a little feverishly to her lover’s hand. The mail had just left the last big station before they reached Jarnagar, and Flame knew that the time of separation was drawing near. She had promised to be brave; Hugh had told her that they could not be together for this bit of road, but that directly the baby was born and she was well again he would come and fetch her away.
“Where shall we go, then?” asked Flame, trying to speak brightly.
“Oh, to all sorts of heavenly places,” returned Hugh, cheerfully.
And now he spoke equally cheerfully, although his eyes were dark with anxiety. “Of course I shall, darling,” he said. “And you know, even though I am not actually in the same house with you, I shall be quite near. The Seymours live about a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Mission.”
“Having it called a Mission makes it sound so stiff,” said Flame, clinging to a bit of Hugh’s coat.
“But I am sure it won’t be stiff,” returned Hugh cheerily. But as he spoke he shivered. The awfulness of what lay ahead of her. And for him to bring the girl he loved, a creature shamed in the eyes of everyone, to what must be her most extreme hour of anguish. To stand himself, a man who had always been one to be reckoned with, a hateful figure of selfishness and lust. But to do him justice, Hugh did not at this crisis of his life take his own feelings much into account. Flame’s welfare, that was all he cared about. He had had ghastly moments of misgiving about her capacity to weather safely what was just ahead of her, and as that was so, Hester’s letter had come like a rope thrown out to a drowning man. She was a brilliant surgeon, a brilliant everything where the physical condition of women was concerned; very well then, she was the person to have charge of Flame at this more than awful time that was nearly on her.
The little group on the platform waiting for the mail was hardly more at its ease than the two who sat closely together in the luxurious first-class compartment. Ann was the only one who was quite serene; she had been told all the facts of the case before it had been finally decided that the Seymours should take Hugh, and when she had heard her husband to the end, she had wrinkled up her little white forehead.
“But what’s the difficulty about having him here?” she asked.
“Well, darling, you see when two people decide utterly to disregard all the laws that other people abide by, they have got to take their chance,” said Tony Seymour bluntly.
“What sort of chance? . . . the sort of chance of her perhaps dying in awful misery because he isn’t near her, or him going through frightful agonies of wondering about her and not being able to find out because people will wonder. Oh, Tony I how can you? Supposing you had been married to an awful person who made you wretched, don’t you suppose I would have lived with you thousands and thousands of times?” Ann’s eyes were wide and reproachful.
So it had been settled. And there they stood on the beaten-earth platform. Hester, very pale and still, but with a glow of content in her eyes that not even her immediate discomfort could quench; Tony, tall and lean, with a cigarette between his lips; and Ann, looking like a pink rose, peeping out of her black furs, for it was seven o’clock in the evening and Jarnagar had a cold weather with the nip of an early English spring in its breath.
“Shall I kiss her?” Ann spoke hastily, with a tug at the Burberry sleeve, as the long train came swinging slowly round a corner into view.
“No!” Tony Seymour spoke decidedly and firmly; but when he saw the tiny drawn face peeping out from between furs far more costly than Ann’s, he regretted his hasty decision. It was only a child; what a brutal shame!
But Ann for the first time in her life disregarded her husband. She drew close to Flame and stared straight into her eyes.
“Why, we’re rather alike,” she said, “even I can see that. How do you do? How glad, how very glad, I am to see you.” She leant forward and kissed the pale face.
“Do be kind to him.” Flame’s eyes had begun to stream at this totally unexpected welcome. She dragged Ann a little way away from the others. “We’ve never been away from each other before,” she said, “and it kills me to think about it.”
“Of course I will”—Ann spoke sturdily and reassuringly; “of course I will. And now, show him to me; I want to see what he’s like.” And the two walked back to the three standing awkwardly under the flickering yellow lamp.
“How do you do?” Ann had Hugh’s hand in hers.
“How do you do, Mrs. Seymour?” Hugh’s voice was quiet, and his slightly drawn mouth did not smile. But his heart was surging out in gratitude to this girl who had given Flame a kiss of welcome.
“I am very glad to see you indeed,” said Ann. “And more than anything I shall love it when we have the baby to play with. You must both come and stay with us then. Now we can only have you, because, of course, Miss Peterson must go somewhere else, but afterwards it will be different,” and Ann beamed.
Hester broke the awful silence. Both men stood staring straight in front of them. But there was a laugh at the back of Tony’s eyes. Trust Ann to say something desperate, he thought, turning to beckon to a passing luggage coolie.
“I shall come and see you every day”—the little party was moving towards the wide echoing entrance to the station. But Flame was not listening. Was she going to be torn away from her lover now? she wondered, hanging desperately back to take hold of his hand.
“Darling, you promised me you would try to be brave,” Hugh returned the frantic grasp with a pressure almost as frantic. This child of his! Oh, hadn’t he expiated his sin again and again! “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he urged desperately, stooping down to look into the little face.
And Flame, with a strangling, snorting cough, wrenched back the sobs that were forcing their way upward. For his sake she must try: but oh, the awful, awful misery of it! She stumbled up into the big car that stood waiting for her and Hester. Hugh tucked the rug round their knees quietly enough. But by the light of one of the station lamps Tony Seymour caught sight of his face: and he cleared his own throat abruptly as he turned away.
“Well, Keymer, shall we make a move?” he spoke after a little pause. The big car with Flame and Hester in it had gone, swinging out of the station yard with a slowly diminishing tail-light. Ann was standing very still; she too had seen the stricken face and was trying not to cry.
“Oh, thanks!” Hugh Keymer raised his head. She had gone: sent perhaps to her death, and by him. “Thanks very much . . . is it a car? . . . Oh, yes!”
“I say, you know, she’ll be all right.” Tony Seymour spoke under cover of the darkness as he fumbled with the door of the car. “No, Ann, you get in in front with me, then Mr. Keymer can stow his luggage away behind. I say, it’ll all turn out all right,” he spoke again, urgently this time, only conscious of an intense desire to comfort.
