Ships of Youth

A Study of Marriage in Modern India

To Bird
For the Best of Reasons
From
S. M. D.

Note on Pronunciation of Names and Places

I append a brief guide for pronouncing certain Indian names that occur in this book.

Indian vowel sounds are as follows:—

Author’s Note

As the events of my story are laid in Northern India, 1928-1929, they include certain actual events of that period; but my characters bear no relation to any of the men concerned. Also, in the interests of actuality, every Indian episode in the book is founded on fact. One of these bears a curious resemblance to an episode in Major Yeats-Brown’s Autobiography; but as it was written before I read that book and was vital to my story, I have left it unchanged.

All Indian expressions of opinion are no less actual; as it seemed to me that only so would they possess any real interest value. Allusions to Soviet activity are also based not on rumour, but on fact; though the episode in pursuit of a few particular men is fictitious. For my book, though primarily a study of marriage in Anglo-Indian conditions, aims at being a true presentment of life on the North-West Border at that time.

India of to-day—or indeed of any day—is too great and complex a theme to be used merely as an effective back-cloth. It seems to me incumbent on all who use it for imaginary ends, to make even a partial presentment of its people and conditions as true in essence as any imaginary picture, based on artistic selection, can claim to be. That, at least, has been my own guiding principle in every Anglo-Indian novel I have written.

Maud Diver

Book One — Still Waters

Chapter 1.

The ships of youth go sailing,
Close-hauled on the edge of the wind,
With all adventure before them
And only the old behind.

— Humbert Wolfe

They were married from the Gulmarg Residency in the early summer of 1928—Captain Lawrence Desmond of the Punjab Cavalry and Eve Challoner, daughter of Colonel Ian Challoner, who had served India well and died in harness. It was a very simple wedding—by order: no elaborate service, no large gathering afterwards at the Residency. Both would sooner have been married imperceptibly—as Eve expressed it—with none present save the necessary witnesses to a transaction they regarded as their own very private affair. But India still remains, more or less, a land of open doors: a wedding still remains a legitimate occasion for smart frocks, champagne and a vicarious thrill.

On this occasion, in particular, Gulmarg had felt entitled to a full-dress Residency function, as none knew better than the large and genial Resident, Colonel Havelock Thorne, C.S.I. For in March—after years of intermittent wooing—he had married Vanessa Vane who was virtually Eve’s mother by adoption. It was he who would give away the bride; and there were many close friends who would consider themselves privileged to be present.

Foremost among the privileged was Sir Vincent Leigh, Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province—whom Eve was depriving of a secretary, almost regarded as a son—and Lady Leigh, herself a Desmond. Sir Vincent had made a point of coming over from his summer headquarters at Nathia Gully with his wife and their second daughter Margaret, a clever, diffident girl of eighteen, too shy to relish the conspicuous role of solitary bridesmaid, which she had been invited to fill.

Eve herself had voted for ‘no body guard’ except her six-year-old page, Peter de Cray; and had flatly refused to be a ‘show bride.’

She would be married in a simple frock and hat—her favourite lily of the valley green. She would have no important bouquet, only a modest bunch of lilies.

‘So why fuss about a bridesmaid?’ she argued it out with Vanessa. ‘I wouldn’t even want to borrow her handkerchief! Nobody weeps at weddings now.’

‘Don’t they?’

It was lightly spoken, but the lurking implication caught at Eve’s heart; and Vanessa Thorne briskly reverted to the bridesmaid.

‘It’s dastúr,’¹ she insisted: and Eve made a face at dastúr—a word associated with the conventional mother from whom she had fled fifteen months ago.

Vanessa understood all that. She knew there was no vestige of pose about Eve’s eternal quarrel with the conventions, knew her troublesome shyness for a heritage from her Scots father, the one man whom Vanessa Thorne had passionately loved.

Eight years after his death, she loved him still; yet—she had married Havelock Thorne. There had been no question of deceiving herself or him: but that was their own affair. This was Eve’s affair—not to mention Lance, who was no cipher. They should have it their own way, up to a point. Lance had secured, as best man, young Dick Molony of the E.A.F.; his chief friend John Lynch, having unaccountably refused. And the Leighs would appreciate a request for Margaret. So Vanessa, knowing her Eve, put in a plea for Dick—a cheerful youth, frankly and harmlessly envious of Lance.

‘Dick will feel defrauded,’ she tactfully urged, ‘if you don’t supply him with a charmer for the occasion.’

Eve looked demure.

‘He’s threatening to come with crêpe round his arm, because it’s Lance’s funeral—and he thinks it ought to be his.’

‘Give him Margaret to distract his attention from the funeral! They’ll both want to be kissing someone besides the bride. It’s their immemorial right.’

‘Then I daren’t deprive them!’—Eve tried to screw up a nose not fashioned that way. ‘Men have so few rights left. They’re welcome to kiss anyone they please—except the bride. I’ve warned Lance. I shall only kiss Peter my page.’

‘Peter my page’ was a shock-headed imp to whom Eve had played nursery governess on her headlong voyage to India. She had kept in touch with him and his mother, chiefly on account of the boy, who returned her affection with interest. They were still at Murree, where Major de Cray had an appointment; and Mrs de Cray, a lively lady, had snatched at the chance of a respite from wifely duties that were no longer impulses of the heart. A hill station appointment had its drawbacks, from her point of view; and having no hot weather to flee from, she had manoeuvred six weeks in Gulmarg, on the score of Eve’s particular wish to have Peter for her page. Eve Challoner of the Kashmir Residency was implicitly in a different social status from the stray girl who had offered Mrs de Cray her services as nursemaid in exchange for a second class passage to India. If she wanted Peter for her page, she must not be disappointed: but Mrs de Cray must be there to see.

She was there to see, conspicuously smart, sitting behind Colonel Thorne’s party, and keeping an eye on her small son, at the altar-rails, looking very shy and important in his velvet suit of spring green. Too well she knew that, under the shyness, his mischievous brain might prompt him to any devilry that would flash out and cover her with confusion.

As for Peter, he never gave her a thought. Awed by the queer proceedings in which he was taking part, he kept his round blue eyes fixed on Eve, who was linked in his mind with a jumble of recollections labelled ‘boardship.’ There she had been his peculiar property, always kind and ready for larks—unless he was a bad boy. Then she had basely deserted him; and he had been turned over to an excitable person in spectacles; had persistently tormented her in the hope that, if he worried her enough, she would depart.

She had, at last, departed; and when Eve asked him to Gulmarg, he did not doubt that she would return with them to Murree. There had been ‘larks’ at bedtime. She had told him his favourite tale of the Cat with Nine Lives. But he was realising now, with dismal certainty, that she was not coming back to Murree. Because of his bitter disappointment he had to swallow a hard lump in his throat: and his thin little hands fiercely clutched the gloves she had given him to hold. He knew she was being married, and he vaguely resented it. On board ship she had promised to be Mrs Peter——

‘Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband?’ asked the deep voice behind the railings.

That blunt question even Peter understood. With sudden courage he caught at a drooping fragment of her skirt.

‘But, Eve, you did say——’

The man raised a warning finger. ‘Hush!’ he commanded.

Eve never moved: and the question was repeated, with a good deal more besides.

Then Eve said in a soft clear voice, ‘I will.’

For Peter that settled the matter. When Eve said she would, she usually did. To comfort himself he cautiously rumbled in his coat pocket for a precious sticky sweet, while Eve and the man carried on a murmured conversation, which conveyed nothing to him beyond the impressive fact that they were talking in church, which you must never do, except out of the prayer-book when all the others were doing it too.

Then Captain Desmond began; and Peter, weary of well-doing, yawned expansively, forgetting to put up his hand. In the very middle of his yawn, he was discovered by the nice man, with red hair and wings on his uniform, who grinned at catching Peter out, and whisked a ring out of his pocket for Captain Desmond to put on Eve’s finger. That little interlude of the smile and the ring cheered Peter considerably; but he hoped this dull game of getting married would soon be over.

At last the talking ceased: and as they all moved away, Peter looked up at Eve, holding out the gloves, hoping she would speak. But she only smiled and shook her head; and he felt like crying. Perhaps he looked like it. For suddenly she put her ring hand round his shoulder; and stooping, she kissed him, there before them all, whispering in his ear, ‘Don’t cry to-day, my monkey. Eve’s terribly happy.’

Proud and excited, he trotted behind her into the vestry, untroubled by the knowledge that her first kiss, as Mrs Lance Desmond, had been given to the wrong person.

Inside the vestry there was more kissing; and the women said kind things to Peter in a babyish voice as if they didn’t know he was six. But Captain Desmond patted his shoulder and called him ‘old chap’ which restored his self-respect.

When the nice man tweaked his hair and said, ‘What was the just impediment, sonny?’ Peter was baffled completely; but Captain Desmond answered over his head, ‘No fishing, Dick! He was jealous of my luck. That’s all.’

The nice man made a funny face. ‘Not the only one afflicted that way.’

And as they moved off, Peter wondered who else was ‘flicked’ that way? And how did Captain Desmond know?

Desmond himself, making important entries in the vestry book, had forgotten all about Peter. And while Eve stood behind him, Vanessa Thorne slipped a hand under her elbow.

She was a tall woman of singular grace and charm, who looked nearer thirty-five than forty-two; and she said in an undertone: ‘Bad child, kissing the wrong man first!’

The superstitious streak in Eve was troubled. ‘ Oh, I didn’t mean to. But he looked so pathetic, I did it before I thought.’

‘The story of Eve in a nutshell! You’ll still act first and think afterwards, when you’re eighty. It’s not a safe habit.’

‘I’m not a safe person. Poor Lance!’

Vanessa’s fingers pressed the girl’s thin arm.

‘He’ll worry through. I’m not pitying Lance to-day.’

Desmond turning from the table, caught the last words.

‘You’d better not,’ he said, his low voice charged with feeling. ‘Come and put it on record—Eve Desmond, your good deed!’

He stood very close to her while she ‘put it on record’; and undetected, his fingers closed on her left hand. He had taken her at her word, and refrained from the bridal kiss in public. Peter was welcome; so was Dick. He preferred to wait. With all his impatience and quick ways he had an unexpected capacity for waiting rather than snatching, even when desire was keen.

‘I am now a married woman,’ she told herself firmly—and did not believe it in the least. Lance was probably believing it with all his might.

But Lance Desmond—untroubled by the self who looks on—was simply absorbed in the near view of Eve’s serious profile, as she leaned over the book, writing the name she loved for the last time: the decided nose, the sensitive lips, the clear skin of her cheek and throat, browned by the healthy outdoor life of Kashmir. And the pressure of her cool clinging fingers stirred the natural man’s thrill of possession: ‘I’ve got her. She’s mine.’

Then she stood up and smiled at him; the vestry door swung open—and the exalted moment passed. They were merely two intrepid young people—rash enough to have faith in themselves and each other—facing their little world as man and wife.

The shared emotion, lifting them above shyness, so dazzled them that they were hardly aware of the crowded pews on either hand: but Eve though dazzled, was not blinded. She was consciously shutting out those interested minds—trespassers on her private and profound sense of all that they two were claiming and undertaking, in order to belong to one another and not to be ‘afraid with any amazement,’ whatever might happen. Always that blend of beauty and terror in the great moments of life. And, rightly viewed, this was one of them, this practical affair of getting married: this venture of faith, so full of fine and tragic possibilities, this love of man and woman, bearing within it seeds of life and seeds of death. . . .

Her wandering thoughts had carried her miles away from kind, intrusive people. And here was the church door.

Outside the porch lay Bijli—Lance’s Afghan greyhound; and at sight of the pair he sprang up, leaping on his master. Someone flung a handful of rice. The air was full of rose petals and confetti, and Peter shrieked with glee.

Again Eve said to herself, ‘I’m married.’ But she did not believe it—yet.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The cake and champagne interlude was mercifully brief. Sir Vincent Leigh, a shy man, was shyer than ever on so personal an occasion. In a dozen words he wished them health and happiness: then there was the drawn sword poised above the cake and Peter, lifted by Lance, to help cut the first slice. There was Mrs de Cray kissing Eve, with a whispered warning—‘If you want to bring it off, my dear, don’t expect too much, don’t give too much, and don’t ever let him guess how much you care.’

Eve’s amused smile was non-committal: but her clear eyes dwelt upon the woman who had failed to bring it off—perhaps on account of those self-regarding negatives. She would create her own muddles and ecstasies in her own way—the only way that counts in art or life.

They were all cheering now, led by Dick Molony, who opened the door for her, when escape was possible. She could only smile her thanks and wave her hand with its gleaming rings, as he closed it behind her.

Outside, she stood still, and drew a steadying breath. She wanted to get away from everyone but Lance; to ride and ride till they reached the first rest house on the road to Sonamarg, whither their shabby boxes and bundles had gone on before. Then—the long leisurely trek through Ladāk to Leh—a dream of very young days come true. But more than all—in that brief pause between two lives—she wanted Vanessa. She would always want Vanessa. Neither years nor absence could impair the love grafted in their hearts by her vanished father. And because her gain would be Vanessa’s loss, she must not weep when it came to good-bye.

She was up in her own little room now, stripping off the green frock, pulling on her riding breeches that whisked her back into Eve of every day. Her fanciful brain never ceased from marvelling at the magic effect of clothes: the fascination they exercised, the associations they enshrined.

The door opened, and there was Vanessa, looking younger than ever in her flowered blue and mauve gown.

Eve, in shirt and breeches, sprang forward; and, as they kissed, she whispered: ‘Darling Vinessa, I can’t bear to leave you.’

‘Leave me?’ Vanessa said in a schooled voice. ‘In two months I’ll be seeing you again.’

Eve caught her breath, realising . . .

‘I’m rather terrified at my own good luck. And I’m still more terrified—for Lance. Such a scaramouche as I am!’

Vanessa’s arm tightened round her thin figure.

‘Happiness makes cowards of us all,’ she said, not in the tone of one so afflicted. ‘Scaramouche you are; but you’ll be a bad bungler if you don’t make a fine thing of it—with Lance.’

Eve pensively twisted her new ring.

‘That amounts to a challenge. I must beware! And especially I mustn’t bungle his precious career. Aunt Thea thinks I’ve done it already. I saw his murdered career in her eye when she kissed me in the vestry! I know she loves me. But she disapproves . . .’

‘Eve, don’t talk nonsense,’ Vanessa countered sharply, though she knew it was not altogether nonsense. Thea Leigh loved her nephew as a son, partly because he had lost his mother, partly for his remarkable likeness to her father—the most distinguished Desmond of them all. Gifted, ambitious, with the Border tradition in his blood, and the Chief Commissioner for his uncle, his future had seemed assured. Yet here he was, at six and twenty, shouldering the responsibilities of marriage. Thea’s concern was natural enough. But no word of that to Eve in her bridal mood.

So Vanessa said sternly, ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ but her kiss said other things. ‘Uncle Vinx and I know that Lance is a very wise person. So don’t fret about that you lucky child; getting your real right man straight away.’

The ache in her voice stirred an answering ache in Eve.

‘And you—didn’t ever,’ she whispered, greatly daring.

‘No. I’ve done it twice—and I didn’t ever,’ Vanessa confirmed the tragic statement. ‘Some of us are fated.’

And Eve, emboldened by her new estate, looked searchingly into the eyes of the older woman, who had so loved, so suffered—and so dared.

‘Darling Vinessa, may I say it?’ she lucidly asked: and Vanessa’s smile told her that she knew what was coming.

‘You may say anything—to-day.’

‘And you’ll answer true?’

‘As near as may be!’

‘Well, I terribly want to feel sure that you are happy now—with Havelock. Anyone can tell he is.’

Vanessa smiled and sighed. ‘Yes, darling, I’m happy—if not in the full sense that you mean. In that sense, how many of us are really happy, except in patches? I’ve done what I vowed I never would do, in art or life; I’ve accepted the second best. And I mean to make a success of it.’

Eve looked pensive again. The true answer left her vaguely troubled. ‘You are a wonder. But it sounds—rather a strain.’

‘It’s less of a strain, in many ways, than the ups and downs of being madly in love. Marriage isn’t only a state of heart, Eve, it’s a state of mind and a state of life. I study Havelock as few young wives study the adored first-best. They’re too busy making demands on him. And I find it a fascinating job. It needs intelligence and imagination and a disciplined heart. At least I can give him something genuine; and I can never lose my music. That’s the truth—as near as may be.’

No hint of reservation now in words or tone: and Eve said softly, ‘If you see it all that way, it’s a fine thing to do. I did hate it at first—because of Daddy. But if he sees why you’ve done it, I think he must be glad.’

‘I’m sure of it; or I would never have ventured. He loved Havelock; and that counted with me.’ They spoke of him, between themselves, as simply and naturally as if he were still alive and in the house with them. For Vanessa, at times, he was too sensibly present in this particular house where she had known and loved him. But sad thoughts were not for to-day.

Turning briskly she lifted Eve’s habit skirt from the bed.

‘Whisk into this, darling. And remember—all’s well with me. Lance will be getting impatient. Hasn’t he kissed you yet?’

‘No. He’s waiting.’

‘Exemplary young man!’

‘Oh, he’s not that, or I wouldn’t be loving him to distraction.’

Vanessa settled her into the coat with a small hug.

‘Well, we’ll say he’s a Sahib. So get on with your loving. And don’t feel afraid when things calm down. Life can’t be lived at boiling point. But you’ll keep it up longer than most.’

‘I mean to. Watch me!’ Suddenly her eyes clouded. ‘But, you darling angel, you won’t be there to watch. And you’ve been absolutely in it all the time.’

‘I can be in it still. It rests with you two.’

Eve nodded. ‘Nothing can separate us really—because of Daddy,’ she said in a hushed voice.

And again they kissed; both thinking, at that moment, less of the men they had won than of the vanished man, whose spirit still informed and coloured their lives.

Then Eve disengaged herself and ran lightly downstairs. She had come perilously near to needing a handkerchief after all.

Chapter 2

Lovers are not themselves; they are more, they are all;
For them are past and future spread together,
Like a green landscape lit by golden weather . . .
— Gerald Gould

Twenty minutes later Vanessa Thorne stood alone outside the Residency, watching the gallant pair ride off together. Sir Vincent and his wife had gone indoors. Havelock, lingering beside her, had been called away by an urgent telephone message from his Maharajah’s Prime Minister; and she reproached herself for the relief it was to be without him at this poignant moment of parting.

She had told Eve the truth, so far as it ever can be told of any close human relation; but there remains always a deeper truth within the truth—and that was her own affair. Body and life and the half of her heart she had given to Havelock Thorne: but her lonely spirit still dwelt apart; still belonged to the man who had awakened it; and to-day he was too much with her, sharing the ache of loss, the prick of anxiety as to how it would be with Eve during those critical early years of marriage: never more critical than in the rare unions that spring from first love. For in first love, with its beautiful blindness, its inexperience, its fervours and fallacies, much is given and much required. Impossible for any young inexperienced husband to realise how far he is responsible for the fair or false start in life’s finest adventure.

In. the past year, Vanessa had grown to love Lance Desmond only second to Eve: and her natural concern implied no distrust of him, no cynical doubt as to the staying power of married love—if the two were endued with just sufficient variousness to keep them in some sense new and strange to each other. Only so could their love remain vital and durable—a durability rooted in change. For love, that works many miracles, is by nature dynamic; it cannot remain static—while it lives. Eve, so young and gifted, so plastic yet sharply individual, must either grow towards her husband’s more firmly moulded character, or grow away from him, along the lines of her own zig-zag temperament. For her gift of music was no mere talent, that could be buried in a napkin at love’s bidding. It was that fine uncomfortable thing, a spark of creative genius.

Much depended on their decision as regards children—that crux of early marriage in India; much on these two months that they had chosen to spend in the wilds of Ladāk: an adventurous honeymoon congenial to both. Lance was a fine fellow, with a clean record and little experience of girls or women. He had told her so once, with the engaging frankness of modern youth; and he had probably told Eve also. But he was a man, and ardently in love. Would he demand too much of Eve before she had schooled her shy spirit to the new necessities? If he found her difficult or unpractical (and she was often both) would he have patience with her? Patience was not his strong point . . .

As if her thoughts had reached them, they halted—at the last curve of the path. Turning in their saddles, they smiled and waved to her. She also smiled and waved, and felt annoyed because tears blurred her last sight of them.

Then they rode on round the corner. Trees hid them from view. They were gone: and suddenly her world seemed empty. A small cloud slipped across the sun: a chill ran along her nerves—a ghostly whisper of the fear and sadness that lurk at the core of all intense love. For the past year her life and thoughts had been mainly centred on those two. Now they were going on a far journey; and anything might happen. . . .

She started perceptibly. Someone had touched her shoulder.

‘Ian——?’ The foolish thought sprang—not for the first time. It was Havelock, of course, his presence mutely reproaching her for a thought he would mercifully never guess.

‘Well—they’ve gone, have they?’ he said superfluously.

‘Yes. They’ve gone.’

The blank note in her voice moved him to put an arm round her shoulder. She could feel the warmth of his heavy hand through her silk sleeve; but he did not kiss her. And the fine tact of the omission, at that moment, stirred her more deeply than the caress.

‘Don’t be alarmed for your Eve,’ he said, guessing her thought. ‘That’s a fine boy. He has himself in hand.’

‘I’m not alarmed,’ she reassured herself rather than him. ‘Let’s go in, dear. It’s been a strain: and I’m tired.’ She leaned lightly against him. ‘Thea suggested music.’

Together they went into that house of many memories—now her home, one of the most English homes in all India.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And away on the road to Sonamarg, the adventurous pair broke first into a trot, then into a canter, Eve leading and setting the pace.

The strong sun of early afternoon was tempered by a breeze from the snows that quickened the exhilaration of escape from all those friendly intruders. Though a large piece of Eve’s heart remained with Vanessa, though Lance loved Sir Vincent better than his father, and Thea Leigh only second to his vanished mother, nothing and no one mattered urgently to-day outside themselves. It was their inalienable right, this brief and blissful estrangement from the world that too soon would renew its hold on them, and would never so completely loosen that hold again.

On and on—Eve still leading—they cantered along the narrow path where two could not easily ride abreast; and the double hoof-beats, in the silence of hill and valley, set excitement crackling like electric sparks in her brain; excitement of a new kind, faintly tinged with fear. Fear of Lance? Impossible. Her utter confidence in him was the corner-stone of her love. Yet here she was, vaguely alarmed at being quite alone with the dear familiar man, because a few terribly explicit sentences had conjured him into that unreal abstraction—her husband. What then? She was no bridling, blushing Victorian miss. She was a sensible modern girl; very shy and prickly none the less, where her deepest emotions were involved. And this was his moment. She must think of him.

She thought of him hard, still cantering on through the Mid-summer loveliness of Kashmir—forest and meadows and flowers without end. The wonder of these high valleys, the glory of going on and the song in her own heart shamed her fanciful fears.

Her old self, high on the crest of a wave, said sternly to her new quivering self, ‘Eve Desmond, don’t be a fool!’ She said it just above her breath: and after that she felt better.

As soon as the path widened a little, she slackened to a trot, to a walk: and Lance promptly edged up alongside, very close, because there was not much room between her and the railings.

If he guessed at her inner disturbance, he gave no sign. He only smiled at her with a sort of intoxicated happiness in his eyes. Shifting the reins to his right hand, he flung out his left and caught her fingers hard.

‘Well—we’ve done it now,’ he triumphed, just as he had triumphed after their first kiss in the Residency garden a year ago: and all that was brave and adventurous in her went out to meet his look and touch.

‘Not frightened?’ he asked.

‘Not frightened,’ she answered with perfect truth still on her crest of a wave. ‘Because—it’s you.’

That lit up the little gold flecks in his hazel-grey eyes. It was the one assurance he needed just then.

‘Good. I call a halt here.’

Eve halted, looking calmer than she felt. The inner pressure of her own rising emotion told her what was coming. But Lance had his own quaint way of doing even the most obvious things.

‘I think it’s about time I was allowed to kiss my wife,’ he announced in a practical voice, using those very new words as casually as if he had been using them for twenty years at least.

Eve laughed at that; and her laughter cleared the air.

‘You’ve been kept waiting a terrible time, haven’t you?’

‘A terrible time,’ he gravely agreed. ‘Seems an eternity since we said we would, by those brass railings; and that little devil Peter tried to queer my pitch.’