“Thanks very much, Seymour.” Hugh spoke quietly. She had gone—perhaps he would never see her again. All that little soft, childish sweetness crushed out of the world by him. By him . . . her lover. Her murderer! Hugh’s breath came unevenly.
“Tony, he hasn’t got in.” Ann spoke in a hurried undertone. Her husband was settling himself in the seat beside her, turning with a hand on the wheel, to back the car a little.
“Hasn’t got in?” Tony Seymour twisted his head abruptly the other way. No. by Jove! there he still stood, staring in front of him. “I say, Keymer!” He raised his voice a little.
“Oh, I’m sorry! “ Hugh Keymer laughed a little, apologetically, and stepped blindly up into the car.
Miss Harris was the one now who was most exercised about the whole thing. Flame had settled down into it with a quiet, acquiescent acceptance. After all, there was nothing else to be done: her lover wished her to be at the Mission, so at the Mission she would be. And in her heart of hearts there was a certain amount of relief about it. Flame was afraid of the immediate future—more afraid than she had allowed Hugh to know.
As for Hugh, he was experiencing a time of relief from almost unbearable anxiety. For for the last few months he had been in a constant state of terror lest something should go wrong, and he not be able instantly to get hold of a doctor to put it right. So to feel that Flame was being properly taken care of was to him an enormous relief, and he throve under it.
“Didn’t you think he was an old man at first? Now he’s got to look quite young; and don’t you think the white hair and black eyebrows together are frightfully attractive?” Ann, who had quite gone down before Hugh’s undeniable charm, spoke excitedly.
“Yes, he certainly looks much better.” Tony Seymour spoke non-committally, although he, too, was very much attracted by Hugh. The two men had become very intimate, for Hugh was passionately grateful to the Seymours for taking him in, and did not hesitate to show it. And it was all made easier by Sir Herbert Benson, who had known Hugh before and Mrs. Keymer too, and who, because of this earlier knowledge, in a sense held a brief for Hugh. So the situation was harmonious and easy, and the three had many an excellent game of golf together, with the Garrison Chaplain to make a fourth.
“Had you better ask him?” Hugh’s eyes had got their tortured look back again when Tony Seymour had first made the suggestion.
“Oh yes, rather; he’s a splendid fellow—one of the best,” Tony Seymour spoke enthusiastically. The suggestion of the padre for a fourth had come out with all the spontaneity of the unpremeditated, but it had not been so at all. Tony Seymour and Sir Herbert Benson had laid the whole facts of the case before him first.
“I say, how awfully sad!” The padre was a young man, and had spent most of his service up to the present, firstly in Mesopotamia, and then in Waziristan. Jarnagar was his first real Cantonment station.
“Yes, it is, desperately. Of course, I suppose one ought to feel only condemnation, but really I . . .” and Sir Herbert stopped abruptly and stared down into his glass.
“Let him that is without sin . . .” the padre had a way of quoting Scripture in the tenderest, most delightful manner, and both men raised their heads involuntarily.
“That’s a really good man!” Sir Herbert spoke enthusiastically as, the foursome fixed up for the following day, the two made their way back to the Club.
“Yes, he is; the Tommies simply adore him.” Tony Seymour spoke equally enthusiastically, and then a silence fell between the two men. Both had the affair of Flame and Hugh Keymer very much at heart, and thought of very little else.
“If only that useless woman at home would die,” Tony had spoken almost fiercely one evening, when, the English mail in, Hugh had with a gentle apology retired to his room without coming in to dinner.
“Ah! but that’s just exactly what she won’t do!” Sir Herbert took the long slender pipe out of his mouth and stared into the glowing bowl of it. “It’s a disgraceful state of affairs that,” he said; “insanity and hopeless intemperance; both ought to be made sufficient cause for divorce.”
“Ah, well, but you must remember that we’ve got a reputation for sanctity to keep up, deserved or undeserved,” said Tony Seymour, getting up and laughing ruefully. “Anyhow, we ourselves can do a certain amount now to make the poor fellow’s life a little more bearable. Up to the present he’s simply had to stick in the compound for fear of being seen. But now, we four can clear off to the links—the padre won’t say a word, and no one will notice him out there.”
But Miss Harris, one of the small-souled of this earth, did not take things quite so quietly. “Who is she? that’s what I want to know!” she said one day to Hilly, jerking the question at her, as she sat at her writing-table correcting exercise books.
“Who is she? Why, she’s an old friend of Dr. Lane’s.” Hilly had an acid-drop tucked into her cheek and she spoke carefully.
“Yes; but old friends of people don’t come out to India to have their babies. And they don’t come to Missions either, when they can afford to dress like Mrs. Peterson does. And where’s her husband?—that’s what I want to know!” finished Miss Harris firmly.
“Where could he be? In his own station, I expect.” Hilly began to crunch the acid-drop, by now reduced to a shadow of its former self.
“Well, I think it’s odd.” Miss Harris held a white cotton stocking up to the light. “I’ll kill the dhobi one of these days. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s right. We’re all fellow-workers in the Mission field, and Mrs. Peterson’s underclothes are not the underclothes of a Christian woman.”
“How do you know?” Hilly’s good-tempered face was creased with curiosity.
“Why, I took her in her breakfast the other day,” said Miss Harris. “And her nightdress, and the peignoir she wore over it, just a mass of filet lace. And her hand. Well, of course, to my mind, that settled it; just a tiny little strip of silver on it. Well, you and I know what a wedding-ring should be, and that wasn’t one,” finished Miss Harris, to whom a wedding-ring began and ended in a quarter of an inch of pinkish gold.
“There was a young married woman on the ship I came out in who had a ring like that,” said Miss Hill shyly. “It’s platinum, the very latest,” and she beamed contentedly. Hilly hated to think the worst of anyone, and to think that the Mission sheltered a young woman on the eve of motherhood who was not even married was surely the very worst you could think of anyone.
But Miss Harris only sucked the end of her darning-cotton and sniffed. The wonderful cherished beloved look of this golden-headed child roused her deepest ire. That wasn’t the look of the ordinary married woman at all. Miss Harris had heaps of sisters-in-law, and she had seen them going to have babies too. This was sin, and Miss Harris was going to find out about it.
And the devil played into her hands. She was lumbering along Civil Lines one day in the Mission dumny, a big covered cart drawn by bullocks, when Mrs. Holroyd-Browne came spinning by in her tum-tum—Mrs. Holroyd-Browne hot on the heels of a scandal; she had been playing golf the day before, and had seen Hugh’s frosted head in the distance. There was no white-haired man in the station except her husband. That in itself was nothing, but her ayah had spoken of beautiful undergarments being washed by the Mission dhobi. The Mission dhobi! That, coupled with Hester Lane’s skill in her profession and the news imparted by Mr. Mason, was enough for Mrs. Holroyd-Browne . . . “Hallo! . . .” she saw the lumbering cart and reined in her grey Arab.
“Oh, how do you do?” Miss Harris was overcome by being hailed by the wife of the Colonel commanding the station, and she gave her blouse an awkward pull down in front.
“Just the person I wanted to see! Miss Harris, do you think Dr. Lane knows of an ayah by any chance?” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne threw the reins to the syce and leant down from her high seat.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure.” Miss Harris was all in a flutter. “I don’t know, I’m sure, but I’ll find out. I’ll find out at once. At least, I have a little shopping to do first, but directly I get back to the Mission I will ask Dr. Lane.”
“What a nice, jolly old vehicle that is; I wish we had one. Just the thing to go into the bazaar in.” Mrs. Holroyd-Browne spoke rather inconsequently but very cordially, and Miss Harris rose to the bait like a stupid fish.
“Oh, do you think so? I always think it is so slow. But I am going to the bazaar now, and if you cared . . .” and then Miss Harris flushed purple at the thought that anyone so much of the world as Mrs. Holroyd-Browne could care.
But at that precise moment Mrs. Holroyd-Browne cared very much indeed. And Miss Harris, all in a flutter with the excitement of the possibility of being seen driving by the side of this very smart woman, drew her skirt aside, and pushed a couple of parcels out of the way, and Mrs. Holroyd-Browne gave a brief order to her syce and stepped down from her high seat and got under the swaying hood.
And a quarter of an hour and a few leading questions sufficed for her to find out everything she wanted to know. And when Miss Harris, a little exhausted, stopped to moisten her top lip a little, she turned and caught hold of the ugly hand on the seat beside her. “How good and how right of you to tell me!” she exclaimed.
“Well, don’t you think it sounds very queer?” said Miss Harris, enormously surprised, but desperately gratified all the same by this expression of cordiality.
“It sounds queer because it is queer,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, and then in a few well-chosen words she explained the whole situation to Miss Harris.
“There now! Just what I thought, and what I said to Hilly!” After an instant’s speechless silence Miss Harris found her voice. “Oh, but how wrong, how terribly, terribly wrong!” she said.
“Yes; but how wrong of Dr. Lane to force such a situation upon you,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, who had always loathed Hester Lane and was thankful for an opportunity to get her own back. “The sin is great, I admit, but to subject you and Miss Hilly . . .”
“Hill, her name is!” interrupted Miss Harris, with a high, excited giggle.
“Hill, then!” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, suddenly feeling cross. What an impossible young woman! how could she shake her off? The rencontre had been very fortunate, but now, its object attained . . . “Ah!” she suddenly leant far out from under the hood and waved a neat wash-leather hand— “Mrs. Hanson—just the person I wanted to see! Will you excuse me, Miss Hill, if I get down here?”
“Harris my name is,” said Miss Harris. “Besides, aren’t we going to the bazaar?”
“No, I am afraid there is not time to-day,” said Mrs. Holroyd-Browne, and she dug the old native driver in the back. The two mild-faced bullocks stood with gently swaying tails in the middle of the dusty road. Mrs. Holroyd-Browne shuffled herself eagerly out of her seat.
“Good-bye, Miss Hammond,” she said; and laughing unkindly, she scuttled across the road to where a little two-seater car stood waiting under a banyan-tree.
“Hammond! my name isn’t that!” Tears of disappointment gathered in Miss Harris’s pale eyes. It had seemed nearer, just that minute—a chance of getting to know someone—perhaps a cup of tea out, for a change. And now—just the same old round . . . “Oh, get on, you silly owl, you; what do you think you’re waiting for?” Miss Harris turned on the old driver, who sat, his mild opaque eyes fixed on the twitching ears in front of him.
”Miss-sahib, bazaar ko jarte hain?” Wazir,’who had driven Mission miss-sahibs for many a long year, and who had summed up this one ten minutes after first seeing her, spoke amiably.
“No, you old stupid; drive me straight home,” replied Miss Harris in execrable Hindustani.
So Wazir, bending forward, twisted the white-knotted swaying tails. Very gently though, because he was a kind old man. And Miss Harris, also bending forward, spread out her hands on her knees and showed her top teeth a little below her top lip. And the big cart lumbered along back the way it had come, through patches of flickering shade, and then out into the sunlight again.
Flame was alone when Miss Harris got back. It was about half-past eleven, and Hester, very tall and slim in a white overall, was stooping, brows a little drawn, under the great plate-glass window of the operating theatre. Miss Hill was in the school—the buzz of droning voices came faintly to Flame through the sunlight.
“Oh, I say, Miss Harris, how you made me jump!” Flame turned from the foot of the long cane chair on which she was laying her workbasket and a bundle of soft, lacy little garments. She always enjoyed these long mornings of sewing: such heavenly little things: little fat coats with necks that would only do for a big doll.
“Put down those emblems of your shame,” said Miss Harris, who had been fairly sure that she would catch Flame like this, and had been practising what she would say.
“How do you mean?” Flame turned with a whitening face.
“What I say. Put down those shameful things.”