‘Darling Peter,’ Eve sentimentally murmured. ‘The only one who couldn’t witness my departure dry-eyed.’

‘The dry-eyed were feeling it ten times as much.’

She flung him a provocative smile. ‘Oh, aren’t you clever!’

‘Too clever to live; as you’ll soon discover to your cost. Anyhow, I won’t wait a minute longer. I’m going to kiss you this instant—on horse-back.’

‘No, no,’ she protested: and he stared nonplussed.

‘Why not then? ’Tisn’t illegal! Shahzada won’t mind.’

He pressed closer: but she put out a hand warding him off.

‘No, Lance—please. I mind.’

The note of alarm in her voice checked, him instantly.

‘You darling girl—what is it?’

His hand closed firmly on hers: yet still she shrank from the reminder that there had been another—though not rightly loved.

She spoke very low, looking down at the hand that covered her own. ‘It’s only—Angus did. Silly of me.’

‘If it was his way, it won’t be my way. So down you come.’

Deliberately he dismounted, lifted her out of the saddle and took her in his arms.

No fear now in her uprush of emotion, confused yet profound. Her heart, pressed hard against his, glowed like a risen sun, shedding tides of warmth all through her body, as the actual sun, beating on her closed lids, filled her brain with a dazzle of red light.

For one whirling moment, life and time stood still. But just beyond their moment lurked the penalties, the delights and distractions of all the veiled days to be.

At last, with a quick-drawn breath, he released her, smiling at her, holding her arms.

‘Now you know,’ he said simply. ‘I’m yours.’

‘Yes,’ she answered still shaken by their mutual fervour. ‘Now I know.’

And her detached self—never quite submerged—drew attention to the fact that Angus would have said, ‘You’re mine’: a trifling reversal of pronouns that set the two men poles apart. Her true self—moving in a dream all day—was fully awake at last: and as they stood, hands linked, he looked straight into her eyes—a long searching look, more intimate than any clasp or kiss.

After that look, that unadorned avowal, Eve no longer needed to tell herself she was married. Now she knew: Lance, and something that was more than Lance—something he stood for—would hold her always near or far, even if she could see herself ever wanting to break away from it, from him.

Chapter 3

Whom does love concern save the lover and the beloved? Yet its impact deluges a hundred shores.
— E. M. Forster

In the Residency that evening they were only five at dinner; themselves and the Leighs. Though they drank champagne, their talk lacked sparkle, lacking Lance and Eve. All were afflicted, more or less, by the after sense of flatness that follows on an eventful day.

Lady Leigh—a beautiful woman, her squirrel-brown hair hardly touched with grey—was thinking of Lance, of the blank that his absence would leave in Vincent’s study and in her own home life. Vanessa, inevitably, was thinking of Eve, who smiled at her with Ian’s eyes and touched her with Ian’s hands; Eve, with her impish humour and her father’s undernote of melancholy, gone so soon out of her keeping.

Margaret Leigh—shy and studious like her father—was thinking chiefly of herself, and incidentally commiserating Eve. Only twenty—and no more personal independence. For Margaret, marriage was a terrifying prospect; and in India there were far too many young men. That service! At all events, it had fortified her private resolve not to say ‘I will’ to anything but her own secret purposes.

She contributed little to the fitful talk that was only saved from extinction by Havelock Thorne and Thea Leigh. None of them were sorry when Mrs Thorne made a move: but the two men, left alone, lingered over their coffee and cigars.

They found one another congenial company, as is often the case with men who have few qualities in common: the one genial, forthright and intelligent; the other a man of intellect, reserved and diffident; the main link between them their keen interest in the India both had served for more than five and twenty years. That India, thanks to them and their kind, was troubled with growing pains, with an awakening sense of nationality among the politically-minded, who, in all good faith, were eager to clap on the roof—vaguely termed ‘Dominion Status’—before the foundations of unity had been laid; while the dark forces of disruption were engineering a convulsion beside which the Russian upheaval would look like a storm in a tea-cup.

Both men had been early transferred from the Army into India’s finest service known as the ‘Political’; a service responsible for that seeming anomaly, the soldier-civilian. Sir Vincent wounded in the Tirah campaign, had lost his left leg from the knee; a loss that had proved ultimate gain. For at fifty-one, instead of commanding a Regiment or Brigade, he was governing the whole North-West Frontier Province.

Havelock Thorne had looked to Political service mainly for better pay and a wider knowledge of the country under its own rulers. A sound, if not a brilliant brain, had led him—by way of Rajputana and Indore—to Kashmir; and there, eight years ago—as Assistant Resident to Ian Challoner—he had fallen under the spell of Vanessa Vane, and had struck his flag at sight. It was the strangest and strongest thing in life, that lightning stroke of passionate love; a madness that might vanish in a few weeks—and leave a man wondering, ‘Why the devil——?’—or a glory that might transfigure the rest of his life. Havelock Thorne was no anchorite; and at the time he would not have believed that, for eight years, his vain desire would continue to plague him; that at last he would return to Kashmir and win her—up to a point. For he recognised his partial success more clearly than she knew. But being an optimist in the grain, he looked for nothing short of the best—in time. This wedding of Eve’s concerned him chiefly as a possible turning point in his own married life. Would loss of the child—so like her father in a dozen ways—draw Vanessa nearer to himself? That was his carefully hidden hope.

But always, beyond his important personal concerns, loomed the vast background of Kashmir, for which he felt additionally responsible while his Maharajah was taking a holiday in Europe. At the moment, his official brain was a good deal concerned with the possible misbehaviour of a far off lake in the Karakoram range, seventeen thousand feet up. A vast glacier, imperceptibly sliding down from greater heights, had for some years been blocking up the Shayok river, checking the yearly downrush of melted snow, and gradually forming a deep lake of no particular interest to anyone but explorers—so long as the ice-barrier held. But let the waters rise, or the barrier splinter, and seven hundred million tons of water would come thundering down towards India, demolishing all in its path.

News had lately come through that, as the snows melted, the waters were rising; and he was sending Captain Kaye Lenox—his Assistant Resident at Leh—up to that lonely region to find out what devilry the lake and the glacier were planning between them. Thorne had not yet spoken of it to Leigh, who would be interested. To-night he was rather more silent than usual: worrying perhaps, over the loss of his Private Secretary. The wedding had hit him and Vanessa hard. It was apt to cut two ways, this risky and rapturous business of mating. For years these young things monopolised one’s heart and one’s interest. Then some other young thing beckoned—and good-bye to all that. But he would wager that those years of possession were worth the pang. Was there a chance, even at this late hour, for himself and Vanessa——?

The question so deeply moved him that he took out his pipe and turned to his friend.

‘A convivial pair we are!’

The brooding look vanished from Sir Vincent’s face.

‘I’m enjoying it,’ he said; and Thorne chuckled.

‘Same here. Weddings are a bit exhausting.’ He paused, guessing the other’s thoughts. ‘Haven’t you hit on a hopeful successor to Lance?’

‘No, Thea’s nobly filling the blank; but I’m hard to please.’

He said no more. The least hint of airing a grievance was distasteful to him.

‘Why not keep the boy on, married or not?’

Leigh sighed.

‘Oh, I’ve sat in committee on all that—a committee of one! It’s odd how disunited a committee of one can be. But an independent job for Lance would be fairer to them both. He’ll do very well as A.C.² at Kohat. Of course I’d ear-marked him for Chitral.’

‘Eve would have loved that—if permitted. The ban on wives across the Border comes hard on the right sort.’

Sir Vincent smiled, perceiving his drift. ‘India’s a complicated country for the man and woman relation. And as to the children—really, except for Margaret (who’s the image of my mother) I hardly feel I know my batch of six—or that they know me.’

He was checked by steps in the verandah: and next moment the open doorway was blocked by a man’s figure, thick-set, of medium height.

‘Kohi hai?’³ said a deep voice, curiously resonant.

‘Do Burra Sahibhan hai!’⁴ Thorne answered rising to the joke.

For both men had recognised John Lynch of the C.I.D.⁵ Bureau, the friend whose refusal to act as best man had vexed Lance, because he had read between the lines of the brief letter telling him that Lynch, as usual, would be spending his leave in the wilds, and could not be sure of getting back to Gulmarg in time. He had spent it, by permission, in the hill region round Gilgit and Chitral, bent on a form of ‘shikar’ peculiarly his own. His quarry was neither markhor nor ibex, but wandering Hindus and Mahommedans trained to scatter the seeds of Soviet doctrine among their own people.

He was that rare thing, a single-minded man; all his knowledge and uncanny skill devoted to one end; and he might one day deserve well of his country, though his country would probably never discover the fact.

Sir Vincent knew all about that. He also knew why John Lynch would not assist at the wedding. In his eyes, a promising young Border Political had no business to marry; and in his eyes there was no budding Political of finer promise than Lance Desmond. Because of that conviction he was forgiven by Sir Vincent for the excuse that had not been intended to deceive his friend.

And now he capped it by coolly walking into the Gulmarg Residency on the evening of the wedding day.

That was Lynch all over; and Leigh, who greatly liked the man, did not hesitate to let him know it.

‘Very neat! You’ve missed the event by seven hours!’

Lynch took it smiling.

‘Narrow shave! But Lance understood.’

‘Yes, Lance understood all right.’ There was no mistaking the implication. ‘Have a smoke?’

‘Have a drink?’ Thorne supplemented, unlocking the tantalus.

‘Thanks—I will.’

‘For better for worse?’ Thorne prompted him: and he laughed, suddenly seeing the connection.

‘For infinitely better, thanks very much. A wife isn’t in my horoscope. We can’t do without the women. But marriage isn’t every man’s vocation. Work and whisky are good enough for me.’

He helped himself liberally, half-emptied his long tumbler, and apologised for his casual intrusion.

The light revealed him as a noticeably square man. Nothing pliable about him, mind or body. Even his eyebrows had a square effect, like a thumb stroke; and the clear sea-green eyes beneath them looked uncannily pale set in his tanned face. They were deceptive eyes that could appear vague and abstracted, while the brain behind them was swiftly talking stock of a man, inside and out. To that blend of the vague and the shrewd and an exhaustive knowledge of the Border, he owed his professional success and his personal influence with the tribes. He never seemed to weary of his fruitful wanderings; and rarely took a holiday, in the accepted sense, even when on leave.

‘Had fair sport—in your line?’ Sir Vincent asked.

‘Pretty fair,’ Lynch answered, trimming his cigar. ‘Met an Afghan trader one morning, full of buck about Amanullah and his western leanings. I was rigged out as a hill man, and—I took him in! I gather the Amir will be up against his Mullahs, if Europe turns his head. And while the cat’s away, the Soviet rats are getting busy.’

Thorne sighed ponderously.

‘Clever devils they are. They’ve all the push and skill that our crowd lack—or refuse to exercise.’

‘Which is it, I wonder?’ Lynch mused, helping himself to more whisky. ‘We’re up against the powers of darkness. But we can counter attack, and win hands down, if we use the right weapons—in time. Neither soldiers nor guns need apply.’

‘One John Lynch, with the serpent’s wisdom and the gift of tongues—eh?’ Thorne queried, only half in joke.

Lynch nodded gravely. ‘If they’d give him half a dozen Sappers, making roads—roads—roads. The Afghan funks rails, but he doesn’t funk roads. We’ve only to show him we’re after trade, not after his sacred country.’

He was off on his hobby-horse now; the two elder men content to listen. For he spoke of what he knew.

‘The Afghan may distrust us, but he distrusts Russia a good deal more.’ Lynch addressed the Chief Commissioner, who leaned back, half his face in shadow, silent and attentive. ‘And we seem bent on shoving him into Russia’s arms. As my Afghan remarked, “It’s the taste of the fruit, not the sight of it, that our people desire.” And the Reds are giving ’em the fruit, while we buck about its advantages.’

‘But my dear fellow, they are one nation acting under orders. We’re trying to handle half a dozen nations through a hybrid Legislative Assembly. I don’t say there aren’t plenty of clever men and sincere men in the Talking Shop at Delhi. But it’s a purely illogical institution, apparently bent on committing political suicide. There’s an atmosphere of irresponsibility that leaves one feeling almost hopeless over our ill-judged, well-intentioned experiment at democracy in Eastern dress.’

Thorne smiled affectionately at his friend. ‘Optimism’s never been your strong point, Leigh.’

‘Never. It’s a gift of the gods: a fatal one sometimes. If the gods tempt a man to feel optimistic about India’s future, they’re simply having him in derision. Yet the discredited Sahib must keep on at his job, because of those inconspicuous millions, who cherish a dwindling faith in his power and prestige—and whom he must never mention on his life.’

‘And if he talks plain sense about the Reds, he’s told that bees are buzzing in his bonnet,’ Lynch added drily. ‘When the big crash comes, a howl will go up—“Why didn’t someone foresee?” My God! I wonder if they’ve an inkling at home, of the deep-laid organisation that’s spread like an invisible net all over this country? I can only study it in my own corner. But just to prove I’m after no goose chase, listen here——’

He leaned forward lowering his voice and using for emphasis the cigar he had forgotten to light—he, the inveterate smoker. He told them how he had, for some time, been keeping under close observation one of the many strands of that unseen net: a skilfully linked chain of men, primed with the true Moslem brand of Soviet doctrine, filtering down from Central Asia, via Chitral and Gilgit, with intent to unsettle the restless independent tribes along the North-West border.

Others might scoff; but not these two. Fully alive to the significance of those stealthy comings and goings, they knew Lynch; knew he was no scare monger. He was devoting all his spare time and energy to tackling this particular chain of Soviet influence, controlled by certain leading spirits, of whom he knew more than he would reveal even to the most discreet Burra Sahib in creation. To capture one or more of these, and so disorganise the main design, was his present aim in life. Whenever he could get away, back he went to the valleys round Gilgit and Chitral, where a few of his picked men were always on the alert—two of them independent Afridis, paid out of his own pocket.

‘They’re an A.1 pair; men I can trust,’ he deliberately stated. ‘You needn’t smile up your sleeve, Colonel. I know the Afridi, inside and out. Ruthless, cunning and treacherous—he’s all that. But he’s got some better points than many better men.’ He turned to Sir Vincent, ‘You’ve studied him pretty closely, sir?’

‘I think I may say I have,’ the other modestly admitted; and none would have supposed from his tone that, as an authority on the Border tribes, he had few equals in India. ‘It takes years and many set-backs to work through the thick outer crust of Afridi fanaticism, treachery and suspicion. But once you’re through—you’ve got him.’

‘That’s the point!’ Lynch thumped the table with a solid fist. ‘I’ve worked at him for years. Result—I can travel and camp unmolested anywhere round the Khyber region; and the local Afridis will guard my tent against all comers. It’s a point of honour among those born thieves that nothing of mine shall be touched. So you see, sir,’ he looked very straight at Thorne, ‘I’m not tall-talking about my picked men. They’re hot on the scent of those false Moslems. And they’re dam proud, I can tell you, of owning information that the pukka police don’t possess. The only white man who knows as much as they do—is young Lance Desmond.’

Sir Vincent’s face lit up at mention of his nephew.

‘Lance? I knew he’d gleaned a good deal from you. But he never dropped a hint of all this, even to me. He can keep the door of his lips, that boy.’

‘I’d never have opened mine to him, otherwise, on this subject. Will he be as discreet—with his wife?’

He jibbed at the fatal word; and Sir Vincent smiled.

‘The sort of question a confirmed bachelor would ask! He will—if my opinion goes for anything.’

The confirmed bachelor’s relief was obvious.

‘You see, I didn’t reckon on his getting married. And I knew you had him in mind for Chitral. He’d be invaluable up there just now. Such a rare stroke of luck, there was bound to be a snag somewhere.’ He paused, considering Sir Vincent’s lean thoughtful face that contained so much yet revealed so little. ‘I suppose he’d be fool enough to refuse it now, even if he got the chance?’

And Sir Vincent said gravely, ‘At present, he won’t be given the chance.’

‘Damn!’

At that Thorne made an abrupt movement. ‘No, Lynch, I won’t have his marriage damned in my house—on his wedding-day. Eve’s a girl in a thousand. I won’t have it.’

He spoke genially, but with decision; and Lynch liked him none the less for that.

‘Sorry, Colonel. No implications intended. I’m wishing Lance all the good he deserves. And I’ve no mean opinion of his deserts.’

‘That’s more like it,’ Thorne muttered, pushing back his chair. ‘Coming, you two? Or d’you prefer carrying on your mild gup about the Reds?’

Lynch glanced at Sir Vincent, who did not look like moving.

‘I’m keen for a little more gup,’ he said frankly.

‘And I,’ said Leigh, ‘could listen till midnight.’

As Thorne moved away, he struck a match and held it out.

‘An unlit cigar is cold comfort,’ he remarked; and Lynch glanced reproachfully at the dead thing between his fingers.

Sir Vincent, watching him light it, unobtrusively shifted their talk away from the personal issue, to those skilful moves, via Chitral, that did, in effect, concern Lance more nearly than either supposed at the time.

In the main it was Lynch who talked. For Sir Vincent was a born listener; and his philosophic outlook gave to his brief, pregnant comments, even on controversial points, a singular breadth and wisdom that was apt to raise the tone of any discussion in which he took part.

Too clearly both men foresaw serious trouble ahead, whether Westminster voted India a big or a small slice, or no slice at all, of their political plum cake, labelled Dominion status, by men who might be puzzled to explain, what they honestly believed it would involve. And Lynch said his say on that thorny subject more freely than he would have done to any other high official in the land.

‘No one, it seems, has the moral courage to tell them that the term is quite misleading. No trace yet of Dominion conditions in India. Nor likely to be in a dozen of years. To tell them it’s a near prospect is damned unfair to all parties—including our insignificant selves. Some sort of Federal Scheme might work. But if we ever let them try the Dominion touch, it doesn’t take a major prophet to foretell the issue.’

‘Will we ever be able to forgive ourselves,’ Sir Vincent said, in a slow difficult voice, ‘if our blind democratic zeal gives this awakening jumble of races, that we call India, the first definite push into the clutches of the Tcheka?’

‘Judging from history, States can forgive themselves almost anything in the way of wrong-dealing that would brand a mere man for life. Queer slippery thing—the collective conscience.’

There was no mistaking the note of bitterness. For Lynch, too, was profoundly moved. And although both these men disliked the common cant of England solely intent on India’s welfare, both were chiefly thinking at this moment of those ignorant millions, whom they must never mention, of the India they loved—as men grow to love that which they have worked for all their days—given over, in the sacred name of freedom, to the letting in of the Jungle, that no power can check, once it begins to move.

For more than a hundred years the bug-bear of Russian influence and advancing Russian armies had dictated India’s frontier policy. Millions of money and thousands of human lives had been squandered to one end—the North safeguarded. In a military sense, the country might now be called impregnable. Yet here was the old danger rearing its head in a deadlier form: poisonous propaganda, camouflaged by trade amenities and Utopian catch-words; an insidious plan of attack, inspired by fanatical hatred of England and all that England stands for in the civilised world. To-day the armies of Russia march unseen. Against their secret irresistible advance, Himalayas, troops and fortifications are as effective as a box of tin soldiers guarding a house of cards.

And while this insidious enemy was permeating India, politicians in England were arguing over the next slice of political reform. . . .

Since it did not bear thinking of, and those who cared most had least say in the matter, it was more profitable to consider problems within their own sphere of action. So Lynch reverted to his chosen region; and they talked on undisturbed till after midnight—Chitral and Gilgit and the Khyber tribes; and then again Chitral.

Lynch very cautious, very purposeful, flattered himself he had left an impression on the Chief Commissioner, that Lance was steeped in secret knowledge such as he himself would not dream of confiding to any other young Political Officer, that as Agent at Chitral, he would be in a position to help Lynch with unofficial work of genuine importance. And when, at last, the Policeman rose to take his leave, he could not resist the temptation to press his point, while the luck was in.

‘Don’t you think, sir,’ he remarked dispassionately, ‘that in the special circumstances, it might only be fair to give Desmond the chance of refusing Chitral?’

‘It might,’ Sir Vincent agreed in a non-committal tone. His half smile suggested that he had not followed blindfold the other’s skilful leading. ‘Time to consider that next year, when Mason will be leaving.’

Though Lynch wanted something more definite than that, he hugged the admission.

‘And meantime,’ he said, ‘it’ll be Kohat?’

‘Yes.’

There was a brief silence, while Sir Vincent knocked the ash out of his pipe. Then Lynch harked back to the main issue.

‘I don’t believe he’d refuse Chitral—married or not. He’s chockfull of ambition. I suppose even marriage doesn’t kill all that?’

‘Sometimes—deflects it,’ Sir Vincent cautiously admitted.

‘Lance doesn’t strike me as a deflectable subject.’

Sir Vincent made no comment on that.

‘Perhaps by then the girl may have achieved a baby—to keep her occupied,’ Lynch hopefully suggested; and Sir Vincent smiled outright.

‘What an undeflectable beggar you are! The girl may have her own ideas on the subject. When two young people marry now, babies don’t always follow as the night the day. Perhaps you haven’t noticed?’

‘Can’t say I have. Too busy noticing other forms of unnatural phenomena!—Well, good-night, sir. It’s been a privilege. And as to Lance—here’s hoping.’

‘A very wholesome form of spiritual exercise,’ Sir Vincent secured the last word, still in his non-committal vein. But Lynch was shrewd enough to know that he had made an impression; that eventually Desmond would be given the chance to refuse Chitral.

Beyond that, even his shrewdness could not foresee the issue.

Chapter 4

The thought of her is tranquil as a star,
That trembles through the wet tempestuous twilight . . .
Yet she is fashioned like an April hour
Of storm and sudden sunshine . . .
Her soul is filled with warmth and restless fire
And charged with shadow and with mystery.
— Maurice Baring

It was on a cloudless afternoon, more than two weeks later, that Lance and Eve Desmond halted their ponies on high ground and looked down, for the first time, into that curious belt of bone-dry country known as Little Tibet. Here summer brought no cleansing fury of thunder and rain; only a fiercer heat, aggravated by the abnormal dryness of the air, a sky more intensely blue and a dazzle of sunlight in which the vast landscape seemed to tremble as if seen through flame. Bare hills above, bare rocks below; stony or sandy paths winding among them. Now and then an isolated village in an oasis of crops and orchards; now and then, near the river, a brief patch of shade.

Most days they were in the saddle by six, so as to reach the next camping ground before the heat and glare became intolerable; glare from the sun, glare from the river, a furnace glare from red-brown rock and cliff. Blue glasses—that Eve detested—seemed hardly to soften it. Their faces and lips, though smeared with cold cream, were scorched and blistered. For this was no honeymoon de luxe. It was a three weeks’ journey through a wild country that often delighted their eyes, while severely taxing their powers of endurance. But both were young and vigorous and eager for realities; and of these they had experienced a fine medley since their march over the Zoji-lā Pass, where strips of snow still lay deep on the long flat summit, and the lower slopes were gay with gentian, iris and forget-me-nots that gave whole meadows a sky-blue sheen.

Through the intervening belt of buffer country they had been marching for nearly a week; and the last two marches had been something of an ordeal for Eve. But she was loving the wildness and freedom, taking the rough with the smooth, finding fresh wonder daily in the simple fact of being married to Lance and escaping with him right out of India. To both it seemed good that their life together should begin in this adventurous fashion; this delight of riding on and on, day after day, meeting no one but occasional wandering officers, immensely alone in these vast surroundings, that made them seem, at one moment, lords of all the Earth; at another, mere specks of animated dust troubling the quiet of those stark tremendous hills.

Eve had discarded her habit skirt, for the greater ease and comfort of a man’s saddle on the march. Even so, after the first few days of incessant riding, she had felt stiff and sore, though she refused to admit it; determined not to be a drag on Lance, delighting in his easy toughness, eager to become the seasoned rider that she aspired to be.

To-day they had ridden twenty-three miles from Kargil to Moolbeck; easy going at first over a broad table land; vast brown hills all round them, and far below them a crawling line of little black specks—a Yarkandi caravan, trudging as caravans had trudged, in these unchanging regions, for many hundreds of years; the same yaks, the same type of men, in filthy rough clothes, even the same merchandise, from the Cities of Central Asia. But the last eight miles, with the sun at its fiercest, had told on Eve. Hot and tired, painfully sunburnt and thirsty, both were inclined to be irritable on small provocation. Yet, under all their surface discomfort, they were entirely happy.