“All right,” and Flame let the soft bundle drop on to the end of the chair. One little white coat fell away from the others and lay by itself on the matting. Flame saw it, and wondered if she should pick it up. It was her first attempt at knitting: she and Hugh had pored over the directions together, and when she had got hopelessly muddled in making the sleeve, he had seized the wool and the needles and said that he knew he could do it much better himself.
“But you’ve made such a weeny cuff!” Flame was in convulsions of laughter as he brought it to show her.
“It’s got to be weeny!” Hugh’s eyes were alight.
“But not as weeny as that!” and then Flame had thought of the little tiny hand with the tinier fingers that would be crammed through it, and she had choked, and clung to her lover. “It’ll be ours, won’t it? Like nothing else could be,” she breathed.
“Yes, it will, darling.” Hugh’s voice was as it always was when he spoke to Flame, full of cheer. But his eyes were as they always were when Flame could not see them, full of despair.
But Miss Harris did not know all this; and if she had done, it would only have stiffened her resolution to make Flame suffer more; so that when she saw her movement to retrieve the little coat, she stepped quickly forward and put her foot on it.
“Don’t! you’ll make it all dirty!” Flame cried out, and tried to stoop quickly.
But Miss Harris had already got it safely under her foot: and then she too stooped and dragged it out from under her shoe.
“Mind the cuff!” The tears had begun to stream down Flame’s face. Her most precious thing!” Give it to me: it’s the thing I like best: my husband made it—at least, a bit of it: give it to me!” Flame made a lunge forward.
“Your husband! You woman of sin and shame, you have no husband!” Miss Harris had an idea that this was a quotation, so she spoke more viciously than usual.
Flame let her outstretched hands tremble slowly to her sides. “How do you know?” she said in a dreadful whisper.
“Never mind how I know: take it from me that I do know,” said Miss Harris. “And when I see you there in your costly wrappings, with your sewing in your lap, sewing for the little lamb that is only to come into this world to be a thing of shame, I could weep. Oh, you wicked, wicked woman, you!”
“How do you mean, a thing of sin and shame? How can anyone be that for what they haven’t done themselves?” Flame’s eyes were wide and her lips were suddenly stiff. This was something new. She had grasped for some time that she and Hugh had done a wrong thing in living together without being married, but that this should affect the baby! “How can you be that?” she repeated.
“Easily,” said Miss Harris. “God in His infinite love and mercy has ordained it thus. Your child will be a thing of shame: it can never be baptised.”
“But does that matter very much?” asked Flame with quivering lips.
“Matter?” said Miss Harris, staring speechlessly.
“Well, but, after all, if God has that sort of a plan that something that can’t help being born is, and then is punished for it, it rather turns you against things like baptism,” said Flame, trembling. “It’s like having a party and not letting a child in because it’s not properly dressed, when it’s its parents fault that it isn’t. Besides, if the baby isn’t God’s already, how can just being baptized make it His? Heaps of people don’t believe in baptism—Quakers, for instance. What happens to all of them?” asked Flame, suddenly interested, and forgetting the sudden terror she had gone through at hearing that the baby would be a thing of shame.
“Hell fire for the unbeliever,” said Miss Harris firmly; “that little child of yours, if it is born alive, which God forbid! will go through life a little marked soul. If it dies before birth—and may God in His infinite mercy ordain it thus—it will . . .”
“No, no!” Flame flung herself forward. ”No, no, don’t say it! . . . because it is alive . . . it is alive! And if it dies now, it hasn’t a chance . . . it hasn’t a chance! Don’t you see—if it’s even just born I could sort of see it, and plead with God for it, but if it dies first . . . Hugh! Hugh!” Flame began to scream.
“Don’t take that name of shame upon your lips,” said Miss Harris, who, being of an inferior class to Flame, did not realize that screams from her meant a good deal more than screams from one of her own sisters-in-law. “Pray to your God that in His infinite mercy He may . . .”
“But what have I got to pray about?” Flame had got her clenched hands up close to her mouth and was staring over them. “The baby’s there—it’s too late! Because either way you say it hasn’t a chance! Hugh, Hugh I why did you let me have one? Hugh! Hughie!” and Flame, gathering her soft draperies round her, began to stumble blindly up and down the verandah.
But this last was altogether too much for Miss Harris. Also, the big bell over the arched doorway into the school was beginning to boom out the hour of twelve. So she turned to go. And as she turned, Flame made one little desperate rush towards her.
“Say that perhaps you’ve got it wrong,” she gasped; “after all, no one, even a missionary, can know everything for certain about God. Say that perhaps there is a chance for it. Otherwise—I don’t know . . . and then Flame stopped, and suddenly an odd expression came into her eyes.
But Flame’s last cry to her lover had turned all Miss Harris’s starved instincts into a flaming fiery furnace of jealousy. Not so had the sisters-in-law behaved when their hour was drawing near: no, theirs had been the passionate desire to get Tom, or James, or Alfred, or whichever it was, out of the house until everything was well over. So she drew back from Flame’s little clutching hands. “Don’t touch me,” she said hardly.
“Then of course I must,” said Flame; “ if it’s as bad as that. Besides, anyhow, how could I let it wander about alone when it wasn’t its fault—I must go with it. Hughie! . . . darling, darling Hughie! . . .” and then Flame made another two or three steps towards the edge of the matted verandah, and before Miss Harris could prevent her, she was over the edge of it and down on the gravel below.
“Why did you do that?” Miss Harris, demented with fright, was also down on the gravel, kneeling by Flame’s side.
“Because I don’t care for the idea of it being alone with God,” said Flame, with funny twisted blue lips. “And nobody can fall over a verandah when they are going to have a baby without dying. At least, I hope they can’t. Hughie . . . Hughie!” and then Flame’s head rolled a little over on to one side, and Miss Harris was up and galloping like a hunted rat towards the hospital.
Death—or the messenger of Death. There was something in the sound of the padding bare feet coming nearer and nearer through the darkness that told Hugh so without a doubt, and he gripped the stem of his wineglass as the blood fled back from his heart in a ghastly tide. The padre, who with his elbows on the table was listening cheerfully to rather a long story of Sir Herbert Benson’s, saw the whitening knuckles, and although still listening, shifted his gaze a little.
“Burra doctor-sahib hain?” Simon, the Mission chuprassie, was not as young as he had been, and the words came gaspingly from the back verandah.
“Hain!” but Francis, the Seymours’ Goanese butler, spoke with a certain amount of reserve. His master and mistress were dining out, certainly, but it was not the thing to rush into one person’s bungalow and immediately ask for another. “Hain,” he repeated in the vernacular; “but the three sahibs drink the port wine: wait!”
“Attcha!” and Simon sank down on the wide flagged space with almost an audible creaking of his old bones.
But Hugh sent back his chair with a shove: “I say, Benson, I think you’re wanted. Excuse my interrupting, but . . .”
“Wanted? where?” Sir Herbert stared vaguely up at the greying face on the other side of the table. “Oh, I see . . . excuse me, will you?” He took the note from the servant at his elbow. “H-m . . .” reading, he got slowly up on to his feet, and being a very great doctor, his face did not change. “H-m— well, you two won’t mind being left alone for a little while I expect . . .” and slipping the note into his pocket, Sir Herbert went out.
“Something is wrong with . . .” and then Hugh, dropped his head into his hands with a groan. Heart of his heart, and yet he had no name to give her!
“I hope not!” The padre’s chubby face was furrowed with instant sympathy.
“There is! Find out, for God’s sake: I must know!” Hugh lifted haggard eyes.
“I will, of course!” The padre laid his creased table-napkin down on the table, and got up. “I say . . .” he was out on the verandah, speaking in an undertone; “I say, Benson, Keymer is in a fearful state, thinking that there is something wrong with Miss Peterson. What am I to tell him? “
“Tell him that there is: it’s useless to try and keep it from him: Miss Peterson has had an accident—a fall of some kind—and Dr. Lane has sent for me.” Sir Herbert Benson was shrugging himself into a Burberry and he spoke abruptly. “But for God’s sake, padre, keep Keymer here: he can do nothing at the Mission, and he’ll only hang about and drive us all frantic. We’ll send for him if it’s necessary: thank Heaven, I kept my tonga!” and Sir Herbert Benson, hands in pockets, was gone at a dive down the two shallow stone steps, running like a hare towards the two faintly seen lights beyond the white gateposts.
“Well?” Hugh’s voice was one agonized questioning, as after just a second’s pause the padre walked back into the circle of rose-coloured light.
“Come into the drawing-room, Keymer, and I’ll tell you.” The padre had seen a good deal of the world, and had burnt and blistered on more than one Eastern battlefield. But the task that lay before him now turned his soul sick. Here was a man already tortured in conscience almost beyond endurance. Was he to add to that torture by pronouncing him to be practically a murderer? “Lord, why did you choose me?” the padre flung out the protest in a gentle remonstrance. “Because you would do it as I should wish it done”—it was just like a quiet answer out of the night, the response that came. And the padre took courage, and spoke.
“Keymer, Miss Peterson is very ill,” he said. “She has had some sort of a fall, and Dr. Lane has sent for Sir Herbert to help her.”
“She is going to die.” Hugh was standing by a little table covered with brass, and everything on it suddenly began to rattle.
“No, no; she is not. Don’t!” The padre took a step forward.
“She is! And I have killed her. What a score for this God of yours!” Hugh swung round and began to walk about, his hands clenched over his ears.
“Keymer, don’t!” The padre followed him. “To begin with, you don’t know yet that Miss Peterson is even in extreme danger,” he said. “Apparently there were no details in the note that came.”
“She is; I know she is.” Hugh had not stopped walking. He shook off the gentle hand on his arm, and then he turned. “Curse you!” he said; “leave me alone!”
The padre walked quietly to a chair and sat down on it. And as he sat, his forehead dropped on one hand; he thought of something that had happened the week before. He had been dining at the Club, and one of the party had come in late. But he had been cheerful, and had been one of the last to leave. And when he had gone, the host, who was giving the padre a lift home, had raised the palms of his hands a little, and shrugged his shoulders. “Look at that, padre,” he said; “ I suppose he’d say that we didn’t know anything about it, not being married men. But that man’s wife started to have an infant at seven o’clock to-night: I happen to know it because the regimental surgeon digs with me. I call it damned callous!” and the two men had walked out to the little car in silence.
And now the padre thought of this as he watched the tall, lean figure threading its way in between the little chairs and tables—moving them out of the way sometimes mechanically, but not in the least conscious that he was moving them; the padre could see that.
“Keymer!” he said again, and at the sound of his voice Hugh flung round.
“I must go,” he said; “she might want me,” and he started swiftly for the door.
“No, don’t! Stay here!” The padre got up quickly and followed him.
“She might want me.” Hugh was talking to himself, and was already, bareheaded, half-way down the drive.
At the high white gate at the end of the avenue of trees, the padre stopped short. “Let me go on alone from here, Keymer,” he urged.
“No.” Hugh’s voice was almost entirely without expression.
“I say, do!” The padre spoke urgently, like a boy.
“No.” It only came quietly again, and the padre, with a little imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, fell into step by the side of the taller man.
The avenue was long and winding, and from the last turn in it you could see the Mission bungalow—a bungalow entirely in darkness, except for two rooms at the end of it which were a blaze of light. “Every lamp you can spare, please, Miss Hill; and then will you two go over and sleep in the hospital?” and Hester, very tall and grave in her white uniform, had walked back into the big room in which Miriam kept watch.
“No,” and Hugh walked on again. And then he stopped dead, like a man with a bullet through his brain, as the shriek came echoing through the darkness. “No—no, I can’t . . . Hugh, Hugh! . . .” It was a cry from someone in most extreme torture.