Winding down from the pass they had come upon this sudden view of Moolbeck valley; the first glimpse into a new country of many-coloured hills, the strangest they had yet seen. Splashes of raw sienna, of red, yellow and blue, blended—where the rocks crumbled—into mauves and greens and ochreous tints. And dark against the dazzling sky of Tibet, broken ruins clung to inaccessible peaks; so much a part of them that one could hardly tell where ruin ended and cliff began. At the end of the valley, they sighted their destination, the village of Shargol. High above it, a Buddhist monastery, white-walled and red-roofed, looked as if it had been carved out of the precipice it crowned; and scattered about the valley were a number of chortens—wayside shrines, built over the ashes of dead lamas.

Eve, absorbing every detail, turned from the unreal scene to the very real husband who rode beside her.

‘I can’t believe it’s all the work of Nature and those odd dumpy Ladākis. It looks much more like the masterpiece of some terribly modern artist, who would die sooner than put anything natural on paper! If only one could translate it all into music.’

‘It wouldn’t be music,’ Lance stated with decision. ‘It would be a jangle of discords that no one would want to hear.’

‘Would it?—You wait.’

‘Quite content to wait. No music scribbling yet.’

She flicked a finger and thumb at him.

‘Scribbling? You don’t deserve to have a budding composer for your bride!

‘I probably don’t deserve any of it; but I’m loving it all none the less,’ he said, a deep note in his voice that checked her flippant mood. ‘Let’s canter on and get a closer squint at those chortens.’

‘Yes, let’s,’ Eve agreed briskly with a glance at his profile—its mingled strength and fineness that pleased more than her eyes: the slightly jutting nose, the resolute lips and clean dent under the chin, the hazel-grey eyes with gold flecks in them that came alight when he was roused.

He was unaware of the look—or seemed to be. He was very clever at side-slipping away from an appeal to his emotions at the wrong moment. In his ardent moods he was a flame of fire. He had even startled her a little at first. But he would not be manoeuvred into ‘the sentimental touch.’ So she cantered ahead of him, profoundly happy; steeped in the spirit of all natural things, seeing all beauty of earth and sky in terms of one person. No escape from the obsession; no desire to escape. That hundreds had travelled the same road, and shared the same emotions had no damping effect on her; rather it made her feel one with all the world’s lovers from the beginning of time.

As she urged Shahzada on and lifted her eyes to those strange hills, an overwhelming gratitude flooded her heart. Life, that came unsought, was a gift so fine and thrilling that, however one might damage it in fits of folly, it must always retain some unquenchable splendour. For that brief while, evil and sorrow seemed remote and strange, powerless to touch the real Eve. Happiness, no longer a fantasy, raced in her veins, lit the blue vistas ahead and illumined even the tragic past, that one could outlive, but not forget. A vivid memory of her father’s death, of her own brief disastrous engagement, darkened the brilliant scene as if a raven’s wing had brushed across her eyes. It was terrifying, now, to remember how near she had come to marrying Angus Monteith, through a tangle of wrong reasons and the incalculable streak of folly in her nature. And any folly she committed now would harm Lance as well: a thought to shake the heart. But fear was a serpent, a very cobra. She would have no cobras in her paradise.

Comforted by the beat of his Banshee’s hoofs behind her, she rode gaily on to explore those curious chortens, scolding her sentimental self for a faint twinge of disappointment because Lance had not said ‘I’m loving you,’ but had included her with the joys of marching and camping and rainbow hills. So she continued to ride ahead lest he should detect her passing foolishness.

Naturally he had already detected it. He was longing to ride up close, to call her foolish names and kiss her into ecstasy. But he checked himself with the reminder that she disliked it on horseback because of that damned Monteith. Besides, it might look as if he guessed what was in the wind. It was dear of her, if ridiculous, not wanting him to guess; and it was very much Eve—a more delicious and distracting creature, at close quarters, than he himself had foreseen. Clear-eyed, even in love, he had not the idealising tendency that invites disillusion. Her very faults were a part of her fascination. He loved her with fervour, imperfections and all. If she wanted to be quit of him for the moment, he would not intrude.

So he did not trouble to catch her up; and Eve ruefully decided that he was thinking her a little fool. She could not know how often he thus refrained from making passionate love to her in and out of season. This natural, if far from simple affair of marriage revealed itself to him as a test of inner poise; and these first few weeks—he instinctively felt—were of immense after-importance to them both.

During the past year he had done some private and practical thinking about a way of life not so far seriously considered. For a wife had not entered into his scheme of things. But a man, it seemed, had small choice in the matter. There were powers that struck from afar, and compelled Fate; and if Lance, the lover, would not have it otherwise, there had remained for Lance, the husband, a critical process of inner readjustment, securely hidden—so he supposed—from the most discerning eye. Yet before leaving Katina Gully, he had been beguiled into an illuminating talk with his Uncle, who was apt to see more, and to say less about it, than any man of his acquaintance, not even excepting Lynch. For once Sir Vincent had come right out of his shell; had spoken of marriage, in his profound yet impersonal fashion, as no haven of sanctioned self-indulgence, but an initiation into life’s major difficulties; a risky venture at best, making large demands on faith and loyalty; on a mutual capacity, to preserve the delicate state of tension that was the law of its being.

‘Not precisely the sentimental view,’ he had added with his quaint lift of one eyebrow. ‘But life gives it proof. Just that delicate tension, more implicit than actual, keeps love alive and lets it grow. You’ll get as near as maybe to each other, in a finer sense, by keeping a healthy distance apart! I don’t mean actual separation, though that often acts like a tonic. I mean guarding your own hidden ego, and respecting hers. Paradoxical but true! No music can come from a slackened string.’

The fine wisdom of all that had left a deep impression on Lance; and, in a minor sense, he was keeping his distance now, while he rode behind Eve, loving her and laughing at her in his heart.

Whether or no she fully appreciated, just then, the fruit of wise counsels unknown to her, she was happier than she knew, because she often wanted from Lance more than he gave her in the way of lovers’ rhapsodies.

Arrived at the first pair of chortens, she could pull up without damage to pride. They were primitive shrines, painted with queer figures, posturing and straddling; crude yellow animals prancing above them. Eve’s interest had evaporated; but she gazed at them religiously till Lance rode up and halted beside her. Even then she did not look round—foolish as a child over a secret game; not lifting an eyelash, waiting to see what he would say—or do.

He edged nearer; and his hand closed lightly on her arm.

‘Little goose!’ was all he said; but the way he said it sent a delicious warmth all through her. ‘Shed your goose’s feathers, and race me to Shargol. I’m crazy for tea.’

And she obeyed him gladly.

Outside the region of her own sensibilities it all amounted to nothing; but for Eve, half the charm of those first weeks lay in the heightened significance of a look, a touch, a tone. By these trifles they were learning as surely to know one another as by the rarer moments of exalted passion: and the inner effect was not trifling by any means.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Shargol serai was simply a set of mud rooms built round a courtyard with a verandah facing outwards. Here Ramazān had laid their camp table, with a pale blue enamelled tea-set, a pile of chocolate biscuits, hot chupattis in a napkin and a plate of cream toffee, shared by two dogs, whose eyes followed each mouthful till one came their way. For Bijli, the Afghan greyhound—strong and lithe with a curly mane round his shoulders—went everywhere with his master; and Eve would not be parted from Bliss, her West Highland terrier, the liveliest bit of quick-silver that ever rejoiced in the sins of puppyhood.

Up here in the town, the air was cooler; and the empty rest-house being comparatively clean, they had voted for a big bare room, with space to move and fling things round. For Eve—a paragon of untidiness—complained that two linked service tents rather cramped her style. There was just room enough in her twin tent for camp-bed, hold-all and kilta; not much space left over for herself and Bliss, who was small but fatally active. Wherever you happened to tread, there she would surely be. A folding mirror dangled from the tent pole, and the bed served as dressing-table or refuge for homeless odds and ends.

Lance, who was terribly tidy, alluded to it disrespectfully as ‘the local jumble sale.’ His own little tent put hers to shame; but he was a practised hand, served by a bearer who knew his ways, while Eve was trying to manage without old Miriam, whose virtues she had never fully appreciated till now.

Though she had taken ‘next to nothing’ by order—she dressed and undressed in a chronic state of chaos; always pursuing some lost sheep that would probably be found under Lance’s bed—thanks to Bliss—or behind the little case on which Ramazān kept his Sahib’s shaving things and other sacred items. On the Sahib’s bed there was no jumble sale; but Eve, who trespassed freely, often left fragments of herself behind. Though Lance was still at the stage when even fragments were welcome, she knew by now that her chronic untidiness really did vex him. He could not always see the joke of hunting for his hair-brush, only to find that she had used it, had flung it on the bed, and buried it under her knitted coat and stockings. And Eve could never take it seriously; a disability that was responsible for her one bad minute, the first time he had lost his temper with her. It was a temper that blazed up, and left no aftermath of sulkiness or constraint: but it blazed so fiercely that it had startled and hurt her more than he knew. Of course he had made ‘divine amends’; and since then she had tried to control her wayward belongings—with spasmodic success.

To-day—mistress of a room and a table—she would be a model of neatness. While he attended to the beloved ponies, she unpacked her few things, and doctored the bed with Keating’s powder to discourage the formidable flea of Central Asia. Then she put on her wedding frock, with Lance’s jade necklace and a pair of green shoes—the only frivolous items in her luggage. It was the first evening, since Sonamarg, that she had dressed up for dinner. It would please Lance.

And when she stepped into the verandah where he sat—looking very spruce in his drill coat and breeches—she knew, from the way his gaze lingered on her, that it was one of her successful moments. She did not know that her dress was the least part of it. These first few weeks of intimately loving and being beloved had given her whole face a new beauty, a new radiance; and there were times when Lance himself wondered at the subtle change in her.

He was wondering now; but he merely remarked in his level voice, ‘We’re very jigspo this evening!’ as Ramazān appeared with two steaming plates of soup.

‘Jigspo’—signifying smart—was one of the many quaint Ladāki words they had picked up from their lively grinning coolies. Lance, a keen linguist, liked these simple cheerful Ladākis; and when Ramazān—concerned for the Sahib’s izzat⁶—marvelled that he should thus favour men of no caste, little better than animals, he had retorted good-humouredly: ‘Why not? They’re honest folk. If they do worship idols and give one woman many husbands, they neither lie nor steal, nor take life. Can you say as much for devout Moslems on the Border?’

Ramazān, discomfited, could only protest, ‘They be not men, as we are, Hazúr.’ And indeed, his aquiline features, his whole virile bearing seemed to justify him in praising Allah that he was not as those devil worshippers, who wore pigtails and went shares in one woman. In all matters of bundobast, he was their Lord High Everything Else; and he served their simple dinner as though it were a banquet, while they talked—of themselves, inevitably; of the bungalow in Kohat, where Eve was to prove that she could handle a household as skilfully as she handled a fiddle-bow.

If Lance had his doubts, he kept them to himself, knowing her well enough not to discourage, even in joke, her rare flashes of self-confidence.

So she chattered on, till Ramazān brought coffee in tea-cups, with a jug of dead white cream; and the sun went down in splendour behind the crags of a purple ridge, sharply carved on a sky of clear amber. Above the ridge hung a roof of golden cloud, filling the verandah with unearthly light, imparting a dream quality to the strange town and the darkening hills.

Perhaps it was the sunset, or her successful moment, or the flowing together of sense and spirit, that stilled her talk and lifted her into one of her entranced moods. Ghosts of unseizable melodies went singing through her brain, fairy flutes and the elfin pizzicato of violins. Lost in that mingling of light and sound, there was neither real nor unreal; there was only her released self following the music, as the children followed the Pied Piper.

It was as if she owned two bodies—one married to Lance sitting at their camp table, the other a soaring speck of light, adrift in that golden cloud filled with the haunting music. The whole sky was full of music—her own, could she but capture it. . . . You might as well try to snare sunbeams . . .

Part of her knew that Lance was talking; but her true self, up in the cloud, could only hear those unseizable melodies . . .

‘Eve!’ His voice reached her now—startled, imperative. His fingers closed on her arm.

She had lost the music. She would never hear it again . . .

‘Oh, why did you?’ she reproached her bewildered husband. ‘It’s gone!’

‘What’s gone?’ he asked, still more mystified.

‘The music.’

‘There’s not been a sound—except the music of my voice. Are you crazed?’

‘I don t think so!’ She smiled into his troubled face, suddenly realising her odd behaviour. For the cloud was melting from light into colour now, losing its peculiar magic. ‘Only sometimes—bits of me aren’t quite under control.’

‘For no earthly reason?’ He was still puzzled; and she gazed at him, anxious to explain, yet shy of inner mysteries that she had never tried to clothe in words.

‘I think—to-night it was a heavenly reason; because of that blinding cloud, full of music . . . I was there. And because I’m feeling rather intoxicated with happiness——’

At that simple statement his face lit up; and she, in a swift impulse of contrition, caught at his hand and kissed it.

‘Darling!’ he protested in quite another tone.

‘It’s you—it’s you—from beginning to end,’ she murmured unheeding, as he rose and pulled her into his arms.

Close and fervently he held her; closer still, because of a strange sensation as if he had snatched her from some unknown danger—from that will o’ the wisp element in her that would be at once his distraction and delight all the days of their married life. Always that elfin touch of the wild; ‘always the unexplored beyond the known.’ And he himself would not have it otherwise. He liked her to be wild and free: or she would not be his Eve, who had charmed away his fear of women by not thinking it necessary to keep on reminding a man that she was a girl: a reminder that always had a fatal effect on Lance. By that lack of feminine guile, she had captured him unawares. By the lack of it she would continue to hold him. She was the desire of his heart and his senses; but she was infinitely more. It was the Eve no vows could bind, no human arms could hold, whose dominion over him was stronger than she knew, stronger than he himself yet knew. It was those very bits of her ‘not quite under control’ that the latent artist in him loved and the husband instinctively feared; though he did not yet recognise his fear as proof that even his half knowledge of her struck deeper than that of the average husband after many years of marriage.

Chapter 5

My desire and thy desire
Twining like a tongue of fire,
Leaping live and laughing higher
In the everlasting strife
Of the mystery of life.
— Robert Bridges

There was yet another week of strenuous marching before them through that high desert region, where giants of the prime had scattered stones for seeds, had sent bitter winds and a blazing sun to discourage any vestige of life. But, for Eve, there was more potent fascination in the threat of the wilderness than in any luscious beauty of ‘the tame.’

And for Lance there was fascination in the knowledge that here, under their feet, was the high road to Central Asia, India’s danger-zone through the ages; never more so than now, with Russia very busy in those regions creating a chain of Soviet States, as a means of permeating Afghanistan and the Border, and furthering her ultimate designs on India. Though Lance had all that very much on his mind, he rarely spoke of it, nor would he let the thought of it intrude upon these brief weeks of isolation with Eve—isolation from work and sport that he would take up again with keener zest—after all this.

He had wondered, often, whether men really enjoyed the honeymoon interlude as much as they were supposed to do. Now he merely pitied the poor devils who went through it with girls other than Eve. Apart from loving her, he found her more and more the true companion, such as a man rarely finds in his wife. Increasingly he admired her pluck and cheerfulness over the manifold discomforts of their long and difficult journey. Her untidiness was of small account beside her dauntless spirit for which, perhaps, he praised her too seldom; and the word of praise, in season, was a genuine need of her nature. It would simply not occur to her that Lance was admiring her pluck and spirit, unless he told her so. When her body flagged she took special pains not to let him guess; and felt faintly aggrieved at his density when she seemed to be succeeding a shade too well.

They were trying marches, the two that followed on Shargol: not the mere distance, but the heat and glare and the utter lack of life in those barren hills. Even when a level mile or two made it possible to canter, Lance, as likely as not, would refrain because of the precious ponies, whose legs were his first consideration. In nothing was he more Irish than in his feeling for horses. He treated them almost as fellow beings. He had a special voice in speaking to them; and he firmly believed they understood every word. In the saddle he had the conscious link with the animal he rode that marks the true horseman. All that she loved: yet at moments she faintly resented his over-concern for his mounts, especially during those two difficult marches that fatigued more than her body. For the first time, in many months, she was assailed by a disconcerting sense of flatness; partly nervous reaction from weeks of heightened emotion, partly the woman’s rhythmic response to life that is at once her drawback and her source of power. And it had beset her when she was needing every ounce of inner stimulant to carry her through some of the most desolate country they had traversed yet.

The climb to the top of the Pass was long and glaring; all sand and rock; no trees, no shade, no water. Up, steeply up, till the hills opened out and gave them a vision of mighty ranges, a noble symphony of colour, a gleam of snow-line in the North. And after a brief halt, it was down, steeply down, in the full blaze of early afternoon; Lance walking, to spare the Banshee’s legs; Eve, following suit, with rebellion in her heart.

Being young and resolute, she achieved the descent without visibly flagging; but she would not soon forget those sixteen miles of sheer desolation.

And the next day it was all to do over again; her body more jaded, her mind oppressed by foreknowledge of repetition. She was riding the new pony, Swastika, Lynch’s wedding present to Lance; a well-bred Kabuli, with easy paces and a will of his own. Before they reached the top, he showed signs of fatigue; but Eve hardened her heart and resolved not to walk down this time. Riding at that angle was quite bad enough, but walking jolted her all through.

It was near eleven when at last they halted for refreshment thirteen thousand feet up—a great view both ways; such depths of purple, such utter blue of distance, that Eve’s spirit revived; only to sink afresh at the prospect of nearly ten more miles—down and down that steep stony track.

When Lance gave the word to start, she said casually, ‘I’m going to ride part of the way. Not quite so bad as walking on this fiendish road.’

‘It’s a beast of a road,’ he agreed with conviction. ‘Hard on the horses’ legs.’

If he meant that for a hint, Eve was in no mood to take it. So she said nothing: and he shamed her by remarking, ‘I’ll ride a little way too.’ In quite another voice he told the Demon all about it, caressing the bright brown neck and shoulder as he vaulted into the saddle.

It was a long and weary descent, zig-zagging among rocks and stones. The sun, smiting through the thin air, made Eve’s head ache. Her back had been aching all the time: and though Lance rode close to her, they talked less than usual.

At last, inevitably, he dismounted.

‘Coming off?’ he asked, as she made no move.

She shook her head. ‘I’m too tired. And it’s too hot.’

He said nothing; only walked on beside her, leading the Demon, giving Swastika a word of encouragement now and then.

Eve, suspecting disapproval, felt increasingly rebellious. Wasn’t she of more account than a polo pony? Where was the use of having the creature, if she must tramp in blazing heat, down a devil’s track like this?

Between her headache and her wandering thoughts, and her pony’s trick of tugging at the rein, she loosened her hold just when he needed support at a steep turning. Of course he promptly stumbled so badly that she only just pulled him up in time.

‘Look out, Eve,’ Lance exclaimed, in a voice that startled, her. ‘If you must ride, for God’s sake, don’t let him down.’

So sharply his tone contrasted with that which he had just been using to the Demon, that tears pricked her eyeballs; but anger stirred in her heart, and sounded in her voice. ‘I am holding him up. But he keeps jerking his head.’

‘He’s tired, poor chap.’ Quite a different tone now; and Eve had a sudden impulse to answer furiously, ‘I’m ten times more tired—and you don’t care a damn.’

But her sensitive pride was up in arms. Jerking the rein none too gently, she halted Swastika, and was out of the saddle before Lance had guessed her intention.

‘Thought you were too hot and tired,’ he said, with a very straight look.

‘Of course I am,’ she snapped. ‘But it’s no rest to ride, if you’re fussing all the time over your priceless pony.’

‘Darling girl, don’t be an owl,’ he urged more gently, his flash of wrath extinct; but her hidden hurt remained. ‘I’ll put you on the Demon, and lead him myself.’

‘No, never mind me. I’m not dead yet.’

‘And I’m not after waiting till you are!’

His hand closed on her arm, but the little black devil inside jerked it away.

‘Oh, do leave me alone,’ she said irritably; and raged at herself when the words were out. But if she begged his forgiveness, she might weep; and two saises were not far behind.

‘Hazúr ke kushi,’⁷ he said in the level tone he so often used to mask his true feelings; and Swastika was handed over to his sais.

Eve, stricken silent, walked on the far side of the Demon; and for a short while, that seemed endless to both, they obstinately continued to say nothing. Eve, in a bad mood, could keep it up longer than most; but Lance seemed capable of beating her at her own game; and he had his pipe to keep him happy, which was an unfair advantage.

She did not guess that Lance, far from happy, was simply obeying her command. If a man asked to be let alone, he usually meant it. How could he tell that this dear unreasonable being, who loved him and spurned him, was perversely wishing he would do anything else in life—even lose his temper and clear the air. Had he known how ashamed she was, how her head was throbbing and her back aching, he would have taken her in his arms, were there fifty saises behind them. But without a sign from her, he would make no move.

So she stumbled on down the rocky path, not properly lifting her feet, nor seeing very clearly: and the longer their silence lasted, the harder it became to bridge that aching sense of division, seen and felt, in her miserable mood, as a chasm they were powerless to cross . . .

Suddenly she stumbled on a sharp stone, and with a little cry of pain, she fell sidelong against a rough slab of rock, grazing her right elbow, her cheek and temple.

Lance—jerking back the astonished Demon—was beside her in a flash, pulling her up close to him; and she could no longer restrain her tears—not for the hurt but for sheer relief at being in his arms.

‘Whatever made you stumble like that?’ he asked in distress.

‘I didn’t see. I was crying,’ she answered truthfully, pride dissolved by his quick light kisses on her eyelids, as a sais ran forward to secure the Demon.

‘Crying about nothing?’ he rallied her. ‘Not your style!’

Keeping an arm round her, he damped a handkerchief from his water-bottle, took off her hat and dabbed her grazed skin. She shivered at the pain, and leaned limply against him.

‘My treasure, you’re dead beat,’ he said, laying the damp handkerchief over her hair, and wishing the saises at Jehannum.

‘I am—very nearly,’ she murmured.

‘And you wouldn’t say? Plucky of you.’

‘Not plucky. I was angry’—his praise moved her to honesty—‘because you didn’t bother about anything but your old ponies. And I felt you were thinking me a poor-spirited crock.’

‘That was it?’ His arm tightened. ‘You sweet little fool. I’ve been lost in admiration of your grit. Never thought a girl could do it in such fine style.’

She gazed at him, pain and weariness forgotten. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ she asked in a dazed voice.

He gave her one of his odd shy looks. ‘Well, I am telling you.’

‘What a wonder! Because you’re upset by my tumble?’

‘I don’t know—I suppose so.’

‘Then if I want you to say lovely things, I must hurl myself around and get half killed——?’

‘You’d better not try that on, or I’ll shut up like a clam. You know perfectly well I’m loving you to distraction. Yet you snub me and hurt yourself, all about nothing.—Now perhaps you’ll obey orders. On to the Demon you go; and I’ll lead him myself.’

Replacing her hat over the damp handkerchief that shielded her temple, he lifted her into the saddle and walked close beside her down that stony track, talking alternately to her and to the pony. Sometimes his shoulder pressed against her knee. Sometimes she put out a hand and touched his cheek. It was astonishing the joy of those slight contacts after that aching sense of division.

Just as she was wondering how much longer she could last, a turn in the gorge brought strange Lama Yoru suddenly into view: the inevitable monastery, crowning a high grooved cliff, and the village clustered at its base. It was a fascinating scene; but at that weary moment, Eve saw it simply as promise of refreshment and rest.

‘It’s easy going now,’ Lance consoled her. ‘I’ll mount Swastika.’

They covered the few remaining miles at a gentle trot; and, for a time, they were rid of the desert, once more in touch with human life.

Though the rest-house was none too clean, Eve pleaded for a room and a roof overhead; and Lance issued his commands accordingly. He had only one concern, to atone for his flash of temper and his lack of consideration. If he said little, his actions were eloquent, action being his natural form of self-expression, as Eve would have to learn. And he could not have shown her more clearly the shy depths of his heart than by his practical way of attending to her needs: not leaving her, even for ten minutes, to see about the ponies. He hoped she gave him full marks for that.