The padre always played half-back in the regimental footer team, so he was in excellent training. And he needed to be, for Hugh was a very powerful man.
“Look here, Keymer . . . pull yourself together”— it came in staccato gasps.
“Let me go . . . she wants me!” Hugh was fighting like a blinded man.
“Yes; but don’t you see . . . it’s so utterly useless. They won’t let you go in . . . and you’ll only. . . . Besides, everything that can possibly be done is being done: both are there; Keymer, don’t,” for Hugh had groaned, very dreadfully.
“She wants me—God, and I can’t go to her!” Hugh let his head fall forward on his chest like a man wounded to death.
“Come back . . . we’ll talk . . . there was some sort of a seat,” the padre was breathing heavily, as he led Hugh back along the way they had come. Out of earshot . . . he dragged Hugh along in a panic.
And across the narrow bed in the brilliantly lighted room two pairs of clever eyes met. “What do you think?” There was a question in Hester’s eyes.
Sir Herbert shrugged his shoulders very slightly. Then he glanced down and his eyes were suddenly dark with pity. “Chance it,” he said; “it’s a risk . . . but still . . .” and then the sickly clinging smell of chloroform stole through the room, and old Miriam gripped her wrinkled hands together in relief. For Flame reminded her of the missy-baba she had nursed long years ago, the little golden-hair missy-baba of the Collector-sahib, who had loved her, and kissed her brown cheek. Miriam shed a quiet tear as she moved quietly and skilfully about the room.
On the tumbledown seat the padre spoke first. There was something in the way Hugh was sitting that tore his heart with a longing to comfort. Hugh was sitting bolt upright, staring straight in front of him, his hands hanging down at his sides. Listening the padre knew he was, and in a panic lest there should be something to hear, he spoke.
“Keymer,” he said, “I wish you would tell me——” and then he stopped.
Hugh turned his head a very little. “Tell you what?” he said, and the padre winced at the withered voice through the darkness.
“Well . . .” the padre hesitated.
Hugh broke in: “You mean that you wish I would blab out my penitence for the past,” he said. “No, thanks! I prefer to take this last torture standing up.”
“I don’t mean that in the least”—the padre spoke without the faintest resentment in his voice. “All I mean is, that sometimes when one is very near the end of one’s tether, to confide in someone helps. Perhaps you do not feel like that. Don’t think for one moment. . . .”
“No, I know . . . forgive me.” Hugh’s response was instant, and he flung out his hands. “It’s just that: padre, if she dies I have killed her!” and Hugh was up on his feet again, the whitening knuckles showing plainly through the darkness.
The padre drew him quietly down again on to the seat. “Look here, Keymer,” he said; “in saying that you are unreasonable. I don’t know in the least the circumstances that led up to this affair, but this I do know . . .”
“You don’t know—how can you know? . . . she was a child, and innocent, and hadn’t a ghost of a chance with me when I . . . God—God, if she dies! Padre, padre!” and Hugh’s head was down on his wrenched hands again.
The padre waited a little while, and then with a frantic prayer that he might not say too much, he began to speak. Hugh listened; at first apathetically, and then with a growing consciousness of the real goodness of the man beside him. Here was a man: no feeble exhortations from an exalted platform here: no; here was a man, with a man’s understanding and a man’s knowledge of passion and the fearful temptations that it brings in its train.
“But you know, Keymer”—the padre was still speaking—“I cannot believe that you took this step without some very grave provocation from somewhere. I know I ought not to appear to condone, and I don’t. But, tell me, if you can, just a little of what led up to it. You owe it to yourself. So far I have only heard your passionate condemnation of yourself—there must be another side.”
“So far as Miss Peterson is concerned there is no other side,” said Hugh quietly.
“No—quite: but, assuming that, there must be something. Your home: your home life: a man doesn’t chuck that all overboard—at least a man of your type doesn’t—without some very grave provocation.” The padre was trying to see Hugh’s face through the darkness.
“I had a certain amount of provocation, certainly,” Hugh spoke slowly. “And if I enlighten you a little about it, padre, it is only that I feel I owe it to you. I am not whining or asking for mercy. Although if God . . .” and then Hugh lifted his bleached face to the sky again.
And then out it came, the whole sordid story. Far more sordid than anyone had any idea of—for Hugh, with the pride of the proud man who has made a fool of himself, and who has been told beforehand that he is making a fool of himself, had made desperate efforts that no one should know the true facts about his marriage. And no one did know them; a few people knew that Mrs. Keymer drank, but beyond that they knew nothing. And when he had gone so far, Hugh got up, and with the trembling gesture of a hand drawn across a wet forehead, he laughed shakily.
“You see, padre,” he said, “I was too proud to take my freedom when I might have had it. But I was not too proud to take the girl I loved, and drag her through the mud,” and then Hugh broke down again.
They talked until the crescent moon had sailed very high in the sky. The padre was accustomed to dealing with men, and he knew exactly how to do it. Nothing feeble: no impracticable code of morality impossible in a workaday world: but just this. You owe a duty to the community which you cannot afford to disregard.
“Then you mean that if she lives, I ought to leave her.” Hugh jerked up his head, and his lips were white.
“Yes, I do.” The padre spoke quietly. “You see, Keymer, I know perfectly well that in your case things are different,” he said, “you love—both of you—and in God’s sight that is marriage. But by itself it isn’t enough. There are certain laws for the regulation of this world that we must abide by: otherwise, what would it be?—absolute chaos. . . And then the padre suddenly stopped abruptly. Running feet again, coming out of the darkness. . . .
“Oh, my God!” Hugh had stumbled up on to his feet.
“Padre-sahib mangta.” Simon, the chuprassie, was padding breathlessly past them.
“Here I am!” The padre, spoke in English, and flung out his hand. “Stop, Simon; it’s all right. Keymer, you wait here for me.”
“She’s dying!” Hugh was standing very still.
“No, no!”—the padre just laid his hand on the black coat-sleeve.
“She is, and I have killed her. Go, padre; don’t wait. But if . . . don’t let them keep me away from her—she will want me . . .” and Hugh broke away from that kind hand with an awful sob. And the padre started to run. “No, no, Lord! no, not this!” as he ran he prayed. “You stop it somehow: You can: You shall!”
Flame was lying very still when the padre walked into the darkened room. No more blazing light now; only one tall lamp at the head of the bed, shedding a quiet circle of light on to the big pillow.
“We can’t possibly save her: her heart is giving out.” Hester had been crying as she met the padre at the door. “It’s so pathetic to hear her, too; I can’t think what it is that is on her mind. Mr. Keymer must not come; it would break his heart, and it would be utterly useless, as she is quite unconscious. Yes, the little creature hadn’t a chance from the first”— this in answer to a quiet question.
“Can you leave me alone with her for a little while?” The padre had his eyes on the little bed in the distance.
“Yes; that is, if you will keep Miriam. It would not be safe to leave you quite alone with her. There—you see,” and Hester turned and ran.
“Little hands . . . in hell. You rat Christian! No! No!” Flame was up and shrieking into the room.
“Ari baba, nahin, nahin . . .” Old Miriam had her powerful brown arms round the little figure and was drawing it gently down. “Miriam’s little baba. You going quickly, miss-sahib,” said Miriam in an agitated undertone.
“She seems to have taken a violent dislike to me.” Hester turned after a second’s pause and walked back to the padre, who was standing very still. “What are we to do?” She wrung her quiet, self-controlled hands.
“Leave her to me—and Miriam. And you go and look after that man of yours.” The padre spoke in a quiet, very gentle voice. “He will want a drink, and he will want you with him while he has it. Now then, and I will send for you the instant I think it is necessary,” and the padre came farther into the room and stood for an instant with his chin sunk on to his chest.
“Rat Christians! Man-rat Christian!” Flame did not struggle up from the pillow this time, but she stared at the padre with a look of deepest hatred in her eyes as he came nearer and stood looking down on to her.
But Miriam only stared with a sort of dim wonder in her old opaque eyes. Here was something that reminded her of the old days before she became a Christian. The padre had a sort of light round his head, wavering at first and then becoming steadier. “Ari baba, dekko,” Miriam spoke gently to Flame, as if she had been the baby she had nursed long years before. Something here to rivet the attention of her darling and divert her from her suffering.
“His head’s on fire!” Flame suddenly spoke in a voice of utter weakness, but it was a voice of complete sanity, charged with the greatest interest.
But the padre was not listening. His soul was out, struggling to get into communion with the Great Soul of the World. Death, the last Enemy to be overcome. Not of God, this—a child at the threshold of life whose passing would break the heart of a good man.
“I want to touch the Flame—it’s my name.” Flame was stretching weakly out, and old Miriam caught her hands. “Presently, darling . . . Miriam’s darling,” she said.
“No, now,” and Flame whimpered a little.
“Miriam’s darling say a little prayer,” said Miriam, feeling that this was being a very great occasion indeed. For the motionless figure of the clergyman reminded her of one of the fakirs of her heathen days. A still human figure laying hold of the Unseen, forcing It to human will—forcing It to attend to human needs.
“I don’t want to pray.” Flame’s voice was faint again. “I want to die, to get away from cruel rats with stabbing teeth.”
The padre had gone quietly on his knees beside the narrow bed, and he put out one hand and laid it very gently on the little head. “You want to live,” he said, “for the sake of the man who loves you.”
“No . . . no . . . because it is alone. Wandering, wandering, and not because of its own fault. If it could have waited . . . to be baptized, I would have asked God . . .” Flame made a little fragile wailing sound, infinitely pathetic.
“Foolish little child!” The padre’s voice was very quiet and gentle, and full of kindness. “Foolish little child! You’ve got it all wrong, Flame. God is Love! Do you understand what I say? Love!”
“Love is Hughie,” said Flame, and the white eyelids sank a little lower over the dark circles under them.
“Sahib!” Miriam’s old eyes were on the tiny wandering fingers.
The padre’s gesture was imperative, and the old woman sank back crouching on to her heels again. “Love is Hughie,” he said, and he spoke very slowly and clearly. “Love is Hughie; I know it is, Flame. But it is something else as well. Love is God—God Who is here beside you now. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” said Flame, and very slowly she opened her eyes again.
“Well then, listen. Just take hold of my hand and listen. God is here, and He wants you to stay here too. He will take care of your baby—far, far better than you could.”
“Not punish it?” Flame’s eyes were fixed very dimly on the clear ones looking into hers.
The padre laughed. Such a little gentle, amused laugh. “Flame,” he said. “God is Love. You didn’t understand—Love! How could Love do anything unjust and cruel like that? You couldn’t, I couldn’t. . . .”
“Hughie couldn’t!” and the white lips suddenly wavered a little upwards.
“No; well then, if Hughie couldn’t . . .” and then the padre suddenly stopped speaking, because Flame’s eyes were wider open and staring past him.
“Is that God just behind you?” she asked, and there was a flood of returning life in her voice.
“Yes,” said the padre, and he let his head drop quietly down into the blankets.
“I like the look of Him,” Flame sighed comfortably. “Look, Miriam, another Sahib, just there behind this one. Lord, take hold of my hand,” and Flame turned quietly on to her side.
And who shall say that old Miriam had not seen rightly when she fell on her face on the matting, her old arms flung out wide over her head. Someone was stooping over the narrow bed: Someone with eyes looking straight out of the dark verandah door, Someone who spoke—“Get thee behind Me”; when Miriam told the whole story to Simon, the chuprassie, she said that she had actually heard the words.
And Simon was quite inclined to believe it. For the native, when he is left to himself, is a very simple, trusting soul, and lives very near to God and to the heart of things.
Grey dawn, and a babel of awakening crows in the big banyan-trees: Tony Seymour moving very quietly about his dressing-table. “Yes, put it down there,” he signed to Ishmael Khan, who stood with the brass shaving-mug full of water, held carefully in a duster.