She was giving him full marks all round, as she lay in a long chair, Lance handling the tea-pot, and talking delicious nonsense, Bliss on her knee, Bijli lying abject beside his master, not a kick in him.

After tea, Lance carried her to bed; and the cleaning-up process that followed was brief but excruciating, though he kept one arm round her, while the other was busy hurting her. Then he laid on cool ointment, with a touch as light as Vanessa’s own, and called her lovely names in a low voice.

‘Better now,’ she sighed and closed her eyes. ‘Presently I’ll get up and unpack.’

‘No, you won’t. I’m putting you to bed in a minute. And I’m not letting you leave Lama Yorn till the day after to-morrow—if you’re fit. I’ll get a runner through to Kaye.’

She listened to all that, dissolved in relief. ‘You are an angel,’ she said. ‘But I can manage——’

‘You can manage for once to obey orders, my Beauty. You don’t move a finger. I can do it all.’

There was no resisting him. Scarcely troubling to move a finger, she was in her silk night-gown, tucked into the hard bed. And she lay there, her temple smarting, her head throbbing, her heart in a glow, watching him through half-closed lids, as he moved about unpacking with elaborate quietness, believing her half asleep. It was almost worth their clash of discord, the tumble and the pain, to have him tending her in this new fashion, when she was needing Vanessa, for the first time in three weeks.

Presently her lids fell, but she could hear him moving still more cautiously, coming towards the bed; and she knew he was wondering whether he could safely scurry off and see to the ponies. Longing to laugh at him and fling out her arms, she stirred not an eyelash, till she heard him creep away softly closing the door behind him.

Tired though she was—too tired perhaps—sleep eluded her. And while she hovered on the border line, there came back to her that aching sense of division, when they two trudged, in obstinate silence down from that hateful pass, the illusion of an actual chasm opened between them. Suppose she had not stumbled and broken the spell, how much longer would the devil inside her have kept it up? Clashes between natures so diverse and definite were bound to happen again and again. Through those very clashes they would learn to know one another, but some inner voice was telling her to beware of the chasm . . .

To beware—how? One had no chart, no guide . . .

Her thoughts were running together. But her clouded brain knew with awful certainty that the chasm was opening under her; Lance walking heedlessly above her head, talking to the Demon; and she, falling, falling, powerless to cry out.

Suddenly she heard her own voice—a husky whisper, ‘Daddy!’ And still she fell faster than ever—not into darkness but into light. . . .

She was in the garden house of Gulmarg Residency, the place of her many strange meetings in the spirit, with her vanished father. But the familiar chair was empty; the little room filled only with clear sunshine. Slowly the warm sense of his presence invaded her, his voice sounded in her brain: ‘You have won a man who knows how to love. The more love there is, the more risk of hurting and being hurt. Remember——’

With all her strength, she tried to answer him; but no word would come.

The effort woke her with a small cry, a pain in her elbow and a gooseflesh feeling all over—to hear Lance in the verandah ordering his tub. That meant it was near dinner time. And never had the common prose of every-day necessities sounded sweeter to her ears. Never had the sight of Lance himself been more welcome, as he thrust the door open and hurried to her side.

‘Darling, I thought you were asleep. Did you call?’

‘No, it was a dream—partly a dream. It frightened me. But it’s gone now.’

‘And I’m here. Wanting my tub; and loving you hard.’

As he spoke, her father’s words came back to her; and, in spite of herself, she asked him urgently, ‘Will you always—even if I’m very troublesome?’

‘Will I always? You—my wife——?’ he said in a strange voice. Then with sudden fervour, ‘My darling, don’t ask me that again.’

‘Oh, I won’t, I won’t.’

The passion in her low tone so moved him that in an instant he was on his knees by the low bed, his lips mutely assuring her (though he knew nothing about it) that there could be no chasms between them, except in her unruly imagination. But that first sharp clash and her own brief sense of antagonism, stirred, at the back of her mind, a lurking sense of portent.

It was gone in a moment, banished by the pressure of his arms. His presence, his sane, bracing temperament, created an atmosphere of safety.

When the voice of Ramazān called him, he left Eve lulled and reassured, all lurking fears dispelled.

Fifteen minutes later he returned—fresh from the steaming wooden tub, set on a square of concrete, with a sluice-hole in one corner—to find her peacefully asleep, her sore cheek resting on the pillow, her dark hair ruffled, its loose natural wave very marked, one hand flung out towards him, the long clever musician’s fingers half curled inwards like the hand of a sleeping child.

‘Why on earth did she want to be such an obstinate little fool, and hurt herself like that?’ was his sane view of the episode, with the added reflection that he must keep a firmer hold on his devil’s temper, if she was going to take it so hard. But he would need to be a paragon before he could see a pony carelessly handled without letting fly—even at her.

Untroubled by portents, smitten by the unconscious grace of her pose, he stood there gazing at her, simply and fervently thanking God for his good fortune. He had hurried hack to her, eager to chase away more completely her dream fears, her strange mood; and finding her thus, ardour was dissolved in tenderness, love’s least earthly element. Sleep set her, for the moment, completely out of reach; and he could not choose but feel impatient for the lifting of her lids that would give her to him again. Watching her thus, it still seemed a wonder past belief that she should be his . . .

Absorbed in that wonder, he turned and walked very quietly away.

Chapter 6

These to one bosom love can gather in,
These to a single song love can transmute—
The seed, the soil, the flower, the corn,
Beauty eternally re-born!
— Gerald Gould

It was soon, after seven o’clock, two mornings later, that they entered the stupendous gorge below Lama Yoru. The path, hacked out of bare rock, turned sharply every few yards, as if the desperate little torrent were seeking an outlet from those wild and craggy cliffs, more richly coloured than any artist would dare to paint them. High overhead, ribs of shale and pillars of sandstone, made curious patterns on the sky-line, their curves and edges grazed with sunlight. Below them a tumult of water swirled round islands of rock, splashing the ponies, making them sneeze and shake their ears.

Eve’s mount, for half the long march, was Zaidée the Arab mare who had carried her father through that very gorge eight years ago; and because of her strange dream contact, he seemed almost to be with her in the eerie place. Her true self believed in the reality of those rare intimations of his presence. To call it illusion, at the prompting of her critical brain, would make it no whit less real to her. For illusion is, to the soul, as atmosphere to the earth and oxygen to the lungs. Deprived of that diviner air, what a thing of shreds and patches life would be. As for dreams, the mystery of them eluded even the wisest; and she would not allow those fanciful sensations at Lama Yorn to ruffle the surface of her deep content.

But as the path sheered steeply into the narrowest part of the gorge, the breath of night met them dank and chill. It sent a shiver all down her spine. It was the chasm——

Panic seized her: but she pulled herself together. This was no chasm of division. Lance was in it, too, riding a little ahead, shouting to a string of laggard coolies, who scuttled along like animated bundles on legs. Her fear was a purely physical sensation; being close to him would charm it away. So she sidled up between him and the cliff, and slid a hand under his elbow.

He looked round quickly, pressing her fingers against his ribs as if he understood. And, in a measure, he did. For him also this wild gorge was more than a thing seen. It was a sensation, as moonlight and high snow are sensations, that disturb the secret fibres of the soul. But he said nothing. The place seemed to have cast a spell of silence on them; and it was with a curious sense of relief that at last they cantered out into full sunlight of morning.

Ahead of them, to the limit of vision, the vast Indus valley opened out in all its stark and stately beauty; masses of coloured rock merging into noble mountains and the far soft blues of distance. Even at a hand gallop, they seemed to make no progress at all. And suddenly, round the curve of a hill, they came upon a narrow side valley—cornfields and grass, little streams and splendid trees. After the Indus region, it was like tumbling into a toy world. There was a toy tank, Ladāki men and animals grouped round it. There was even a toy mission bungalow; but they found it empty.

‘What a mercy!’ Eve ungraciously remarked, as Lance, hungry and thirsty, shouted for tiffin.

It was ready awaiting their pleasure, laid on the grass under the largest walnut tree, in the densest patch of shade. From one stout branch hung the familiar basket of damp straw in which four soda-water bottles were embedded. A coolie squatting near-by, smacked it now and then with the flat of his hand, to keep it swaying and keep the bottles ice-cold.

Two panting dogs, their tongues hanging out, gazed covetously at dainties that were not for them. And as they sprang forward, Ramazān was careful to announce that the dog-people—though feigning thirst—had already been given drink and food. For he knew the madness of Sahibs in respect of horses and dogs; had even seen this one, on the march, serve that Afghan hound before beginning his own meal, which vexed his Asiatic sense of precedence—the man first, the woman second, the dog last, if at all. So he noted with disapproval how these favoured creatures, though their bellies were filled, received much superfluous food, their eyes shamelessly demanding more, even as the coolie people—though well paid—always demanded more backsheesh. In this country, however, they were simple fools, easily content; so that a capable bearer could please his Sahib with a moderate charge and yet make his own due profit on the transaction.

Tiffin ended, the capable one departed to round up coolies and baggage ponies; while the travellers, rested and refreshed, enjoyed their cigarettes and each other. Speaking or silent, they breathed a mutual sense of companionship as naturally as air.

The ponies, eased of saddles, rolled in the cool grass, and Eve, watching them, longed to follow suit.

‘So aggravating,’ she grumbled, as only the happy can grumble. ‘ The many harmless things that can’t-be-did, because of other people—what they might think or say.’

Lance—nearly flat, with his knees in the air—gave her a wicked upward look.

‘They do stand in the light a bit sometimes! If it weren’t for those confounded coolies and Ladākis, I’d be kissing you now within an inch of your life! They aren’t of much account, but there they are—keeping me in order; as you (who are of much account) would ignominiously fail to do! I suspect, it’s only Other People, who keep Some People on the rails at all.’

Eve laughed and patted his head. ‘K’ever boy! Was it spontaneous?’

‘Slick. My best efforts usually are. Not the only cause I have to thank the dash of Ould Ireland in me veins.’

‘Yet you’d the sense to marry a Scotty.’

‘And you’d the sense to avoid doing so, by the skin of your teeth. Nature seeing after the next generation.’ He fell silent, looking ahead. ‘Half Irish; half Scot. He ought to be a ripper—when he comes along.’

He said it in a pensive tone, simply speaking his thought.

The hand that had touched his head rested a moment against his cheek. It was caught and kissed. They smiled at one another with a grave content that sprang from deep sources.

Then he sat erect in his lightning fashion. ‘It’ll be a case of spontaneous combustion, if we don’t start ek dum.’

He shouted an order to the saises: and within ten minutes the untiring pair were off once more.

Mile on mile of blinding sun and sand: spine pads under their coats; blue glasses, turning sky and hills and desert to one sickly hue; faces and lips scorched to the point of pain.

Grass once more at Nuria; but the next day and the next it was the desert again; pitiless, barren country, culminating in a wild and stony pass, wilder and stonier at every turn, as if they were shut into a giant’s quarry.

From it they emerged at last on to a high table-land, a world that seemed empty of life; not a bird, not a drop of water, nor any green thing. Yet how fascinating it was, in its barren grandeur, its setting of craggy mountains. And they two, alone in that spacious emptiness, tingling with youth and health and delight in each other. Not even the thousand years that were as yesterday, to mountain and desert, could chill them with a sense of transience or futility.

And far below them—as if a thousand years were indeed yesterday—the unchanging company of shaggy men, shaggy yaks and donkeys crawled like flies along the trade route of the ages. Eve watched them, fascinated; but Lance was watching her face, considering neither the flies below nor the hills above their plateau. For theirs it was, while they lightened its eternal desolation with their passing flash of life.

Suddenly Eve turned to him, her eyes alight. ‘Oh darling, come on! I could gallop for ever on this top-of-the-world.’

And down the shelving plain they galloped, exulting in the freedom and swiftness, in the champagne sparkle of that bone-dry air.

They camped at Niemo, the last stage of their outward journey. To-morrow—Leh; real beds and a Residency and Kaye Lenox to welcome them: Kaye who had persistently spoilt twelve-year-old Eve, under her mother’s disapproving eyes, in the good days that had ended so tragically for them all.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

When to-morrow came they rose in the dark and dressed by the light of one candle; Eve losing everything and tumbling over everything, laughing and swearing at random. And, just as the sky began to lighten, they set out at a brisk pace on their seventeen mile march to Leh.

Up the valley to the inevitable Pass, it was easy and pleasant riding in the keen air of dawn, watching the stars fade and the savage hills come to life. From the summit they had a vision of Trans-Himalayan peaks, dazzling against the blue; and below them the Indus again, a slow, majestic volume of water, framed in strips of living green. Down by the river, when they got there, it was almost England, on a grander scale; grass and willows and grey-leafed buckthorn, plash of water and birds without end. So beautiful it was, so peaceful, that Eve decreed they must off-saddle and bathe and feed—and dream. Beauty that so caught at her heart demanded more than a passing salute. It must be absorbed through every faculty; only so might it some day be born again in music.

While Lance tethered the ponies and wandered off to choose the aptest spot for a bathe, Eve flung herself down on the cool turf under a willow, the mighty Indus gurgling beside her as though a tame lion licked her hand.

A light air breathed on the water, shivering clear reflections to a blue-green blur, just stirring the tamarisk leaves; and the quiet place was alive with birds. All over the meadows sandpipers were crying; and on the wet sand wagtails walked delicately. Higher up, where the river had split into three streams, a tall cliff sprang from the water’s edge, crowned with red-roofed buildings: and higher than all, lovelier than all, the silver lights and grape-blue shadows of the snow line.

Eve, who loved solitude, had seldom been alone for a full hour in these first strangely illumined weeks of her new life; had not even desired to be alone; a tribute to Lance and to the quality of his love. Now, quite suddenly, the craving came upon her, though she had not been aware of it till he vanished. Then the green stillness, the blue of distance and the murmuring river whispered ‘Look—listen.’ There was neither speech nor language, but their voices were heard among them.

She hoped that Lance would not come back too soon. For the moment, she was beyond all that. No human feeling—even for Lance, even for her father—was quite comparable to the feeling wrought in her by such a scene.

Minutes passed—and he did not return. Alone with her dreaming self, in the almost unearthly beauty of mountain and river, awe invaded her, as in a great cathedral. Her very thoughts were stilled. There seemed nothing left of her but that all-absorbing sense of beauty which was the core of her being; nothing left of the world but the blue and pearl sheen of the river, the blue-green of summer leafage, and those far peaks against the fierce blue of morning. . . .

Something lightly touched her cheek. With a start she turned her head—and it was Lance.

A moment he stood there smiling into her eyes; then he too dropped down on to the grass, slid an arm under her and drew her closer to him, resting his cool cheek against hers. With a sigh she yielded to the charm of his touch: yet he said not a word. He did not even kiss her. And more dearly she loved him for his tacit understanding of her withdrawn mood than any lame words could express. Simply to feel him there, at one with her, added the last touch of magic to the spell that was upon her. To be made disturbingly aware of him would be to break the spell.

And the vain thought slipped into her mind—if life could only be like this journey of theirs, an affair of simple toil and needs, of simple joy in the most natural bond on earth: no falsification of the great realities within or without. It was the lesser things, the insistent trivialities, that most often drove a wedge between two who had willed to be one. Yet her saner self, tucked away in a corner, knew that it was the lesser things which threw the greater into high relief. Without the stimulant of threats and difficulties their very love might lose its savour. An exciting yet perilous affair, this every-day adventure of living together, for fallible mortals, in whom the best so often wrought evil, and the worst wrought good.

Always that whisper of danger—the curse of her vivid imagination. With a small shiver, she pressed closer to Lance. He turned and kissed her passionately—and the spell was broken.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In the full blaze of early afternoon from the crest of a low ridge, they had their first sight of that strange desert town, set among rust-red hills, encircled by the great main ranges—Karakoram and Kailas. The Indus, no tamed lion here, surged like the sea over its stony bed: and beyond the river only five more miles of glaring sand and crumbling rocks, like islands in a yellow lake. Above a belt of trees, that screened Leh, towered an immense building. Behind it, a rock-perched castle and monastery seemed carved out of the hill they crowned; and somewhere, in the great Karakoram range, lurked Eve’s true objective, the Kardong Pass.

While, in fancy, she had reached it, Lance found himself considering the chances of a few days’ shikar in a region quite new to him. If Kaye Lenox happened to suggest it, would Eve, by any chance, understand?

As he glanced at her, wondering, she turned to him eagerly.

‘Almost there! The dear ponies are a bit tired. So are we. But let’s finish in style.’

And the ponies, tired but game, took at an easy canter that long track across the rising desert.

Trees drew nearer and scattered houses; till they came to a rustic bridge and up a narrow lane to a big double door in the city wall, framing a sunlit vista of shops and houses—the famous bazaar and polo ground of Leh.

High above it, on a base of solid rock, loomed the palace they had seen from afar—nine stories of jutting windows and carved balconies—dominating the town; and all along the palace side of the street a line of giant poplars struck a note of grace and beauty, their leafy spires rising a hundred and sixty feet into the air.

If the human beings, far below them, had neither grace nor beauty, they were fascinating; they were strange. Lamas, in red gowns and turned-up hats; Ladāki men and women in shapeless tunics, traders from Yarkand, from Bokhara and Baltistan. Fewer animals here than in an Indian city; and not a single wheeled vehicle. The only wheels in Leh were prayer wheels, twirled by the pious to keep them in effortless touch with heaven, and the wheels of a British perambulator, in which the doctor-sahib’s first-born took the air. The Ladākis probably saw that perambulator as some unknown form of prayer wheel constantly turning for the child’s benefit—and respected it accordingly.

That restful absence of wheels more than any other strangeness made Eve feel as if they had stepped into an imaginary world. Riding along at a foot’s pace, silent and absorbed, she found herself contrasting the strangeness of Leh with the more virile and evil strangeness of Peshawar—that fascinating city through which she had ridden, on an early April morning, fifteen months ago: the animals and the Border ruffians, the wailing music and dark narrow by-ways, hot-beds of secret vice. Then as now, Lance was her escort; a friendly, detached Lance, who lived behind shutters.

Turning, she looked at him riding beside her, in his drill coat and breeches; alert, interested, his athletic body graceful and at ease in any pose, never more so than in the saddle. Dear and familiar now in every aspect; yet the artist in her could still appraise him, apart from loving him. One could rely on a man like that—gallant and straight, with a flash of temper, a dash of obstinacy and more than a dash of humour, with brains and character enough to carry him wherever he desired to go. Under the easy lightness one could feel the inborn soldier. By every law, divine and human, he was her man; yet in some respects, the real Lance still lived behind shutters. Even to her he would only open them now and then: which was no grievance, but an essential part of all that most attracted her and most securely held her.

He had ridden on a little ahead; and as they swerved down a side street, he waved his crop at an approaching horseman.

‘Here comes your Kaye, shikarring the lost sheep of the House of Desmond!’

Kaye it was, unmistakably, six foot two of him; the broad shoulders and long legs that he used to grumble at because they involved expensive horses. He could afford them now.

As he reached them, she flung out a hand. He caught it and swung it lightly, nodding a welcome to Lance.

‘This is great! And you’re looking splendid.’ He too was aware of the transfiguring touch, the subtle change in her. ‘Wish my Chris was here to give you a proper welcome. We’re a bachelor crowd. I’ve got a General and a Colonel Sahib at the moment, both up for shikar.’

‘Shikar going strong this year?’ Lance inquired casually.

‘A.1. Are you very keen to sample it?’

Lance nodded, with a side glance at Eve that brought a smile to Kaye’s eyes.

‘Right. We’ll see about it,’ he said in a guarded tone.

But Eve—unheeding or unaware—was intent upon those massed mountains beyond Leh; and again Kaye watched her for a moment. Then he touched her arm.

‘Come out of it, Eve, and be sociable.’

‘Can we see it from here?’ Eve asked, ignoring the command.

‘We can.’ He ranged himself beside her. ‘Follow my finger. Got that dint in the ridge?’

‘Yes—got it.’

She was serious, intent. Lance found her lifted face and eyes better worth watching than any mere dint in a mountain range: and he liked Kaye for that swift response to her mood.

‘Got the heap bump in the middle of the dint?’ Kaye went on. ‘At close quarters it’s the great rock that marks the Kardong Pass.’

‘It doesn’t look very far,’ she mused; and both men caught the note of yearning in her voice.

‘It’s a rise and drop of six thousand feet from here. A long day’s outing. And you won’t be allowed to attempt it—Mrs Desmond, for a clear week, after your great trek.’

Eve drew herself up. ‘I’m not under orders.’

‘Well, I am. Straight from Gulmarg. And you can’t go without official permission. I’m British Joint Commissioner here, remember! So keep calm, and try to take a passing interest in my palace and my Burra Sahibs. One’s a friend of yours, General Maclean, commanding Peshawar.’

‘Oh, the dear man. I knew him there. He’s got the ugliest and nicest face that was ever invented. He and Uncle Vinx were subs together.’

‘So he told me. And his friend Colonel Myles was in the same batch. He’s commanding the 9th Sikhs now, at Kohat. So you’ll see him again. Not brainy, but quite a good little sport. To-morrow afternoon’—he turned to Lance—‘we’ll show you polo as he is played in the main street of Leh.’

‘Polo—in that street? Good God!’ From Lance, the devout player, it was a pious ejaculation. ‘Wish they’d let me have a whack.’

‘You won’t, after you’ve seen how they handle their gees. But it’s exciting to watch. Polo’s hot and fast in Leh. Here we are. Please admire my Chinese arch. We were a palace once.’

It was now a delightful house; its English-looking lawns studded with what Eve called ‘the epidemic of potted lamas,’ and beyond it, a wood of lordly trees refreshed the eye after shadeless miles of glare. On the main lawn stood the flagstaff, proudly waving its Union Jack; and the sight of that familiar flag, lording it over the Other End of Nowhere, sent a small stir down Eve’s spine, as if a band had struck up ‘God save the King.’

Standing near it on the lawn, they looked back over the yellow plain to the strip of green that marked the Indus, and away to the snow-line, soft yet clear, like a silver frieze between violet mountain walls and a ceiling of passionate blue. In this dry keen air all colours were intensified, all shadows dark as purple nightshade, all far things looked astonishingly near.

Eve gazing enchanted, while the men talked of other matters, decided that she could just manage to wait a week in these surroundings; though no doubt by the day after to-morrow she would feel rested and restless, eager to be on the move again. For she had caught the fever of travel in its most beguiling form. Each onward step in their journey had come to seem less an attainment in itself than a starting point for the next stage, and the next . . .

Chapter 7

. . . This I am; for this you take me
I love with what I know of good . . .
And what I shall be, you will make me.
— Gerald Gould

The wide main street of Leh was cleared for that promised game of polo—polo in its most primitive form, before British officers revised its rough and ready rules and converted it into the finest game on earth.

Lance Desmond cared for no other ‘madness of a ball’ as he cared for polo, played no other game with the same inspired élan. It kept every faculty alert. It gave a man the excitement of danger, and battle without its horror. It satisfied his taste for life with an edge to it; and, above all, it was played in close fellowship with the creature he loved best on earth. Normally he cared little for looking on, either at life or games; but primitive polo played in a main thoroughfare was novel enough to excite his interest; and ponies were always worth watching.

A shower had sprinkled the dust and a breeze stirred the poplar branches high overhead; for their trunks were clean as a ship’s mast to a great way from the ground. Shops, balconies and roof-tops were packed with people.

Two balconies, in an upper storey, sufficed for the few English onlookers wedged in by that dense crowd of Asiatics. Besides the Residency party and the Kashmir Diwan there was Dr Schuster, of the Moravian mission, and his young wife, the owner of Leh’s one wheeled vehicle. Pennell, the English padre, had a sister, and a passing traveller—a brisk young man, gold prospecting for a company.

To Kaye’s party had just been added an American woman-explorer, hoping to reach Yarkand. She was eager and intelligent, brimful of searching questions. She had a pair of fine blue eyes and a thrusting chin that would carry her past every obstacle in the way she would go. She had fastened like a barnacle on to Kaye, who was full of information, and had a sincere liking for Americans, having married a half-American himself. She had also pursued Lance with friendly attentions, and frightened him out of his life. For although there was no shyness in him, he was terrified of ‘the predatory petticoat’—he that hardly knew the meaning of fear. She was immensely interested in Kaye’s ‘little trip’ to the Shayok valley; and had pounced with zest on that lonely lake dammed up by one of the world’s greatest glaciers. She had the weakness of her country for the ‘world’s greatest’ anything: and she would have paid a large sum for leave to accompany Kaye. But this was an adventure that money could not compass; a wholesome discovery for the moneyed, once in a while. She wanted none the less to hear all about it, to see the great chain of bonfires that would flash a warning from the heights all down the Indus valley.