“Attcha, sahib!” Ishmael Khan cleared a little space on the disordered dressing-table, retrieved a couple of pairs of scattered shoes, and went out.
Tony Seymour sighed as he began to lather his chin. This was being darned unpleasant—no doubt about it. Right, of course, look at it how you would, but still . . . and Tony went on with his dressing.
And as he went on with his dressing, he lived it all over again in his mind. The awful strained tenseness of the last week. For one evening Hugh had come to him as he lay stretched in a long chair out under the stars, and had told him that he was going to leave the station almost at once.
“But what about Miss Peterson?” Tony had got quietly up, his smouldering cheroot held between his thumb and forefinger.
“She stays with Dr. Lane for the present.” Hugh had a dreadful bleached pallor on his face, and in deepest pity the tall Sapper averted his eyes.
“But . . .”
And then Hugh had interrupted in a sort of fierce undertone. “Don’t, Seymour,” he said; “there is no question about it. It’s the right thing to do—I know it now. And if it kills me—well, I have asked for it. She is young—and after a bit . . .” and then Hugh had broken down, and as Tony moved again between his dressing-table and wash-hand-stand, his own eyes stung again with tears. “Why couldn’t that cursed creature at home die!” he thought as he adjusted his tie carefully to the collar. Then there had been that one wild hope of the foreign telegram, too. Hugh had brought it to him, shaking, and Tony had torn the narrow white Eastern Telegraph envelope across in a sudden gust of joyful expectation. But it had only been some futile query from Hugh’s publisher. “Oh, my sainted aunt! I can’t stand much more of it.” Tony spoke in a resentful undertone, as, after reaching up for his soft hat—5 a.m., no need for a topi yet— he tiptoed through the big bedroom in which Ann still lay sleeping. Poor Ann! who had cried herself to sleep the night before.
“Up to the very last I thought it was going to be like Abraham and Isaac,” she sobbed, “and now you see, it isn’t. There isn’t any more time now: I think God is very cruel,” and Ann had refused to be comforted.
And although Tony had never had any hope of it being like Abraham and Isaac, even he felt uncommonly wretched as he met the eyes of the man already out and waiting on the verandah.
“Hallo!” Hugh’s face was grey.
“Hallo!” but after the stupid interjection Tony Seymour turned away, “I’ll just get along to the garage,” he said, and he walked quickly down the two steps that led from the verandah into the compound. “Oh, my God, much more of this I can’t stand!” he said to himself as he strode along, his hands dug deep into his pockets.
And mercifully he did not have to: Ann had been right. For as he stood stooping over the open bonnet of the car—some little adjustment of the wiring needed —Hugh was beside him again. “Open it: I can’t!” he said hoarsely, and he thrust the crumpled envelope into the jumble of wires and tappets.
Tony withdrew an oily hand with deliberation. “I don’t suppose it’s anything, Keymer,” he said quietly; “we always get a stack of telegrams here: let’s come to the light . . .” But as he walked to the door of the garage, his own hands were shaking. Dash the cup of hope again from this man’s lips, in this his most extreme hour of anguish, he could not. What cursed fool had had the imbecility to send an official wire at this hour of the morning? And then he tore the narrow white envelope across, and gradually the evilly written words straightened themselves out in front of his eyes, and he walked back again:
“Keymer!” he said. “It is—it’s your—your wife. She’s—Keymer—it’s freedom.”
Late afternoon this time, and rain. Rain blurring the windows of the big car with its wild whipping. Rain that formed big blobs like tears, and ran down the bevelled sheets and lost themselves in the grooving.
“Oh, how it’s simply deluging!” Flame shivered.
“Never mind, dear”—Hugh held the small hand a little tighter.
“Yes, I know . . . but it’s a sort of omen. If Nigel isn’t kind to you . . . Hughie!” Flame’s mouth was set in a little straight line.
“He will be.” Hugh Keymer spoke very quietly and certainly, for Flame must never know the torment of apprehension that was turning him cold and sick. To confront Flame’s brother . . . the thought was almost more than he could stand.
“But supposing he isn’t!” and then the car turned in at the great gate, and began to creep slowly upwards, and Flame had her face pressed against the windowpane. “Hughie, it’s just the same!” she flung round and buried her face in the rough overcoat sleeve.
And then the car crept slowly to a standstill under the wide stone porch and stood there throbbing; and there was Waterton—Waterton with Robert behind him, coming down the shallow steps. Waterton, with just the same old mastiff face with shaking jowls, for the old butler was making no attempt to conceal the tears that were streaming down his face. His little lamb back again—and with a husband too! for Waterton had been kept in outer darkness as to the events of the past year.
“Where is Nigel?” Flame had her hand gripped in the old butler’s.
“In the library, Miss Flame.” Waterton was looking over the little fur cap up into the face that towered above it. A good face that . . . his darling had chosen well.
“No; let me go in first, darling.”
Hugh had taken off his hat and was surrendering his overcoat to the attentive Robert. “No, you wait here, Flame. Waterton, just show me which is the library, will you, please?”
“Certainly, sir,” and the two disappeared quietly down the long flagged hall. “Mr. Keymer, Sir Nigel!” Waterton generally called Nigel “Master Nigel,” but this was being an occasion.
Hugh stood with his back to the closed door, and faced the young figure standing with his hands nervously gripped behind him. Nigel had in imagination rehearsed this scene many times. The man who had practically betrayed his sister—he would say. . . . And then the words died on his lips as through the lately opened door the wintry smell of chrysanthemums crept in. Chrysanthemums, and another day in late autumn. Chrysanthemums—the smell of them mingling with another smell—the smell of fire. Fire—and a small clawing body being drawn whimpering down his face. Nigel, choking, was across the polished boards in a flurry of young welcoming feet:
“Keymer, I say—I’m awfully glad! . . .” he stammered.