Now—while they waited for the players—she was questioning Kaye so intensively that he must be wishing he had never said ‘glacier’ in her hearing. Eve, sitting next to him, was enjoying all the human by-play, in her still fashion, after weeks alone with Nature and Lance. She enjoyed as much as anything the way he had secured the end chair, with only her beside him, so that he could watch his sacred polo without being bothered to make talk.

He leaned forward suddenly. ‘Here they come!’

From the far end of the street they came—sixteen of them, eight a side; a queer mixed crew; Yarkandi merchants, the State compounder, the Post Office babu and the Serai Master, who fancied himself as a crack player. One of them—a big fellow on a clumsy mount—cantered off to the far end of the street, to guard the goal.

Lance promptly spotted three Yarkandi ponies, strong, sure-footed, and hard as nails; not up to polo height; but the lively grey mare, who was leading, ought to race and jump like a bird. He resolved to do some bargaining afterwards, whether he could afford it or no. Her rider, the Serai Master, might prove amenable; and Lance had fallen in love at sight. That was his way with horses. He would have that lively Yarkandi. He would call her Grey Dawn; make a perfect thing of her for Eve. He watched her sidling and curveting, eager to start: for her rider carried the ball.

A signal shot rang out. On came the players, full gallop, till they reached the line midway between the goals. Then the Serai Master flung up the ball; smacked it as it fell, and sent it hurtling through the dust, fifteen men after it, shouting madly. The whole crowd shouted, whistled, yelled. The State band, in a balcony opposite, broke into a blare of sound.

As they neared the goal, Back charged boldly into the onrush of horses and men. It looked like certain death, but the next moment he was out in the open, brandishing his polo stick, well away with the ball.

The others had wrenched their ponies round, regardless of back sinews, and were in full pursuit, the grey mare leading again; Lance, in spirit, on her back, the ribbons between his fingers. . . .

As the big fellow turned and swung up his stick, there was a sharp crack; shouts breaking into cheers—a goal!

But in that free fight, masquerading as polo, the goal could not be reckoned till one of the players had dismounted and collared the ball. It was the striker who swung out of the saddle, still holding the rein, while his opponents closed in and rode over him, hitting out with fine impartiality at man or ball. Yet he very soon reappeared with it, and sprang into the saddle, cheered afresh by the crowd and the persevering band.

Again the signal shot; and again they were at it, pell mell; up and down, to and fro, the ponies ruthlessly wrenched and spurred. The Post Office babu, ‘fat and scant of breath,’ was beside himself with excitement. A smart stroke sent the ball whirring up like a startled chikor.⁸ The Serai Master caught it in mid-air and swiped it across the street—straight at the corner of the balcony, where Lance was leaning forward, absorbed.

Before the others realised, he had jerked sideways, pushing Eve towards Kaye. The ball whizzed between them, perilously near his temple; struck the wall behind and bounded back into the street.

Lance righted himself and laughed.

‘Neatly dodged!’ he said; and was checked by the anguish in Eve’s eyes.

‘Terrified?’ he asked in a low tone, as a man behind the Diwan stood up and shouted a warning to the players. ‘It was a close shave. But these little things will happen. Hold up, darling,’ he added under his breath. ‘It’s over—and no damage.’

‘Oh, but as it came——” She could not tell him how, in that fraction of a second, she had seen him dead with terrible clearness, had felt the arrow pierce her heart. But her lips were shaking; and his hand cautiously sought hers and closed on it, with a quick hard pressure, while Kaye warded off kind inquiries.

Then he leaned forward again; and in two minutes he had forgotten the errant ball that might have ended his life.

Not so Eve. Her pleasure in the game was at an end. She sat there in a tense composure, trying not to see other balls fatally coming at him; realising, in advance, the strain it would be, watching him play polo. Yet if she tried to slip out of it, he would be dejected; so dearly they loved a feminine audience, men and boys. Tony, the small brother in England, Peter de Cray on board ship—whatever they played at, it was always, ‘Watch me!’

She watched him now surreptitiously, so close beside her, yet in spirit miles away. She knew it was not only the game that so enthralled him. It was the ponies. And a faint prick of jealousy warned her that, on occasion, she might resent their dominion over him.

And Lance, intent on the grey mare, was following her every movement; raging when her owner jerked her mercilessly this way and that. Off he went again with the ball; too close on it for a free stroke. But he swung up his stick, missed—and struck the mare’s fetlock so sharply that Lance swore under his breath.

Next moment he swore more profanely still. For the brute, having lamed her, was urging her on, spurring her cruelly when she stumbled in a vain attempt to obey.

At that, Lance saw red. Springing to his feet, he shouted at the man to desist.

His voice just carried above the babel; and all eyes were turned on him.

The Serai Master looked up, laughed and spurred the mare again viciously.

Lance, infuriated, leaned over to Kaye.

‘Can’t they call that devil to order? Can’t I nip down and see to the mare? He’ll damage her for good——’

‘Steady on, Lance,’ Kaye soothed him, seeing that he was carried beyond himself. ‘Go down, if you like. He won’t thank you for offering first aid.’

‘I don’t want his damned thanks. I want that mare. Look at him!’

He shouted again to no purpose. He was in a blazing rage; and Kaye liked him the better for it.

‘There’s a door behind you,’ he said, ‘leads down to the street. If you’re after Uzman, he knows a little Urdu. He’s not a bad chap really. It just doesn’t strike him——’

‘Wish to God I could strike him,’ Lance retorted.

‘None of that,’ Kaye said quickly, but Lance had vanished: and the Serai Master, seeing that the mare was useless, had hustled her off the ground.

The interruption was brief. The Serai Master reappeared, on a fresh mount, and the game hurtled on. But Lance did not return at once; and Eve could picture him fussing tenderly over the damaged mare. She wanted to be there too. And he probably wasn’t giving her a thought. He had not even glanced at her when he dashed off. These ponies!

When at last he did return, there was a murmur of approval from the men. Miss Thorold’s fine blue eyes were eloquent, and General Maclean screwed up his indiarubber features; a way he had, when he was pleased.

‘Did you give it him proper?’

‘Oh, I gave it to him proper,’ Lance replied in his level voice, but a glance at his face told Eve that he was bubbling over inside. ‘Surprised him a bit. Quite a fresh point of view! Of course he’ll carry on just the same with the rest. But I’ve got her.’

Kaye turned quickly. ‘Got that mare?’

‘Rather. Dirt cheap. Three hundred. He took it for a joke at first that I was after bidding for a lame pony. But I’d handled her leg and sized up the damage. I’ll soon put her night. And she won’t have her mouth sawed at or be spurred like that again.’

‘She’s in luck,’ said Maclean—a keen polo player in younger days.

And as the rest reverted to the game, Lance looked full at Eve.

‘A sinner—am I?’

‘You know you are.’ But her eyes said other things; and in any case he was triumphing, simply.

‘Not a miserable one! I can trust Kaye for the cash and pay him back in sections. Eve, she’ll be a gem when I’ve seen to her for a bit.’ He paused and added in a lower tone, ‘She’s my honeymoon present to you.’

‘O—oh——’

Eve let out a breath of rapture; and his gaze lingered on her face. It was vexatious not being able to kiss her. He could only say, ‘I planned it all while I watched her play. I christened her in advance.’

‘Tempting Providence!’ she murmured, ashamed of that passing jealousy.

‘Well, Providence was looking the other way! Grey Dawn she is: for her colour and for luck, which I thought would fetch you. Doesn’t the grey dawn herald the perfect day?’

Eve gazed at him, loving him for his gift and the name and the thought behind it.

‘I’ll thank you properly—afterwards,’ she said softly; and he gave her one of his quick looks.

‘I’m not deserving any of that. I was crazy to get her,’ he confessed, as wild shouts drew him back to the game he loved best on earth.

Chapter 8

There must be very two before there can be very one.
— Emerson

Not until late that evening, when the others had dispersed, did Lenox broach the subject of shikar, just as Desmond began to fear he had forgotten all about it.

There were ten of them at dinner, including the Pennells with their guest; and after weeks of marching it felt strange to sit at a well-appointed table—glass and silver and roses; to leave it for a drawing-room that seemed a fragment of England transplanted to Leh. There were English chintzes and curtains, standard lamps and a cottage piano, pale-tinted walls and a few good water colours, some of them painted by Kaye, the son of an artist mother. From his father came the strongly marked features, the height and breadth and the zest for mountaineering; from the link with Colonel Ian Challoner, his brotherly affection for Eve: on the whole, a personality congenial to Lance Desmond, who would not otherwise have been counting on him to settle that cash transaction in the morning. As it was, he felt shy of confessing his brazen assumption, though assured by Eve that he need not worry. Kaye had a knack of putting people at their ease; a knack as invaluable with Asiatics as with the relays of travellers, explorers and sportsmen who made constant demands on his hospitality during his brief summer residence in Leh.

Lance watched him after dinner, paying the price of his knack, while Miss Thorold bestowed on him her genuine but embarrassing ‘reactions’ to the discovery of that fragment of England on the ‘Roof of the World.’

‘It’s fine the way you people carry your bit of England to the ends of the earth,’ she told him, with true intent to please. ‘I reckon it’s proof of your racial strength that you spend the best years of your lives in this amazing country; and you don’t merge. You’ve the power to rule others without losing any real part of yourselves.’

That she spoke the simple truth made it none the less embarrassing for a modest man; and Lance admired Kaye’s coolness under fire. He himself kept a cautious distance from the friendly ‘enemy’; and felt safer when he had seen her anchored to a Bridge table. He wanted to enjoy Eve’s music in peace. For of course she had her fiddle; and Kaye could accompany her just well enough not to cramp her style. They caused quite a little stir with Vanessa’s violin version of ‘The Lark Ascending’; and finally—to Eve’s immense satisfaction—routed Bridge. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

When at last they three were left alone, she snatched up her fiddle case and blew kisses to the men.

‘I ran away with myself; and I’m tired. I’m going to sleep like several tops! I want you two to know each other properly. So I’ll leave you to your pipes and your men’s talk. Very good for Lance after weeks of unadulterated Eve!’

And before either could protest, she was gone.

For many minutes they sat smoking contentedly. Both were thinking of her: Lance more aware of her when she had gone from his sight—and aware in new ways; Kaye deciding that the ‘Colonel’s kid’ was in luck.

As Lance made no move, he presently remarked, ‘She wants us to know each other properly. How about a spot of shikar in the near hills? Or don’t you feel like leaving her alone just now?’

The tactfully offered excuse for refusal, gave Lance pause. Of course he hated leaving her; yet a vague restlessness, which he did not trouble to analyse, made him want that ‘spot of shikar’ with an intensity that must not be revealed lest it be misunderstood.

‘I’d sooner not leave her, but of course I’m keen,’ he remarked in a careful voice. ‘I’ve hardly handled a gun this leave—for obvious reasons.’

Kaye smiled as one who understood.

‘They do monopolise a man! But if you’re keen, we could start with the others and put in a few days, not far from here. Eve wouldn’t care to come?’

‘No. She can’t bear it.’

‘And she’ll give you leave of absence?’

Lance pondered that question. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘She’s a sport. She’ll understand.’

‘She’s her father’s daughter. Wish you could have known him. He’s the key to all that’s best and most difficult in Eve. He was one of the finest and most difficult men I ever struck.’

Seeing that Lance was interested, he enlarged on a theme that enabled him to throw fresh light obliquely on Eve by talking of the man who had made her in his own image. He spoke chiefly of that last tragic year, of his final attempt at reconciling his wife to India; and the stand he had made against his suppressed love for Vanessa Vane.

‘She never knew till near the end,’ Kaye added, ‘when his wife bolted Home on a rotten pretext—and typhoid broke him up. It was a hideous time; worst for that plucky child, who worshipped him and hated her mother——”

He paused. Lance said nothing.

‘I suspect the Colonel’s at the back of this journey—especially the Kardong.’

Lance nodded. ‘There’s more behind it than she’ll be letting anyone guess,—When d’you want to be rid of us?’

‘That’s a nice way to put it! Wish you could stay longer. But I must be off next week. It’s a stiffish outing, more climb than march; and we’ve got to carry along with us every conceivable necessity for four hundred miles, there and back. After the first two marches from here, we can count on nothing for man or beast: no supplies, no grass, no firewood; nothing but water.’

‘Good God!’ Lance murmured piously. There are times when even a British officer is impressed by the cheerful readiness of his kind to face any risk or hardship in the discharge of duty. ‘Some adventure!’

‘The finest that’s come my way for years. If only that brute of a glacier doesn’t splinter before we get there.’

‘How about you people, if it did?’

A curious look passed over Kaye’s face. ‘With any luck we’d manage to skip out of the way.’ He glanced at a photograph of his wife on the table near him: an attractive face full of character. ‘Just as well Chris happens to be at Home this summer. It would have been anxious work for her sitting in Gulmarg, knowing too much for her peace of mind. That sort of thing comes hard on the women. They don’t get the real spice of these little outings.’

He fell silent again. In spirit he was there already, over-leaping barriers and delays. ‘Life’s a queer adventure,’ he mused, staring into the fire. ‘We never quite know why we want to do certain things with all our faculties; nor even, half the time, why we do them—eh?’

Their eyes met in a look of understanding: and Lance, liking Kaye better than ever, found it quite a simple matter to speak of that cash transaction and the grey mare.

‘If you’d take a hundred and fifty on account, and the rest when next month’s screw comes in, your petitioner would ever pray!’

Kaye laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘My petitioner can save himself the trouble! If three payments would suit you better, I’m agreeable. And you can tell Eve that, if we go, they’d be delighted to have her at the Mission bungalow next door. But if she’d rather stay here on her own, my man’s Memsahib trained. I’ll make my salaam to her if she says “Go.”’

‘She will,’ Lance stated with conviction.

Fired by that conviction, he half hoped to find her awake: but he found the lamp in his dressing-room turned low, the bedroom in darkness, and Eve sleeping ‘like several tops.’ Just as well, perhaps. If he wanted her to see it sanely, he must catch her in a practical mood—— No: he was damned if he would manoeuvre for it. He would take his chance. His very eagerness to get the matter settled, perversely increased his reluctance to leave her: but the excitement of the polo match and talk of shikar had revived an essential part of him that had been in abeyance these few weeks. There were two halves of him now that would often pull opposite ways. Lover or no, he would still need, at times, a bracing whiff of the masculine atmosphere in which he had mainly lived; a passing freedom from emotional desires and demands. Though his heart might reproach him, his brain endorsed that natural instinct to maintain his inner lordship over the very part of himself that worshipped a woman. Because of it, his love for Eve was a finer thing than that of a man who must always be sitting in her pocket. And he sincerely hoped she would see it so.

For the first time he was aware of an inner check that frankly irked him, accustomed as he was, like any unattached young man, to follow his own bent. If you wanted to play polo—you played it. If you wanted to go out shooting or pig-sticking—you went. But once you are married, an end to all that. Lynch, the devout bachelor, would quote at him his favourite tag:

“He can’t go a-roving, or live his own life;
For he’s sold him his freedom to buy him a wife.”

Selfish and cynical—and not untrue. But if marriage meant anything to a man, he loved his bondage. In his own case, he loved it with more than passion. He would talk to Eve in the morning; tell her he was keen; and of course she would say, ‘Go.’ She would understand.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

As to that, he was not mistaken. Eve understood too well for her own comfort. She had known what would happen when she left those two together. And directly she opened her sleepy eyes next morning, and looked up at him—as he leaned on one elbow, pushing a lock of hair from her forehead with the tips of his fingers—she knew it had happened. His look and touch made her fiercely want to fling her arms round him, and tell him that she could not bear to let him go for three whole days. But she had already decided against that line of argument.

And he said nothing; only looked deep into her eyes and gave her ‘back pay’ for kisses they had missed last night. Then he dashed off to dress; for they had overslept, and must be ready to give Miss Thorold her send-off.

For several minutes Eve lay very still with closed eyes, schooling herself to behave like a sensible married woman, which she certainly was not yet, and probably never would be. Lance was a man’s man; and she would not have him otherwise. She had accepted him, sport and all; just as he had accepted her, music and all. But it was too soon for even a short break; and under her mask of stillness, her many selves were at war about it.

Her true devoted self wished him to be happy in his own way. Her possessive self resented the fact of his wanting to go; and how keenly he wanted it she know without telling. Deep in her primitive self lurked a vague fear of the next turning. This was the loveliest and most precious thing that had ever happened to her; and even a brief parting was fraught with the secret dread that is one with intense happiness.

Vexed with her idiot selves she thrust them aside, swallowed her half cold tea, and dashed into her clothes.

They were both ready in time for Miss Thorold’s ‘send-off.’ And when she had ridden away into the landscape, the others wandered round to the stables; but Lance slid a hand through Eve’s arm and drew her back into the house.

Then she knew it was coming; and she braced herself inside.

‘Let’s find a fire,’ was all she said, snuggling close to him. For though the sun blazed fiercely, the nights were cold, and the morning air had a nip in it, a dry sparkle that made one’s body feel light and tireless as a bird’s.

They found a big fire in Kaye’s study; and Lance, pulling her down into the armchair, looked searchingly into her eyes. This time a smile flickered in them, for she saw him suddenly as a child, wanting a piece of cake, half afraid to ask, not liking to snatch.

The arm that was under her tightened.

‘You’re a witch,’ he said. ‘I believe you know.’

‘Of course I know.’

She was cool and superior.

‘D’you always understand my thoughts long before?’

‘Only when they’re stark obvious.’

‘Well?’ The fervour of entreaty he put into that word tweaked her heart.

‘Well?’ she echoed with mild scorn. ‘You know you’re going—whatever I say.’

‘Not I. All depends how you say it.’

‘I’m going to say it in true angelic style.’ Deftly releasing herself, she perched on the smooth stuffed arm of his chair.

He looked up at her, half resentful.

‘What’s that for?’

‘I can’t be dignified and detached when I’m all crumpled up in your pocket.’

‘Thought you were going to be angelic.’

‘Wait and see!’

She looked down at him a moment. Their eyes met in laughter; and she managed to bring it off—as planned.

‘Run along, darling, if you want to, and play with your pop-gun. I know you’re pining to go and kill something.’

‘I’m not. There’s a deal more in it than that.’

‘Of course there is.’

To atone for the libel she gently ruffled his hair—a form of caress under which he was sometimes restive. But it was such fine thick hair, so ready to wave when ruffled; and he tried so hard to discourage that wave, because he said it made him look like a cinema star. When she had quite finished with it, he passed a hand carefully over the top of his head; and she carefully shed a kiss on it.

‘Go and be a temporary bachelor before you’ve forgotten how,’ she kept it up. ‘Have your little Declaration of Independence: and I’ll have mine. I’ll hark back and become Eve Challoner again! If she mayn’t tackle the Kardong, she can rush off on some wild lone explore——’

‘She jolly well won’t.’

The gold flecks came alight in his eyes; and Eve sprang nimbly out of reach.

‘Isn’t he terrified?’ she confronted him from the hearth-rug, with her lightly provocative air; but he was in earnest, knowing her venturesome spirit, her craze for the heights.

‘If that’s your tactics.’ he said with decision, ‘whatever you say, I won’t go at all.’

Dearly she longed to leave it at that; but pride would not permit. So she answered briskly, ‘My precious man, of course you’ll go. I’m nobly giving you leave. But if you have it your way, I’ll have it my way. It’s only fair.’

And twirling on her toes, she hummed to an old music-hall refrain, ‘I’m Eve Challoner, I am, I am!’

‘You little liar!’

As he leapt out of his chair, she darted down the length of the room—Lance after her.

It was a large room and she dodged him skilfully; but behind the writing table he cornered her; caught her up in his arms and carried her back to the hearthrug, so held that she could only retaliate by furiously ruffling his hair. Before she guessed his intent he had hoisted her on to a wide shelf near the mantelpiece and secured her ankles one in each hand. She, clutching the edge, feeling very undignified and insecure, had now no weapon of attack or defence. And he stood there gazing up at her, not realising how unimpressive and attractive he looked with his hair all anyhow.

‘There you are—and there you’ll stay,’ he coolly informed her, ‘till you give me your word that you’ll not run off exploring when I’m gone.’

The note of authority invariably spurred Eve to defiance. There was also the excitement of not quite knowing how far he would go.

‘What’ll you do if I won’t?’ she challenged him. ‘I warn you, sheik tactics will be wasted on me.’

‘Thanks for the hint! But I’m not that sort of specimen.’

‘Well, you’re behaving rather like an amateur sheik at this moment.’

He only grinned and gave her ankles the least little twist.

‘You’d better not——’

She caught at her shelf, defiance evaporating under his cool command of the situation.

‘Darling Lance, do stop showing off and take me down. The edge is very sharp and you’re bruising my ankles.’

‘Which is a lie,’ he murmured in parenthesis.

‘And listen—there’s Kaye coming.’ (His voice sounded in the front verandah.) ‘I can’t be discovered like this.’

Seeing his advantage he meanly pressed it. ‘Very well then; give me your word. And say you’re Eve Desmond, for better—or for very much worse!’

‘Owl of a man! Of course I am. I wouldn’t be anything else for millions of pounds.’

In a twinkling she was whisked off that shelf into the big armchair. He was on his knees, holding her hard, kissing her again and again in one of his swift silent gusts of passion. Then he soothed her insulted ankles, and vowed he wouldn’t go off on any old shikar.

‘I’d be lost without you; crazy to get back. I’ll tell Kaye.’

‘No, you won’t.’ (The pang of his going was eased surprisingly now she knew he felt like that.) ‘You’ll love it. And Eve Desmond won’t allow Eve Challoner to get uppish. Here’s Kaye. Now settle it—darling.’

‘You are a little trump,’ he said; and she saw relief steal into his face, as he scrambled to his feet, lest he should be caught kneeling to his own wife.

When Kaye entered, Eve was lying lazily in her chair, and Lance stood on the hearth-rug lighting a cigarette; very dignified and detached, quite oblivious of his rumpled head. Kaye, a very tactful person, seemed not even to notice that a hair was out of place, as Lance, with a lordly gesture, indicated his languid wife.

‘Make your salaam to her. She has said “Go.”’

Instinctively he put a hand up to his hair—and his face was a study.

‘You little devil!’ He swung round on her—spoiling the effect of Kaye’s salaam—and dashed out of the far door, to repair the damage, just as dapper Colonel Myles—not a hair, not a crease out of place—strolled in through the other one.

Chapter 9

This separate sovereign loveliness can rhyme
Only with its own moment.
— Gerald Gould

On the lawn, near the flagstaff, Eve sat alone, her hands clasped round her knees. The light of early morning lay clear and wide on the gleaming sands, and striped the far hills. In Leh it seemed worth being alive simply to breathe the sparkling air; and Eve was needing all its magic virtues to lessen the ache that had beset her afresh when she awoke to a disenchanted bedroom and an empty bed.

Lance had been gone more than twenty-four hours; though their parting yesterday at dawn seemed a week ago; so elastic is time, that skilful device invented by man to make his body and mind feel more at home in the vague spaciousness of eternity. For a young wife, left alone in a large and very empty bungalow, three days were three weeks; and in this pang of wrenching apart there was an almost physical pain, as if the half of oneself had been stolen away—a feeling not purely fanciful. The sense of a veritable unity between married lovers is rooted in truth. To them the body becomes precious because it is so much more than the body, even as in love there is so much more than love, as commonly conceived by those who ignore all the best that sex brings to a man and woman.

Eve, alight with love, had feared instinctively the red flame of passion: but Lance, unaware, was teaching her otherwise. Through contact with his mingled ardour and sanity, she was finding herself in new ways. The natural way of life seemed not so much changed as enriched, by the effect of his mind on hers, by the mysterious fitness of their closer relation—different as two sides of a coin, yet as indubitably one. Shy and aloof, she had made few friends of her own age; had been, mentally, very much alone; and she was the more alive to the charm of this close daily companionship. While it was still so deliciously new, the loss of it was hard to bear.

But presently a letter might come. Kaye had said he would try to get a man through. Meantime, she must live up to the valiant Eve of yesterday, and earn the promised reward—an amulet of Tibetan turquoise. Lance was also longing to present her with the head of an ibex; and she had had to say she would love it; though she could not bear the poor stuffed things with their glassy eyes; so dead, yet so alive. Could one ever be quite honest even with the dearest being on earth? Sincerity was a very precious thing, but a very ticklish business, not safe or suitable for indiscriminate use.

She had found it rather ticklish more than once yesterday with Miss Pennell, who had brains and imagination, both blunted a trifle by those unshakeable religious convictions that were a perpetual wonder to Eve. But she very soon found herself admiring this stranger woman, so large and purposeful and human, with her mannish ‘tailor-made’ and stout boots, her resolute features and clear brown eyes, full of a motherly kindness that contradicted her masculine aspect, and seemed begging you to believe that she was wholly woman within. The tragedy of the wrong envelope is barely understood except by those who know what it means to be thus ironically defrauded of their full human heritage. Eve, not knowing, was only aware of an underlying pathos that dissolved shyness, by quickening her sympathy.

She had not intended, that first day, to be drawn into the net laid for her by the friendly souls—doctor, padre and schoolmaster—who lived in the Mission compound. These kind stray people disturbed something in her that was still precious and unaccustomed, still faintly alarming, with which she would rather be left alone. And so she had resolved to remain. But a note from Miss Pennell, offering companionship in case Mrs Desmond felt lonely, had underlined the loneliness and undermined the resolve. She had surrendered to the suggestion of a stroll round Leh in the morning; a climb in the cool, after tea, up to the castle and the monastery. Naturally she would have preferred a solitary climb; but she could only hope that boredom might not be her portion.

Before starting, she had been cheered by the arrival of a dāk-runner with a mail letter from Anne Verity, the true mother of her spirit, who had begun by teaching her the violin and had ended by loving and understanding her as her own mother had never done in all her days. There was also a screed from Vanessa; and its final injunction—like most of Vanessa’s—was worth pondering: ‘Be happy to the full, my darling, while the chance is yours. Happiness is no vain and doubtful good. To enjoy the real thing, even for a few weeks, is worth all the cheerful content that passes for it in most of our lives. And don’t let the abounding energy of your Lance wear you out. Aunt Thea scolded me for letting you run off on such a strenuous honeymoon. But she doesn’t know the reason. You and I do——’

With Vanessa’s voice in her ears, she had forgotten to feel lonely. And after lunch she had written a long story about herself and Lance. But, as Vanessa knew Leh, it was to Anne she wrote of the shops and the monastery—the dirt and ugliness and endless dogs, the nuns sifting grain and monks idling round, the portraits of terrible gods disfiguring the walls. One solitary painting had captured her imagination; the great Wheel of Life with its six divisions, the six states through which the souls of men were said to keep revolving, according to merit. In a smaller circle were three creatures symbolising stupidity, lust and anger, the three devils that kept men bound to the Wheel. Only one god among them could break the chain of cause and effect: that was Kindness, a good god with twelve hands. And he needed all of them, for helping all the people who were in difficulties.

Anne would like that idea of the many-handed god. She would extract from it some pearl of wisdom peculiarly her own: a wisdom that sprang from the harmony of her brain and heart and spirit. In that sense, Anne Verity and Sir Vincent Leigh and her own father were the wisest people she knew. It was a quality that seemed to be distilled from suffering, bought at a price: and her ardent youth, craving the best, shrank instinctively from all that paying the price might involve. Anne—who had paid it—would not chide that cowardly shrinking.

Oh, to have climbed the hill behind Leh with Anne! What a rich experience it might have been! But it was kind, limited Miss Pennell who had appeared and carried her off in the cool of late afternoon.

First a scramble, up sheer rock and shale, to the empty castle, wedged into the hill; then on to a monastery, that out-soared the castle, where two lonely lamas lived in an odour of sanctity and ghi,⁹ tending a huge idol, whose head and shoulders were thrust through the upper storey. Round that shell of a place ran a narrow balcony; and there Eve found what she wanted—-a few minutes worth all the idols and the lamas and the pungent smells. It was as if she stood on the bridge of a ship, breasting an ocean of air, looking down on a vision of Leh, like a crop of mud pies, astonishingly far below; and beyond the corn fields and yellow desert, a far blue vista of hills, changing to purple in the early evening light.

The beauty of the scene and the hour brought sudden tears to her eyes; a troubled ache, not of the heart but of the spirit; a longing to press beyond things seen, to capture life’s guarded secrets that, like all unseizable things, keep their fascination for ever. . . .

From that height, it was a tedious descent to the town and its winding alleys, to the Residency garden and the empty bungalow. Sooner than face it, Eve had asked Miss Pennell to stay for dinner; had shed her shyness and talked unlimited nonsense, releasing the older woman’s vein of dry humour, leading her away from ‘interesting facts’ to talk of real human difficulties—the difficulty of working and teaching and not losing heart, in a country saturated with the most mechanical form of religion ever devised by man. Yet these simple Ladākis, reared in that barren faith, committed fewer sins than many so-called Christians, or pious Moslems who worshipped the living God.

Here was a puzzle for the true believer; and Miss Pennell had no cheap solution to offer; for which Eve liked her the more. To live and work in Tibet, she admitted, was to suffer the loss of many comfortable illusions; and the same might be said of the Border, known to her chiefly through her dearest friend, Dr Grace Yolande, head of the Mission hospital at Kohat. And when Eve revealed that Kohat was her own destination, Miss Pennell’s tongue had been unloosed in praise of her friend.

‘She’s a tireless worker. Nothing daunts her unconquerable spirit. If you take the trouble to go and see her, Mrs Desmond, you’ll find her better company and a better friend than most of your smart station Memsahibs who look down their noses at the “Mission crowd.”’

That was after dinner over coffee: and the further talk that sprang from it had fired Eve’s interest in this unknown Grace Yolande, who could strike a spark of eloquence from her homely friend, and quicken intimacy between two chance-met women hundreds of miles away.

Before coffee was removed, she had found herself talking to that virtual stranger of the shyest theme on earth. A week ago she would have refused to believe that she could utter a word on the subject of religion to the sister of a mission padre—and a theologian at that. For Eve had no theology. Her own private religion was less a conviction than an intimation, winged with hope. And precisely because the spiritual values of life meant so much to her, the attitude of the churchily religious seemed to her at times almost profane; while to them it was her searching spirit that savoured of profanity. That had been one of her many sins in younger days at home, when she had asked for bread and had been given stones. Now, in Lance, she had encountered a clear, profound conviction, that influenced her the more because he so rarely spoke of it. Sceptic or no, she could respect and understand a conviction of that order—a higher kind of harmony between desire of the spirit and knowledge of the mind.

But of doubts and higher harmonies she could not speak to kind, intelligent, firmly-believing Miss Fennell. She could only put in a shy word or two for the men and girls of her own generation, so often unfairly dismissed as irreligious because they had no taste for Church services. Though they thought little and talked less about serious things, the best of them—she ventured to assert—did cherish some sort of sacred ideal, if it was only, ‘I believe in Goodness and Beauty Everlasting ‘: and one might have a poorer faith than that. But in the world, as they found it, there seemed no footholds anywhere. Honestly afraid of self-delusion, they found, in services staled by repetition, mainly a tissue of insincere protestations and false sentiment. If they could not have a genuine religion, they would rather have none: that was the attitude of the few who did think things out. And Miss Pennell—being a very human person—appeared to recognise it as a conceivable point of view, though miles removed from her own.

They had talked till eleven: and, at parting, Eve had felt able to confess, without awkwardness, her desire for a day to herself. She would lunch with the Schusters. For the rest, she would rather be left to absorb Leh in her own fashion.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

So this morning, she must ‘hark back’—as threatened. She must become Eve Challoner, who loved being alone in new surroundings. And a secret hope hovered that music might come of it: something exquisite fitted to express this new wellspring of happiness, that would never again—her prophetic spirit felt—possess quite the same unclouded morning quality. That was the wonder of music. It could enshrine the inexpressible, like no other medium on earth. Whenever she played her own little Ode to Joy (if she could but achieve it) that morning radiance would visit her heart again. But the winged thing was wilful in its coming and going. To-day at least she would give it a chance. She would go right away alone; set her harp in the wind and listen for those ghostly melodies ‘from the other side of silence,’ that she was shy of calling inspiration.

At the moment, she was listening for sounds more earthly, the coming of a possible letter from Lance.

And soon after breakfast it came: a brief note, that brought a glow to her heart and to her ears the sound of his voice.

‘My Treasure,—What are you doing there all alone? I long to know; and I can’t hear a sound of you. But Kaye is getting this through for me, to give you good morning and all my heart’s love. It can only be a scrap to say I’m “in the pink”—leaving the rest to your vivid imagination! These wild hills are magnificent. We’ve good kubber¹⁰ of ibex and markhor higher up. So we’ll be off before dawn. I’m wishing you here in my arms at this moment; but I know how you hate the slaughter business, which it isn’t whatever!

‘Keep an eye on your venturesome self for my sake.

‘Always and altogether yours,

‘Lance.

‘P.S.— If you’ll scribble a note just to let me know you haven’t evaporated, the shikarri who takes this will track us down somehow.

‘L. D.’

The note she scribbled kept her happily in touch with him for an hour: and after that she neither needed nor desired human contact. With a song in her heart and music hovering in her brain, she strolled alone through the winding side-streets of Leh, as no English woman could dare to do through the by-ways of an Indian city.

From her undesired lunch with the Schusters she escaped early, and went wandering up the stream behind the town, rücksack strapped to her shoulders; for she was not returning to dinner. Besides her picnic meal, there was paper and pencil, a bathing dress and a small volume of Mary Webb, whose prose had the quality of music.

It was a heavenly afternoon: the air ice-cool and sparkling. The talkative stream and the birds kept her company; chiff-chaffs and redstarts, but not many larks, her favourites of all, for their ecstatic song and tireless flight, beating their wings at the casements of heaven.

The higher she mounted, the wider and nobler were the views that opened out below; and she alone in the midst of it all, loving these hours of solitude, perceiving now that she had need of them; need to stand back, as it were, from the happiness that was slipping through her fingers every day, every hour. Already it was doing strange things to her precious individual self, this gracious intimacy of marriage; new knowledge quickening her sympathies, her response to Nature and art—a blossoming of all her finest functions. Already, in these few weeks, the ‘I’ that was Eve Challoner and the ‘I’ that was Lance Desmond had become mysteriously blended into the ‘we’ that was both, yet not precisely either; so that, between them, they were creating a new spiritual being, as surely as they might one day create an actual being, who would be both, yet not exactly either. . . .

The cry of a startled bird brought her imagination down from its flights, and set her considering the chances of a bathe before tea. The stream had widened to a pool, green and limpid; not a human creature within miles of her. In two minutes she was out of her clothes, into her gown: a long, slim figure, the sun warm on her limbs, the rock striking cold against her bare feet.

Then she plunged, Bliss following her; and the first shock of ice-cold water was agony. But the after exhilaration too poignantly recalled the joy of bathing on the march; and she scrambled out with a little dragging ache at her heart. Lance ought to be with her, instead of stalking beautiful harmless creatures to rob them of their lives.

And yet—did she really want even Lance for these few hours? Though the music she sought still eluded her, she knew it was hovering in her brain, or in this wide scene; and his presence would scare it away.

After tea, perhaps——?

As the sun slipped, down the sky and the light fell slantwise on hill and valley, as if a different air breathed over them, the charm began to work, the charm of silence and loneliness and a hushed lovely unrest. Utterly still she sat, leaning against a rock, fingers plunged in the cool grass, while the secret forces—Life, Nature, Music—moved within her to their own ends; lifting her beyond happiness, beyond peace, into light—more light as her spirit went soaring up. . . .

Slowly she lost grip of outer sensations, the rock behind her shoulders, the grass under her hands. Slowly, without volition, her eager personal self was dissolved in the stillness of creative fervour—a stillness that carried her unfailingly to the mysterious core of things, where conscious effort ceased: thought after thought dissolving, leaving her mind empty and radiant as the sky. She need only hold her breath and listen.

She listened—for how long she could not tell.

A winged-shaped cloud over the snows had caught fire. It was filled with golden light. And as she gazed, in a tranced fascination, her brain was filled with a heavenly melody, known to her heart as its very own.

Startled by the thrill of recognition, her detached self wondered—why—how?

And suddenly she knew it for the music she had followed in the golden cloud at Shargol; had lost, when Lance dragged her back into the verandah. Lost? She might have known. Any flying fragment of beauty, captured in expression, was alive for evermore: not dead but sleeping, in those dark depths where nothing was forgotten. The evening stillness, the fight in that lesser cloud had enticed it back into her conscious mind. It would not escape her again.

Reeling for pencil and paper, she jotted down the recaptured melody. Out of it harmonies would grow as naturally as leaves and flowers from a seed. . . .

When she ‘came to’ the sun was low in the northwest, the snows flushed where his light caught them. The clear far scene was taking on opal hues; the sands a glowing ochre-yellow; the castle and monastery standing boldly out above the massed trees of Leh.

It must be well after dinner time. She had forgotten to bring her watch, forgotten to eat her picnic meal. From long sitting, she felt cramped and chilled; for, at twelve thousand feet, summer changed to autumn when the sun declined. Her brief meal ended, she set off homeward at a brisk pace, glad with the peculiar joy of the artist who seeks—and finds. As stars blossomed in the sky, lights blossomed in the town. But she noticed little. She was still in the clouds, beauty vibrating in her from such depths that it was almost pain. Yet, even in the clouds, her brain was working with a swiftness, a precision rare in her, except when music was her theme . . .

That evening she was not lonely. Tired from her long outing, she flung herself into an armchair and gazed at the leaping flames, wondering afresh over the fascination of light: sun and fire and stars, a swaying lantern, a street lamp in a dark road, even a lighted shred of cotton wick in oil. Light was life; and for her it was inspiration. She was not shy of using the word to herself, in this elated hour.

Till past midnight she sat alone by the wood fire—most companionable of inanimate things; her brain evolving harmonies to enrich her melody.

Then out came the fiddle; and there in the firelight she played snatches and fragments of the lovely thing. Writing and playing by turns, she lost all sense of time; till weariness fell on her brain like a dropped curtain; and she found that it was one in the morning.

To-morrow had arrived—the day of his return. For those few absorbing hours she had forgotten everything. She had even forgotten Lance. For more than six hours hardly a thought of him had entered her head. Very unwifely, from the sentimental point of view. But from the sane point of view, she did not love him one atom less than if she had been vainly hankering for him the whole time. Probably he forgot all about her when he was stalking those poor harmless creatures. Though they had willed to be one flesh and one spirit, there must be times when their separate selves would prevail; especially as one of the selves happened to be an artist.

And see what she had achieved in those few hour’s. You could not make music like that, except at a price; nor find yourself unless you lost yourself. And her love, after all, was the seed from which her achievement sprang. Losing herself in Lance, she had found herself in this uprush of music. But, she would not tell him of her passing lapse, lest he might understand too well the power, not herself, that could seize her and carry her far away.

Tired, with a great exaltation, she crept to bed.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And all the next morning she sat in the little wood above the Residency, where the stir of birds and the majesty of trees wove new spells. Not till lunch time did she remember with compunction the kind people in the Mission compound; and feeling the more contrite because she had no earthly need of them, she dashed off a note to Mrs Schuster, bidding them all to tea with her on the Residency lawn. It might help to pull her through the last dragging hours that would stretch out like elastic.

The Schusters came and the two Pennells with their gold-seeker, and they all sat round the flagstaff and made appropriate remarks; Eve trying hard to pin her mind on what they said. She caught Miss Pennell gazing at her once or twice with a very soft look in her brown eyes; not guessing at last night’s orgy of music and unwifely forgetfulness; least of all guessing that the pull between thinking of Lance and making polite conversation was positively dislocating. Having invited them all, on the spur of human impulse, she was longing to be rid of them. But of course they stayed and stayed—zealously keeping her company.

Directly they were gone restlessness took hold of her. And when, at last, the two men appeared in the distance, she felt suddenly shy of her own emotion, and fled on instinct to her room. She heard them in the verandah, in the drawing-room; no Eve. Kaye said something that made Lance laugh. He had guessed. He was coming to her.

As she sprang up, he pulled aside the curtain.

‘Eve!’ he cried, an odd break in his voice.

She flew to him, and flung her arms round him, while he held her close and hard. And she thought he would never stop kissing her. . . .

As he half released her, and she smiled at him, breathless, he caught sight of music sheets on the bed.

‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘What’s the Darling been up to?’

‘The Darling’s been up to making tunes for her fiddle.’ She put it modestly, though elation bubbled in her.

‘Writing ’em down?’

‘Yes—like mad: a whole delicious thing.’

‘In these few days? You are a wonder.’

‘It’s the wonder—the way it comes.’ She glowed at his praise; but her sensitiveness felt the shadow of a change in his tone, as if something had tightened inside.

‘Kept you happy—did it? Kept you from running wild?’

Instinctively she resented that view of the gift that was, for her, a mystery and a marvel. It was not the view she expected from Lance; and it spurred her to swift retort.

‘It caught me by the hair and kept me up half the night: made me forget everything—even my dinner!’

‘Even your errant husband?’

The direct question took her completely unawares; and she felt the blood stir in her cheeks.

‘I never said so,’ she tried to wriggle out of it, but his eyes were on her face.

‘No. You tactfully said “dinner!” As potent as all that—is it?—when it catches you by the hair.’

He asked as if in simple curiosity: but Eve knew better. Yet she could neither he to him, nor tell him the exact truth. She had neatly let herself in; had spoilt the thrill of her news, which was nothing, after all, to the joy of his return. That must not be spoilt; and with the instinct of genuine love she struck the right note.

‘Dearest darling,’ she laid her cheek against his and her fingers caressed the back of his hair. ‘It whisked me into fairyland. It kept me from feeling lone and lorn. I thought you’d be pleased—and rather proud.’

The catch in her breath, that vexed her, released the slight tension of which he had hardly been aware.

Eve, who was aware, instantly felt the change; the tenderness with which he gathered her closer, as he said, ‘My treasure, I am proud. Is it very lovely?’

‘I think it is. It’s the music I heard in the cloud at Shargol. And of course it’s dedicated to you.’

At that he caught her close again, and she lay against him in a mute passion of surrender. . . .

Chapter 10

God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason, and welcome: ’tis we musicians know.
— Browning

It was all over—the most wonderful two months of her life. They were back once more in the charmed glade of Sonamarg, where they had spent their first week of rapture in possession, learning to know one another as even the truest lovers cannot begin to do till they come together in marriage. Between then and now they had learnt a good deal more that only shared happiness can teach. For if happiness has no history, no dramatic values, it has its own values, human and spiritual. To natures that never quite lose their sense of life’s underlying tragedy it can teach more in two months than troubles and heartache will teach in a year.

Eve Desmond had suffered unduly young; and those who have so suffered can never take happiness for granted. A creature of many facets and acute sensibilities, her capacity for joy had no relation to the simple sensuous response of a sunny nature moulded for content. She asked much of life; and, with her father’s fastidious spirit, she tested all it offered. But in this first summer of her marriage, happiness had caught her up into a seventh heaven undreamed of: and she had yielded to the spell; her seeking spirit, for one brief while, at rest.

For a wonder, the place seemed almost empty; though probably the bungalow, a mile up the marg,¹¹ was infested with undesired human beings. In any case, they preferred the camping grounds above the river. Lance had chosen a lone and lovely patch of meadow; views of the Pir Panjāl on one hand, and on the other, the grey Glacier Peaks. Though birds were no longer tuneful, the whole place was full of the music of waterfalls, and the Sind river thundered over the rocks three hundred feet below. Eve was lying alone in the cool grass, hands locked behind her head, lost in thought; while Lance—with dogs and shikarri—was pursuing small game to replenish their larder of perforated zinc that hung from the branch of a pine near the servants’ camp.

The air was electrical with coming storm; for they were back in the monsoon region. She could neither read nor write. She could only lie there longing for Lance, living over again the special days and delights of their return journey—memories that even the years, which steal everything, could never steal away.

Among them all was none more vivid, more enduring, than the wild and wonderful experience of their all-day outing, up to the Kardong Pass and back; only themselves and Kaye, with Miss Pennell to square the triangle.

To a height of sixteen thousand feet they could ride local ponies. Then the real climb began; and ponies were exchanged for shaggy black yaks; their short thick legs, immensely strong, their heads tufted with silky hair between sweeping horns. In spirit, Eve was once more astride her little great beast; a goat’s hair rug for saddle, and for reins a length of rope with a wooden ring through the thick nostrils that gave one no sense of control. After a clean bold jump on to that vast back, one could only clutch the inadequate rope and hang on, while the yak indulged in a mad rush, tossing his head, so that the sharp horns had come unpleasantly near her legs. In spite of qualms, it had been one of the most exciting moments of her life; the knowledge that Lance and Kaye admired her spirit, the certainty that she could hold on till her mount calmed down. After that it had been as simple as riding on a dinner table, that grunted like a pig, but otherwise behaved like a lamb.

For two hours those untiring beasts had carried them over drifted snow and massed boulders, up impossible slopes into a rarefied air that afflicted them with a curious breathlessness, a stunning explosive headache.

Physically the height had not troubled her; spiritually it had intoxicated her, as only music and mountains could do. And such desolation; such a pass—all crags and snow, sheering steeply down, on the far side into a rocky gorge. The many wonders of their journey seemed almost trivial by comparison with that vision, near and far, of the fiercest looking mountains on earth—mountains that drew and stirred her as she was never stirred by the ordered beauty of gardens and meadows and streams. For only in the untamed wild, in desolate places unstained by man, there dwells a spirit that hints at the still living power of the old earth gods.

Carried out of herself by the exhilaration of achievement, she had raced away from them all; lifted, for that mad moment, above mischance, above every weakness of flesh or spirit. And Lance had not followed her. He had understood, without telling, her need to be alone up there, if only for half an hour. And to understand without telling is the true test of any human relation. Breathless, and a trifle giddy, she had collapsed on to a low rock: and there, for nearly half an hour, she had sat alone, letting the vastness and the silence sink into her soul.

Gradually, she had become aware of the presence she craved. Nearer, clearer than ever before in waking moments—except once in Peshawar City—her father’s spirit had seemed to hover, almost to mingle with her own. For one timeless minute, the veil between had seemed so slight that if only she could have held the thought of him, the sense of him, for a few seconds longer, there might presently have been no veil at all. The intimation of his nearness had been unmistakeable, unforgettable. It was as if he had shed a blessing on her and her new life with Lance. And who can measure the power of those two small words ‘as if’? The keywords of creative art, they assert the vital significance of imagination in every phase of human life. Others might scoff at the whole thing. But such experiences were not to be shared with others, however near or dear. Since they were real to her, the rest might reason and welcome. For what is reality, after all, but the thing a man’s vision brings him to believe?

Even to Lance she had not felt able to speak of that withdrawn half hour; and neither then, nor afterwards, had he asked a single question.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Now, as she lay in the grass, re-living that great day, her mind travelled back and back over the years, when her one steadfast star had been the father in India, who had stamped his own impress on her heart and brain. In the light of fuller knowledge, she dimly realised what twenty years of marriage with her limited mother must have been for such a man. How he ever came to marry her was a mystery beyond solution. But there are few human acts more unaccountable than other people’s marriages. She could hazard a guess, now, at the inner significance of that lonely journey—his one break-away from the incessant strain of earning and saving money for an exigent family at Home, that had given him so little in return. And there crept into her mind the disturbing question—might even Lance, who had promised to go on adoring her, one day feel that need? Though he had not the erratic strain in him, he had the man’s ambition, the urge toward adventures that she might not be allowed to share, even if she would. She had vowed to herself that she would be no millstone round his neck. But if ever it came to the point—how would she meet the crucial test of wifehood, the call to stand aside? For it is not the call to action that demands the highest form of courage. Action, however drastic or distasteful, is in itself a stimulant. No stimulant in standing aside.

Resolutely she banished the discouraging thought. No vain shadow must intrude on this, their last week of freedom unalloyed. Down in Kohat they would be happy and busy in new ways: but could any after-happiness quite match the wonder of this gallant beginning? Their little world would be very much with them: Lance plunged neck deep into new work and polo; she wrestling, not too efficiently, with servants and household expenses. To herself she admitted her deplorable lack of zest for the domesticities. But if she did make muddles here and there she would be no tearful bride-in-a-book. No doubt Lance would often scold her. And no doubt she would survive; though dread of a scolding had always been the bane of her life. She would remind him that, if she were a model of all the domestic virtues, she would not be his Eve. Because their love was a reality, deeper than sentiment, higher than passion, they could be happy and angry and happy again; and each could unfailingly rely on the other’s sense of humour. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Suddenly she was aware of a stealthy movement in the grass behind her; and before she could turn, the intruder had lightly tweaked her hair.

‘Lance!’ she cried in ecstatic welcome.

He was on hands and knees. He had been boyishly crawling down to take her by surprise. She looked up at his inverted face and laughed—a low laugh of content—as he leaned over and kissed her.

‘Was she gone upon a very long journey?’ he asked, slipping round till he lay beside her.

‘Right to the top of Kardong Pass——’

‘What a girl! The Kardong’s bewitched you.’

‘It’s been doing that for years.’ She said no more in the way of explanation. She could trust his swift understanding. She looked about her at the familiar charm of meadow and forest and glacier peaks.

‘Those fierce mountains and the Indus valley,’ she murmured, ‘make even Sonamarg seem almost—almost suburban.’

‘Good Lord!’ He smiled at her trick of exaggeration. ‘At that rate Kohat will be almost Manchester!’

But he knew what she meant. Fresh from untamed Nature at her fiercest, she had a sense of something lacking even in the beauty of Sonamarg. So shy of human intrusion is earth’s secret spirit of the wild, that it seems to desert even the loveliest places where beauty-seekers assemble in crowds.

While his look told her all that, his lips said, ‘As we’re back in the suburbs, you’ll be ready for neighbours.’

‘I’m not. I’m ready to hate them with all my soul and with all my strength—like the catechism the wrong way round!’

‘Poor devils! But there they are. Two subs, Ramazān tells me, have invaded the nearest camping ground; you—all unaware. But if you were up on the Kardong, naturally you wouldn’t hear an army! What’s more, they’re in the 9th Sikhs. And they’re from Kohat.’

Eve groaned, sitting up and hugging her knees. ‘Well, we don’t know them. We don’t have to be friendly.’

‘We’re going to be friendly. I’ve brought in quite a good little bag of birds. We must invite them to dinner,’ said hospitable Lance.

‘Oh damn! I’d much rather invite them to take up their beds and walk,’ said inhospitable Eve—and her convenient lock of hair was tweaked more decisively this time.

Chapter 11

Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset touch.
— Browning

The subalterns were invited by a message from Lance—and they came. The senior, Claude Mansell, he had known at Bannu; the junior, David Grant, had only been a year with the regiment. Mansell was a lean sandy-haired man, his undistinguished features lit by yellowish eyes and an attractive smile. There was something faun-like about his whole aspect and his lithe movements. He obviously had a good conceit of himself and a knack with women Eve suspected; the sort of man who would kiss you as soon as shake hands, if you happened to look promising, and not too plain.

She liked young David Grant far better; a boy about her own age; ‘the dark shut-in kind’ she labelled him mentally. His name told her he was a Scot: and he had the ascetic good looks, the proud sensitive nostril of the Highlander, the eyes dark and brooding under heavy brows. Eve decided that he was sad or sulky about something; but her shy attempts to draw him out—while the other two talked army and sport—met with small success.

Half through the meal, when she had given it up, Mansell produced, from his coat pocket, a crumpled Civil and Military Gazette—the first paper Lance and Eve had seen for more than a week.

‘I say,’ he said, ‘there’s been a bit of a shindy up your way. Some old lake or other’s burst its bounds. Tons of water careering down the Indus valley ‘

‘Shayok glacier?’ Lance quickly scanned the front page. His first thought was of Kaye and his intrepid party. ‘We must wire to Gulmarg to-morrow, Eve,’ he said—looking up from a journalistic orgy of ‘wholesale devastation.’

‘Do let me see.’ She snatched the paper, glad of a respite from her unresponsive Highlander, who was either too ill or too tragic to care what impression he made on her. Cautiously scanning his face, she concluded that he was tragic: and tragedy, struck sharp on her new happiness, smote her with too keen a pang. It was as if she had been absent a while from life and its machinations; and here was the encroaching shadow —the eternal reminder that one could not escape descent from the crest to the trough of the wave.

Once, inadvertently, their eyes met; and the pain he was hiding looked out of his, before he could veil the naked thing. Impossible, after that, to talk trivialities; but sooner than increase his awkwardness, she did her best, wishing acutely that she was less sensitive to atmosphere. The other two seemed not to perceive anything amiss. They chaffed him mildly; and his hard abrupt laugh hurt her like a cry of pain.

Every moment the air grew more oppressive. A vicious inky scroll of cloud had enveloped the Grey Peaks. Now and then thunder grumbled—a long way off.

When coffee was served, Grant rose and passed a hand across his eyes.

‘Thunder makes my head feel queer. If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Desmond——?’

She needed no pressing; so great was her relief. But as he turned from the table, Mansell looked up.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked in an odd voice.

Grant stared hard at him with his tragic eyes.

‘I suppose a fellow can go for a stroll without giving reasons in writing?’

At the flash of resentment, Mansell resumed his easy manner. ‘Why of course. Run along, if it amuses you. Toddle back before “lights out.’”

Without answering, the boy walked away along the path above the river: and there followed a lengthy silence.

As Eve stirred her coffee and lit a cigarette, Lance turned to Mansell.

‘What’s wrong? He looks like nothing on earth.’

‘He’s about down to zero,’ Mansell answered striking a match.

‘Has he been ill? Typhoid?’

‘Nothing so simple. A woman; and a few other little troubles thrown in. He’s taking ’em all too hard, poor devil.’

The man’s rather flat voice was not devoid of feeling; but one could see the relief it was to him being rid of the boy.

‘I tell him he mustn’t take anything seriously in this blooming country except the mid-day sun and polo and Home leave. No go. He thinks I’m trying to be funny, when I’m giving him “counsel’s best advice.” His sense of humour’s all gone to pot. He comes from some giddy manse at the back of beyond; and he’s been too sentimentally brought up for India. That’s what’s the matter with him.’

At this point it occurred to Eve that she, too, ought to go for a stroll and leave the unembarrassed senior sub to talk it all out with Lance. It was he who might feel hampered by her silent presence. But she was fearsomely interested; and if more were coming, she wanted to hear it.

So she went on absently sipping her coffee, while Mansell enlarged on young Grant’s very private affairs.

‘What chance has a youngster like that with women of a certain sort?’ he queried, with his air of surface sagacity.

‘Scragging’s too good for ’em,’ Lance muttered; and Mansell shrugged.

‘I suppose they’re as God, or the devil, made them. And they like their attachés young and personable—and new to the game.’

Lance made no comment on that. He was frowning at the end of his cheroot. And Eve, remembering his holy terror of women like that, wondered with sudden painful interest—was it all on account of young David Grant? Or was he feeling prickly inside; perhaps wishing her away?

Before curiosity could conquer her virtuous impulse, she finished her coffee and rose.

‘I’m terribly sorry for him,’ she said with smothered fervour; and Mansell looked up at her with his faun-like smile. ‘Same here, Mrs Desmond. He’s a damn good sort, if he is too squeamish. Or you wouldn’t catch me worrying over the first fall from grace of the latest joined.’

Lance thanked her with a look: and when she was out of hearing, he turned to Mansell.

‘She’s married, I suppose?’

‘Rather. And a born charmer. She’s kept him dangling round all the cold weather, spending a lot more than he can afford. He’s gone clean in off the deep end. And the poor fool thinks it sinful to be in debt or get entangled with shroffs. So he’s for it every way. God knows what he expected from her; but I suppose she got a bit sick of him. And I suppose she tactfully told him so. That about finished him—that and his superfluous sense of disgrace, for which his stuffy old parents are responsible.’

‘Hard lines. I wouldn’t have chaffed him, if I’d known.’

Mansell’s smile had an odd twist to it. ‘You’re too sympathetic by half. Chaff’s the best tonic for his complaint.’

‘Not in all cases,’ said Lance, who had fewer years but more discernment. ‘Is he keen on shikar?’

‘He’s keen on nothing but that damned siren. Though I believe he’s sick and disgusted with her now. She’s over at Murree, with her latest in tow. We were all up there too: my wife and three kids. But as he seemed to be getting dangerous, I wheedled him across to Kashmir. And here I am doing chowkidar¹² to the most thankless subject I ever struck. With consummate tact, I smuggled his revolver into my roll——’

Lance looked up quickly. ‘Bad as that, is it?’

‘God knows. But I don’t want any nasty mess to spoil our little outing. Of course he might be troubled with nonconformist scruples; scared of hell-fire if he took liberties of that sort on top of his other deadly sins——’

A drift of cloud blotted out the low sun; and a gust of wind shivered through the branches of their sycamore. From the inky scroll over the Grey Peaks, sprang a sizzle of lightning, followed by thunder. Both men stood up.

‘Hell-fire for all of us in a minute,’ Mansell remarked. ‘Thanks for the dinner. I’m off to see after our tents.’

He ambled away, more concerned for the storm than for his misguided brother officer: and Lance, watching him, wondered what sort of girl had staked her happiness on that unstable quantity—Claude Mansell. Then he shouted briskly: ‘Eve! Where are you?’

She was not far off; and she came running to him, feeling safe and comforted; while the storm crashed almost overhead.

As the light changed, far things became sharply distinct; and a gust of wind raced up the valley dishevelling everything. The force of it blew the two of them into their small linked tents, that flapped and billowed, while thunder drops fell on the canvas like muffled drums. Two candles made a weird twilight enhanced by the ghostly shimmer of lightning through the canvas.

Eve excited, rather than fearful, flopped on the bed and lit a cigarette. Lance perched, half sitting, on the upright case that served as dressing-table. The same thought troubled the minds of both; and naturally Eve uttered it.

‘I wonder—where is that boy? It’s an awful storm. And that other man won’t worry a bit. Did he tell you a lot more?’

‘Yes, a lot more—that I’m not going to tell you.’

Eve knew that was final, yet she murmured persuasively: ‘I like him so. I couldn’t help wanting to hear more. I’m fearfully interested.’

Lance smiled. ‘You all are! But it’s not fair to the boy.’

‘Well, I didn’t go away because of him, but because I felt you didn’t want me to be there.’

‘I didn’t. I loved you for going.’

‘Not altogether because of the boy?’ she ventured, emboldened by his praise.

‘Not altogether.’

She was back in a cul-de-sac; but she could speak her mind, if he would not speak his.

‘Oh, I do hate those women. When they’ve got husbands, it’s unfair all round. Why do they?’

And Lance said dryly, as thunder clattered overhead:

‘Ask me another. I’ve not specialised on the subject.’

Eve gazed at him, wondering—and asked him another.

‘Did that sort worry you much? Mansell said “they like them personable.” And you’re terribly personable. Did they?’

Lance looked restive, as he was apt to do under direct praise or direct questions.

‘Sometimes they did. I kept as clear of ’em as I could.’

Eve hesitated, but dared again. She had the right to know. ‘Does that mean—you never looked at a woman, in that way, till this one came along?’

Lance eyed her very straightly. ‘If I said it did would you believe me?’

‘I would fearfully want to believe you. I thought you were scared of them, in Peshawar.’

‘I was. I still am—rather.’ He gazed at her so hard that she felt the blood stir under her skin. ‘I’ve never looked at any woman the way I’m looking at you now. Will that do for you? Or would you rather have it all?’

And Eve, half desirous, half alarmed, turned it off lightly, lest he think she was making too much of it.

‘Are you going to invent film stuff, just to see what I’ll swallow?’

He looked at her reproachfully. ‘I thought of telling you the truth.’

‘Is it an awful confession?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘It’s lurid!’

‘No!’

He caught the note of fear; and reaching across he stroked her hair. ‘What the dickens does it all matter, darling?’

‘It does rather—to me. How long ago?’

‘About three years.’

‘Was she beautiful? Did she knock you off your centre—like poor Mr Grant?’

And Lance said in a changed tone, ‘Not so bad as that. Thanks to my father, I wasn’t sentimentally brought up. But out here the predatory petticoat takes a more insidious form. One’s up against all the cunning stratagems of Nature.’

‘Nature can be very terrible sometimes,’ Eve mused, remembering that tragic boy. ‘And those beastly women must know it’s harder for men——’ Shyness checked her. They had not so far talked frankly on the subject, owing to the strain of reserve in both.

‘Man or woman,’ Lance said, ‘it’s harder for some than for others. Personally, I was after keeping clear of it all—after the impossible, in fact.’

Eve sprang up and stood close against his shoulder.

‘I love people who go after the impossible,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘And I tactlessly butted In, and spoilt your nice little bachelor plans.’

‘Which was more than I deserved’—he put an arm round her and gave her the full light of his eyes—‘after planning to cut out the best thing in life.’

She shivered and pressed closer to him, as thunder again crashed overhead. In spite of that detested unknown, he was hers now: and nothing else mattered at all. Fascinated, like all women, by virility, it was his controlled virility that claimed her admiration.

‘Satisfied now?’ he asked gently, ‘do you want any more about an episode that’s dead as mutton?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all right.’ The pressure of his arm commended her. But not even the most percipient young wife could realise the sense of reprieve produced by that simple negative. Even to her, Lance could not clearly explain his passing infatuation, nor how acutely it had hurt his pride that his body should desire what his mind despised. He could only pull her closer to him, and trust the fervour of his kiss to tell her all that he found it so difficult to say.

Outside their cramped shelter the sharp storm, with quiverings and distant grumblings, was rolling on elsewhere.

‘Let’s peer out,’ said Eve, who understood to the full the implication of that satisfying kiss. ‘I’m sure it’s lovely now.’

Lance pulled back the flap, and they looked out upon a transfigured scene. The clear sky shone with the green aftermath of sunset. The unperturbed mountains seemed to be asking what all the fuss was about. And through that peaceful dusk there came towards them a hurrying figure: Mansell unmistakably, a scrap of paper in his hand, disaster in his eyes.

He announced his news abruptly, not heeding Eve.

‘I say, Desmond, that wretched boy has done himself in. I scoured the place for him—and found this in his tent.’ He thrust out half a sheet of paper. ‘Read it.’

Lance took it reluctantly, and read the few straightforward lines that were the more moving because they stated the painful fact without a shade of self pity.

‘Dear. Mansell,—You’ve been very good to me, taking more trouble than I deserved over my affairs. But it’s useless. I have blackened my father’s name—and I can’t carry on.

‘A slip into that river will easily work out as an accident. If you will kindly so report it, to the regiment and my parents, you will be doing me the greatest service of all.

‘Yours gratefully,

‘D. G.’

In Lance that brief note aroused curiously personal sensations: and while he mastered them, Mansell became aware of Eve.

‘I’m awfully sorry, Mrs Desmond, letting you in for this unpleasantness, after your hospitality.’

‘Oh, please don’t,’ Eve protested in a shaken voice: mention of her hospitality seemed almost an insult. And Mansell, looking faintly chidden, muttered, ‘He was a thorough good chap. It’s a clean throw-away. But we’ve got to stand by him; and I’m counting on Desmond to see me through.’

‘Right,’ said Lance, pocketing the note. ‘We’ll find him somehow.’

As Mansell left the tent, he gently pushed Eve into her own half of their ‘Siamese Twin.’

‘Go straight to bed, darling—and don’t worry. Grant was in hell. He can’t be worse off now. Damn that woman!’

He said it with a gravity more impressive than any flash of wrath. Then he went out into the night.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

With the help of electric torches and an agile young Mahommedan, they found all that remained of David Grant at the foot of a vicious drop that had left few bones unbroken. It was Ibrahim who rescued the body; and the two British officers said no word more than they must, till they had reverently laid their burden on the camp bed in Grant’s tent. Mansell clearly did not relish personal contact with death. Lance was too much concerned with the boy, and the tragic, merciful lie they must concoct for his parents, to be troubled with physical squeamishness.

And all the next day they were grimly engaged in making out false reports; so that Lance had little time to spare for Eve, whose heart was saddened at thought of a fine young life cut off to no purpose, chiefly for lack of that invaluable asset, a sense of proportion. With vicious intensity she wished that the woman could know. Yet it might secretly flatter her vanity, which would be detestable: and only his parents mattered now.

To Eve it mattered selfishly that the raven’s wing of tragedy had darkened their last week of freedom from work and the world. The ominous sense of it hovered at the back of her brain; and Lance probably never gave it a thought in connection with themselves. Because his eye was single, his whole body was full of light; and all his energies were concentrated on their unpleasant task. He had a wonderful knack of going straight to the point; seeing only what mattered; and for the moment, dismissing everything else. It made Eve, next morning, feel a little left out in the cold. Yet she hugged the knowledge that he was virtually doing and arranging everything; that the rather ineffectual Mansell relied altogether on him.

She could not choose but see him, these days, in a halo that emanated partly from his own qualities, partly from her acute perception of them. Drowned in his personality, she had lost her critical faculty for the time being. No doubt presently it would come creeping back; since—according to Vanessa—she possessed that rare quality, a naturally critical mind. But, even so, she would always admire and desire his positive, outward-going nature, founded on the rock of standards.

He had forgotten the wire to Gulmarg; but the post brought a letter from Vanessa at her liveliest that cheered and comforted Eve and gave her news of Kaye.

‘Darling,’ she wrote, ‘I wonder if you have seen any papers, or heard of the little practical joke (perpetrator unknown) of bonfires flaring out on all the main heights, as arranged! Villagers scared, reporters very much on the spot. Meantime an express runner comes through from Kaye assuring us that the monster stands where it did. Not a trickle of the lake has overflowed.

‘So much for “the Riddle from the Roof of the World”! I’ll post a C. and M. that will amuse you both.

“‘INDUS FLOOD MYSTERY. Beacons blaze out a false alarm. The drama of a chain of bonfires in High Asia, stretching for a hundred and forty miles, from the Tibet border to a point near Leh, has given place to a mystery which is puzzling all Asia and indeed the whole civilised world——”

‘I don’t suppose a hundredth part of the civilised world is even aware of the stupendous catastrophe! All we know is that poor old Kaye is having a hell of a time in “High Asia.” I suppose some half-frozen sentry, trying to light a fire for his dinner, upset a kerosine tin. And once the first pile flared up the rest would follow.

‘I’ll be glad to have you two back again. You’d be wiser to let Lance go on ahead to make things ship shape. The heat is still pretty bad down there; and I want you. I know you’ll want to rush down with him, but—think it over. . . .’

Eve had already done more than think it over. Of course she wanted to rush down, but Lance was inclined to be masterful about it; and he would probably have his way. She spent most of the afternoon writing their tale of woe to Vanessa, while the men were absorbed in the last sad formalities; the lying accounts to the Colonel and to Scotland, beautifully written by Mansell.

It is probable that Lance felt the pitiful affair more profoundly than any of them. Yet it seemed to Eve that, when all was over, he deliberately put it behind him, as she found it difficult to do, though she had only touched the hem of a tragedy in which he had been saturated. Hers was the haunted type of brain that lives a painful experience over and over, in defiance of wise resolves. For twenty-four hours Lance had virtually thought of nothing else. Now he could do no more—and there an end. If she could not emulate his sanity, she could envy it. But she said nothing, feeling sure he would prefer it so.

Next day Mansell went on alone for a week into the higher valleys, before rejoining his deserted family: and in two days the shadow had passed from Eve’s mind. Once more they were themselves to themselves and each other; loving as hundreds love in those radiant early days, when there is ‘glory on the grass and splendour in the flower’; yet lifted a degree above the normal by a shared apprehension of their own happiness, in which its least expression contained the whole. In tune with the full grave heart-beat of life—they were happy.

Book Two — Mackerel Sky

Chapter 1

Youth is lifted on the wings of his strong hope and soaring valour; for his thoughts are above riches.
—Pindar.

On the plains of Northern India it is autumn, not spring, that stirs the blood and lifts the heart with a sense of resurrection. In the yellowing leaf, in the first eager nip of morning and evening air, there is promise of frosty nights and brilliant days, of the quickened tempo in work and play that autumn brings after the stagnant round of hot-weather station life. Once again there is an ‘r’ in the month: no trivial item to those who have worked and sweltered through the unblest months between.

Kohat in September was almost empty of women. No cliques, no bickerings, no tea and tennis At Homes. From May to October there was peace in the land. The Club became a haven where men could shed their manners and be casually at ease with their kind. Lance Desmond, alone in his bungalow, was very fully occupied, learning ‘the ropes’ of his new work and making new friends. He had a natural gift that way; and he had already collected several promising specimens who would, he hoped, find favour with his critical Eve.

She was coming down, with Vanessa, in the first week of October: an October richer in promise of happiness and interest than any he could remember since the autumn when he had joined his grandfather’s Punjab Cavalry regiment. From Mutiny days onward, that particular regiment had never been long without a Desmond among its officers: and for both races there is virtue in that sense of continuity; that personal link, rooted in the past, between officers and men.

Lance himself had arrived soon after his uncle, Colonel Paul Desmond, had completed his term of command: and he had fully understood that the warm welcome he received from all ranks had been mainly accorded to the nephew of their beloved Colonel and the grandson of Sir Theo Desmond, V.C., who had crowned a brilliant career by commanding all India. His own spurs were still to win—in his own way. If his way involved a break with the Regiment, it involved no modern youthful contempt for faith in a fine tradition—a faith that was in his blood and his bones. And beyond all question he had liked the life; had liked and understood the fighting races—Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans. Greatly he liked the Captain of his troop, Paul Wyndham, half brother to Sir Vincent Leigh; the only son of his mother’s second marriage. And among the Indian officers he had found descendants of men who had served with Sir Theo in ‘Piffer’ days; men years older than himself, who had offered him the hilts of their swords to touch, and had treated him with the mingled affection and respect that older Indian officers, of soldierly breed, accord to British boys set in authority over them.

Among these, few had a finer record than Desmond’s Sikh Risaldar Sher Singh, whose father and grandfather had served the Regiment—the one and only Regiment—all their days. For him, the name Desmond was a guarantee of bone-bred soldier qualities, not always discernible in the newly-joined. Since the War there had been too many young officers of the wrong jāt—a word of deep significance to the high-caste Indian. But here was a son and a grandson of soldiers: and Sher Singh had said in his heart ‘God be praised that he has again seen fit to send the Regiment a pukka Sahib.’

He had ventured to say it with his lips on a day when he called informally at his subaltern’s quarters; and had been drawn into friendly talk as between soldiers and men. But perceiving that, because he spoke truth, the Sahib was embarrassed, he had eased matters, with instinctive courtesy, by a less personal remark in the same vein.

‘Hazúr, when are all the pukka Sahibs coming back to India as before the Great War? Too often now they send us sons of bunnias¹³ and vakils,¹⁴ other than the warrior caste. Through ignorance and ill manners these make bad feeling among our young hot-heads bitten by lawyer-begotten reforms. India has need of Sahibs, Hazúr. If a message were sent to the King Emperor—many of us putting our names to a paper—would he not give an order that more true Sahibs come out to our Army as before?’

Lance Desmond had found that unanswerable question even more embarrassing than the frank compliment: but the man’s courtesy and sincerity had moved him to say what he could without admitting the fatal fact that he himself—a true Sahib and soldier—-cherished ambitions that would seem to the Risaldar a betrayal of the blood in his veins.

Personally, he could have asked nothing better than the active adventurous life of a Frontier regimental officer in those earlier days, when Piffers were Piffers, a picked force dedicated to one locality and one purpose—the North safeguarded. But to-day it was the Political Officer who had the power of the keys. And although the Regiment meant much to this latest Desmond, India—that virtual creation of his country’s casual genius—meant more, in other than personal ways. On the Frontier he was born. To the Frontier he had returned. And, for a few good years, he had been content to fulfil the general expectation that he would follow the family tradition—and stick to the Regiment.

But there are men who know, from the dawn of manhood, what they want of life; and they want it with fervour. As a rule, they are the men who achieve. Of such was Lance Desmond. Even from afar, India had laid her spell upon him; a spell as indefinable as it is potent. But only to one person could he confess, at the time, that his private ambition was at odds with his Desmond heritage. That one person, to his great good fortune, was no other than Sir Vincent Leigh. Till they met in India, Lance had scarcely known him, except as the husband of his dearly loved Aunt Thea. But on his first visit to them, he had discovered that here was an unobtrusively notable personality; an elder who might almost not be an elder—the highest compliment youth can pay to age. Partly it was his shyness; partly that he never criticised youth as youth. For Lance had suffered not a little at the hands of his own critical father. Separated in time, unalike in temperament, they had been drawn together by one shared, absorbing interest—the North-West Frontier, its history and recent development, its vital importance to the many other Indias striving politically to speak and act as one.

Soon after that first visit Lance had decided that this uncle would understand, as surely as the Desmond clan would disapprove, his unrevealed, unshakeable aim. And so it had fallen out. With Sir Vincent for his ally, with Aunt Thea scolding and forgiving him in one breath, the matter had been virtually settled.

The pain of breaking with the Regiment had been no light ordeal: but, for himself, the transfer had opportunely cut the thread of an entanglement with a married woman over thirty, who had allured and infatuated him against his will; an infatuation none the less potent for being purely physical. And, in the case of such as he, it could have but one end—the revulsion, the hate that follows on spent passion. There had been one final scene—seared upon his memory—when his temper had blazed up under her cool method of tormenting a man, to test her hold on him. In the white heat of anger he had lost control and said unspeakable things, had shaken even her colossal self-complacence—for the moment. It had only been afterwards that he had felt ashamed of having flung the truth in her face: only afterwards he had dimly perceived that she liked him the better for his flash of fury. She would have twisted even that to her own ends, had he not been timely shifted out of reach. Once the physical spell was broken, nothing remained of her but an aftermath of disgust and self-scorn. The three letters she had since written to him had been destroyed unread.

From that brief surrender to a deliberate assault upon his carefully suppressed passions, he had emerged with every inner fibre toughened by impact with reality. Till he burnt his own fingers at the flame of life, he had not guessed what a woman, who used her sex without scruple, could do to a man—young, passionate and self-contained. And he had said in his heart, ‘Never again.’ He had flung himself into work and sport; had fled the pursuing petticoat till it became a household joke. His friendship with John Lynch had added a new, keen interest to life; and those two years of working with his Uncle had given him much inside knowledge of Border politics and mentality. It had been understood between them that, when Chitral became available, he would be recommended for the appointment of Assistant Political Officer up there, under his cousin Captain Theo Leigh, who was Political Agent for the whole of that region. By his choice of service, marriage had been virtually ruled out for several years; no hardship, since he was not inclined that way.

So he had confidently laid his plans for the immediate future: and had seen that they were good. But Life had her own designs on him—and had caught him unawares.

He had only been a year in Government House, Peshawar, when he encountered, in Eve Challoner, a magnetism more potent than that of any practised siren, because the whole man was involved. She had command of every part; and he, it seemed, had small command of his own destiny. When the disastrous Monteith had killed himself in a motor crash, and very nearly killed Eve, his own affair could have but one issue—Eve willing; though that issue would probably wreck his chances of Political service. For the Foreign Office did not favour young aspirants who were already married or engaged; and there had been few exceptions to the rule. Lynch, with brutal candour, had advised him to discard his ‘giddy ambitions’ and go straight back to the Regiment. But Lance, a hopeful and resolute person, would neither give up Eve, nor sit down tamely under the loss of his chosen career. By some means he would have it both ways. And he had it both ways—up to a point. The Foreign Office—graciously considering his name and his record—had suggested, by way of compromise, that he should undertake not to marry for two years, or at least until he had passed his examination. Into that stiff task he had put all his brains and energy; had passed it in record time; and, within the year, he had married Eve.

So far, good enough; but of course, for the present, he must give up all thought of Chitral: a sharper disappointment than he had allowed anyone to guess—Lynch least of all. For that would be the real political work he desired; the semi-independence, the personal prestige, the interest of dealing with a new people and a new country. He had mentally faced all that before speaking to Eve: and he was facing the outcome now. Here, in Kohat, he was simply a junior civilian, applying all his faculties to the new work that was going to demand more of him, in every way, than he had quite foreseen.

Most Englishmen in India know what hard work means; thankless work, often under trying conditions. And few know it better than the Civil Service District Officer, who deals—as directly as files and intervening babus permit—with those anything but silent millions, of whom he could many strange tales unfold. To each big district a Commissioner, with two lesser civilians under him, and a mixed crew of Indian subordinates—a mere handful of men, responsible for the welfare of an area that may cover anything from fifty to a thousand square miles; that may contain, in its scattered villages, anything from half a million to a million souls; and within that area, those few civilians stand for the Government and the King Emperor, for virtually the whole British race. These the people know, and often shrewdly assess. The rest are myths. When their crops fail, when plague stalks by noon-day, or a neighbour diverts the course of a cherished canal, those visible, tangible, imperturbable Englishmen are all.

What that far-reaching responsibility involves in the way of physical wear and tear, of knowledge and judgment and boundless patience, Lance Desmond—after a mild month of office work and ten days in camp—was dimly beginning to perceive.

First, he must get to know the people themselves, dwellers in scattered villages all over the district: their caste distinctions, feuds and factions, their sensitive pride and callous disregard for life, their ingrained love of intrigue that baffles the Western mind. He must acquire a working knowledge of every exigency that could affect their daily lives—crops, boundaries, irrigation, disease and debts, etiquette, jealousies and ambitions. In the course of the cold weather he must march and camp over most of the district under his Deputy Commissioner’s orders. In the station, desk and office work devoured his day. His kutcherry¹⁵ compound and verandah were thronged at all hours with squatting crowds, every man of them waiting to lodge some trivial complaint, to press some possible or impossible demand upon the ‘Stunt’¹⁶ Sahib, who had the ear of the Burra Sahib. Lance, a rapid worker, often found his patience strained to breaking point by his utter inability to force the pace, or to extract a plain statement from some Hindu merchant, who had never been guilty of a plain statement since he learnt the true use of words. In his view, the Sahib was paid to listen; and he himself had over-paid that grasping Moslem peon for his chance to speak. Being human, he made the most of it, while the Sahib fumed in the privacy of his unreasonable British heart.

He found it a hard matter, most days, to get away early enough for a game of polo. What time or leisure would he manage to find, later on, for the absorbing occupation of being the husband of Eve? On the whole it was as well that, out of consideration for her, he had secured these few weeks of undivided concentration on his new work, of getting in touch with his Deputy Commissioner, Greg Wharton—a man whom he had not expected to like, and whom he liked even less than he had expected.

The parting with Eve had been a wrench; and the only pleasure he had of the bungalow, allotted to him as Assistant Commissioner, was to prepare it for her coming. It was convenient also when Lynch motored over from Peshawar for the week end, and they sat up talking shop half the night. For the rest, he merely slept in it and lived at the Piffer Mess, where he made friends again with the officers of his Regiment—now quartered at Kohat—and with his young brother Neil, the latest joined, who could be trusted to remain a soldier all his days. There had been a bout of good-humoured chaff over his conversion (or perversion) into a blooming civilian. But he had taken it in good part; and when Evans, the Adjutant, presumed that he would join their polo team, he knew himself forgiven. Then Sher Singh came to pay his respects and offer his services for reading Persian with his Sahib as aforetime, to the Sahib’s immense gratification.

Altogether, apart from the ache of Eve’s absence, he had found himself enjoying that brief reversion to bachelor ways. But underneath lurked the satisfying sense of having chosen the better part. That he saw it already as a difficult relation, even with the dearest woman living, was neither here nor there. The more difficult, the better worth tackling: and the bond he had half desired, half feared, gave to his loyal, disciplined heart a deep inner sense of stability that was a need of his emotional nature. Only so could his mind feel free to concentrate on his masculine concerns. Cheerfully and unfailingly he would render to women their due; but he was more keenly alive to other interests; happy in himself, in his work, in the swift delightful movements of his own youth and strength. With men he could let himself go: and he liked letting himself go: the more so because, in office hours—wrestling with cases and quarrels and interminable grievances—he had constant and furious need of self-control.

It might take several years of marriage to modify the bachelor strain in him. But if woman could do it, that woman was Eve. She was his light of life: and he wanted her back with all the bottled-up fervour that made him a dynamic force in work or play.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And now at last it was over, that sullen muggy September; the first week of October nearing an end. They had already started. She was coming as fast as an Indian mail train could bring her . . .

It was to-morrow. It was to-day.

At breakfast, Mansell chaffed him. “Cheerio, Benedick! No Mess for you to-night. Two more weeks for me!”

Lance took it smiling; and unobtrusively changed the subject. Mansell was not married to Eve. Luck for Eve!

In kutcherry that morning, he entirely failed to keep his mind on the details of a caste vendetta—a tangle of lies and counter lies; a case of deciding which palpably false account was the least false of the two; while his imagination raced ahead—retailing the cream of it to Eve.

Strictly to himself he admitted that it had been good, while it lasted, that whiff of masculine atmosphere: but it was of no account compared with this riot in his veins . . .

Chapter 2

All that touches us two makes us twin;
Even as the bow, crossing the violin,
Draws but one voice from the two strings that meet,
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what great player has us in his hand?
— Ludwig Lewisohn

On a certain Sunday evening, the last of October, Lance sat alone in his drawing-room at the upright Bechstein piano—Vanessa’s wedding gift—playing, with a light sure touch, a gay little lyric fragment of Grieg. The family love of music, that had drawn him to Eve, drew him to the piano whenever a suppressed emotion or a profound satisfaction was at work in him. Though unskilled fingers limited his scope, those ‘little conversations with the piano’ gave him infinite pleasure; eased at times the inner stress of a nature at once vehement and controlled. But for full enjoyment he must be alone with the beloved instrument—as now.

Eve, at the moment, was dressing for dinner; and Lynch—who had proposed himself for the night—was equally well occupied. So Lance felt free to enjoy his own music undisturbed, to express in that quaint fashion—as another man might be whistling in his bath—his deep content with things in general: a content rooted in much else beside the natural joy of reunion after six weeks apart. For both, there was still the charm of a new toy in this first home of their own. In the sharing of new interests, the daily parting and coming together again, there was much to talk about, much to be silent about—the best things of all. There were days of high emotion and of simple happiness; there were quarrels, sharp and short, like thunder showers in June: and through good days and bad they were weaving unawares the invisible cords that bind man and wife more securely than any sacred formula. It seemed to Lance that between them they had made a beautiful thing.

And it was mainly Eve’s doing; her comradeship, her music, her lively interest in his work and play. The whole place was permeated with her soft, excited happiness; and Lance—capable of a contained and continued fervour—was mightily enjoying it all; even to their clashes of temperament and opinion, which quickened his sense of living. For they could anger or attract, without alienating or converting each other; and if at times Eve was difficult, it was because she was definite: nor would he have her otherwise. That very assertion of their individual selves preserved the delicate tension that alone keeps marriage vital—‘two notes, a single tune.’

The main difficulty was not in themselves but in the demands of life and work; in the need of the newly married to defend themselves from those who would too soon rub the first bloom off their relation. And nowhere are others more zealous to render that ill-service than in an average Anglo-Indian station—that little world within an alien world, where surface sociabilities have more than surface significance.

Mercifully Eve had small taste for a life of constant running round; and Lance asked nothing better, after a long day in kutcherry, than to find her peacefully at home, ready for music, or watching polo, or a ride across country; not surrounded by subalterns, or larking off to the Club. But he knew better than she did the force of the human stream against which they were trying to hold their own.

Sunday, his one clear day, they had resolved to keep free for their own devices; but, on everybody else’s clear day, it was no easy matter to keep the world from breaking in—usually in the form of young unmarried officers. For Lance was popular with his kind; and very much alive to the unwritten law of Anglo-India that the married should befriend the bachelor, and give him his only taste of home in a far country.

Last Sunday, however, they had given Kohat the slip. With a tiffin basket stowed behind them, in their little car, they had driven out towards Hangu and the Samāna ridge, where a detachment of troops kept watch over the wild Border country beyond. As the road climbed above the Toi river, they had glimpses of brown villages, of vivid rice fields and vineyards splashed with autumn gold, set in a framework of savage hills; the charm of it all enhanced by their exhilarating sense of escape. And so—on to Hangu, a smaller detachment than the Samāna, with its own Assistant Commissioner, many years senior to Lance, an immensely capable hardheaded Scot, named Farquhar, married to an incredibly incompatible wife—a smart and sociable lady, bored to extinction with husband and children and the semi-isolation of their English-looking bungalow and garden, that had made Eve ache with envy, when she returned their call. Mrs Farquhar—who spent most of her time dashing into Kohat—pined for a flat in Army Mansions, with the Club and the Mess in her pocket and a station full of bachelors to play with. And Eve had come dashing out to Hangu to escape those very bachelors: that was the way of life. Resisting a virtuous impulse to call on the Farquhars, they had returned to Cantonments refreshed in body and spirit, firmly resolved to escape again, next Sunday, and drive out towards Peshawar over the wild Kohat Pass.

But they had reckoned without John Lynch, who had no notion of being side-tracked on account of a mere wife; nor had Lance himself any notion of sidetracking his friends when he married—Lynch least of all. Eve would never be obstructive on that score; but if Lynch chose to take the wrong line with her, it would be the devil and all. Only two years they had known each other; yet there was no friend of his own age to whom he felt so closely knit by a compound of admiration and personal liking that could survive even the clash of temperaments basically diverse in more ways than one. Eve would surely like him, if he gave her a chance; but if his surface politeness cloaked hidden antagonism, the sensitive antennae of her spirit would be aware, and would resent it, naturally enough.

She was vexed at the impending intrusion. For she wanted that drive over the Pass: and her eager nature took disappointment hard. Lance himself could have wished that Lynch had given them a chance to invite him at a more opportune moment: but that was not Lynch’s way. And he had a reason for coming, of course. Lynch wouldn’t motor forty miles simply to have a ‘buck’ with a friend. He wrote that Bhagwān Das, his prince of detectives, had just made an important find which would interest Lance. There were other matters he wanted to discuss; and there was a piece of good news to impart—a rise in rank. He had just been appointed Deputy Inspector General of the C.I.D., which would give him a freer hand for his own special work, besides plenty of running round the district. He hoped Mrs Desmond would not think him a nuisance, coolly proposing himself for a night. Would she please accept his apologies and salaams.

In the face of that letter Lance could not dismiss his friend with a trumped-up excuse.

‘We can have our drive another Sunday, darling,’ he had urged, pulling her close to him.

But Eve was inclined to hug her grievance.

‘Can we? Something or someone will butt in again. And so it will go on.’

‘Oh, I hope not. But if you’re specially keen on disappointment, I’ll try to arrange accordingly!’

The flick of humour took effect; and she impulsively flung her arms round him.

‘All right, my precious man. Have your old Lynch, if you feel you must.’

And because she could do nothing by halves, she had arranged to dine with Kitty Mansell, to give the two men a clear evening to themselves. Mansell was dining at Mess, as he did too often; and Kitty would be glad of her company.

Kitty Mansell, an attractive, harassed-looking creature, had taken a violent fancy to Eve. They had little in common; but Eve’s sympathies were stirred by a sense of something amiss underneath. They both felt sorry for Mansell’s wife; especially if she happened to be in love with him; and Eve suspected that was the hidden trouble.

When the drawing-room door opened, Lance was playing the first bars of the Londonderry Air. Knowing it was Eve, he played on, sooner than snap the thread of that lovely melody.

She came and stood near him, a hand on his shoulder: and as the last note whispered into silence, he swung round and smiled up at her. She looked vexatiously alluring in her moonlight coloured frock, with orange-tawny roses and his rope of Chinese amber.

‘You put on my pet frock for Kitty, and leave me lamenting!’ he unjustly reproached her. ‘Wish you weren’t going.’

‘So do I. But your old Lynch will bless me.’

‘Very noble of you giving him a free field!’

‘Him? I’m doing it for you. He’s not the kind that needs considering. He’s the pukka selfish type: all brains and body. The way he looks at you, with those queer eyes of his, as if you were a crossword puzzle: something perplexing, perhaps interesting, certainly not human—which he isn’t himself!’

Lance threw back his head and laughed.

‘You’re terribly discerning. He’s a very remarkable man, with all the defects of his qualities. Have you quite decided to hate my best friend?’

‘No—not quite. Much more likely he’s decided to hate me. But perhaps I won’t let him. Perhaps I’ll show him, presently—when he’s dropped the disapproving touch—that wives can’t all be lumped in one wholesale damnation——’

‘Look out! He’s coming.’

‘Well, I’m going.’

He stood up briskly. ‘Slip into your fur, and I’ll tootle you round.’

‘Quite superfluous!’ But her eyes danced. ‘I’m late. So you’ll be later. And I’m sure he’s punctual over food.’

‘We’ll give him a cocktail to keep him happy.’

He shouted for them as Lynch entered, and announced his intention of driving his wife round to Army Mansions.

‘Right,’ Lynch agreed, and regarded Eve with his vague, light eyes. ‘Does Mrs Desmond actually not drive?’

‘Oh yes, she drives,’ Eve answered briskly, before Lance could say a word. ‘She crashes into culverts and topples into ditches whenever they come handy. And he’s terrified to let her handle that precious little car! Come on, Lance,’—her grip on his arm warned him not to give her away—‘or dinner will be late. And Mr Lynch won’t forgive me—if he ever has forgiven me?’

Her laughing eyes challenged him; and a smile flickered in his.

‘If you want the truth—he hasn’t.’

Look and tone were friendlier than his words; and Eve nodded gravely.

‘Just as well to know where we stand! But I’m quite harmless really. In fact, I’m dining out for your benefit. And I hope you’re properly grateful.’

‘I’m on my knees to you, mentally. But as I had a full year’s start of you, I might be said to have first claim.’

‘I wouldn’t say so.’

‘We shall disagree about that to the end of time.’

Liking him for his frankness, she screwed up her eyes at him and asked in a gentler voice, ‘Aren’t we ever going to be friends?’

Lynch looked amused, but it was Lance who spoke.

‘No use trying on the sentimental touch with J. L. You’re friends already.’

‘I haven’t specially noticed it!’ Eve retorted with her innocent air. ‘However—here’s hoping!’ And she waved a hand at the impassive figure on the hearth-rug, as Lance fairly pulled her out of the room.

‘You really mustn’t cheek him like that, darling,’ he said, as they drove off. ‘You’re only twenty to his forty. And of course he knew you were pulling his leg.’

‘Very good for him to have his dignified leg pulled. He wants stirring up a bit. I’m sure his mind has never tried to live any life except his own: police work and Soviet intrigues; woman episodes—for what they’re worth. Take all the fun you can get, but never marry her; because that means give as well as take——’

‘Kubberdar,’¹⁷ Lance checked her, trying to sound stern. ‘You’re too clever by half. But he’s my friend. And you’ve just invited him to be yours.’

‘I don’t believe he will be—ever.’ She snuggled closer, and said no more.

Army Mansions, a big two-storey building with wide verandahs, was the refuge of bachelors and of the married who, for lack of rupees, or lack of houses, could not achieve a home of their own. From that human hive came a confused medley of sounds—voices of children and barking dogs, officers shouting orders, servants quarrelling.

Lance flung an arm round Eve’s shoulder.

‘Thank God for a bungalow of our own. Don’t be late.’

‘Not likely. Kitty always seems tired. But look here, darling, don’t come and fetch me. Lynch would think I’d quite demoralised you. And I love walking alone in the dark.’

‘If you love it, you shall—not on account of Lynch. He can think what he pleases.’

He himself, as he drove away, was searching his practical brain for something he could give her, something he could do for her, to salve the disappointment he had treated so lightly by way of holding her up in a dejected mood.

Chapter 3

Where he fixed his heart, he set his hand
To do the thing he willed.
— Shakespeare

And John Lynch, sipping the cocktail that was to keep him happy, thought what he pleased, while Lance delayed dinner on account of that wife of his, who could drive, to a certainty, as well as the best of them. If he was still so far gone that he must see her from door to door, they might at least have started sooner. These young married people considered no one but themselves.

Whether he ever considered anyone but himself was a question that did not occur to him; since devotion to his work involved disregard of many natural comforts and desires. But a man’s work, like his wife, may become a second self: and so it was with John Lynch. In the interests of his work, he would sacrifice, impartially, himself or others. To uphold the British Raj in his own corner of India, to expend every ounce of his skill and energy in tracking and frustrating the designs of Soviet Russia—its avowed enemy—that was his religion. Intensive study of Border and criminal psychology, chess problems, and a unique collection of strange coins—those were his hobbies. He had small use or leisure for games, though occasionally, when work was slack, he played bridge. He read deeply and widely, as few men have time or energy to read in India; but he did not easily make friends. Perhaps he studied his fellows too critically. Here and there a pleasing exception cropped up; but collectively he deplored them, as they probably deplored him: a probability that did not worry him in the least. Most of them were mere bundles of prejudice; and their judgment was of no account—to John Lynch.

As in work, so in all else, he played a lone hand, and was content to have it so; though there were infrequent moments when he knew that he had missed the best in life because he had never achieved real intimacy with another human being. Had Lance Desmond been ten or twelve years older, they might have arrived at a fine and satisfying friendship. As it was, he had a very real feeling for the boy carefully damped down; a feeling apart from their joint interest in Border affairs.

In Sir Vincent Leigh he had encountered one of the few men who could stand the test of being studied at close quarters; a man alive to the mysteries, the merits and the humours of a diverse people, a man of understanding and sympathy, untainted by sentimentality. It was through special C.I.D. work for the Chief Commissioner that he had come in touch with young Desmond; had summed him up as ‘fine Border material’ likely to go far, if his good looks did not entangle him with the women; not yet five and twenty, the golden age of promise, seldom fulfilled; with the right blend of brains and character for trans-Frontier work. Lynch, who judged swiftly and moved cautiously, had kept a check on his unusual interest in the boy, whom he liked the better for his strain of reserve, his capacity for enthusiasm that rarely ‘spilled over.’ There were moments when Lynch—who had driving force without enthusiasm—half envied the younger man his temperament of clear flame.

Six months of personal contact, over an absorbing interest, had confirmed his first impression; a year had knit the two in a close bond. Even so, he still saw Desmond mainly as good material; and hoped to make use of him, unofficially, in the tricky work of breaking up that chain of secret communication between Bolshevik Central Asia and the Independent Frontier Tribes. It had seemed a certainty that Desmond would start his political career under young Leigh in Chitral; and on that consummation Lynch had set his inflexible heart.

When Lance went off on leave to Kashmir, there had been no ostensible signs of danger ahead; and the boy’s brief letter, in June, announcing his engagement to Eve Challoner, had given Lynch the shock of his life. He had seen it as probably an end to the ‘Political’; certainly an end—for the time being—to any chance of Chitral. He had cursed ‘that damned girl’ in lurid language; and in terms scarcely less guarded, he had written and spoken his mind to Lance, for the same ignoble reason that a goaded man loses his temper. Nothing could come of it, beyond his own base satisfaction. Nothing had come of it. Lance had taken it so well that, for once, Lynch had felt ashamed of himself; and their friendship had remained unimpaired.

The engagement had not ruled Lance out of the Political; and, when wrath subsided, Lynch had accepted the inevitable with a good grace. A boy of Desmond’s all-round quality would demand no less than the whole of life. And doubtless he would get it by virtue of that singleness of purpose which is the first principle of achievement. There were not many men who really knew what they wanted of life, fewer still who wanted it with passion—unless it happened to be a woman. Lance wanted a deal more than that: and if marriage had obvious drawbacks, Lynch knew all about the peculiar pitfalls of single unblessedness in the East: the fatal attraction of the unattached wife, the swiftness with which Indian servants gauged the moral tone of that Western anomaly, the so-called bachelor. If there were any suspicion of a leaning towards pleasures of the flesh, word would soon go forth; and the Sahib’s path in that direction would be made disastrously easy. Lynch himself had taken his fun where he found it. He knew more than most of his kind about the night life of Peshawar City. But no servant in his employ had ever ventured so to seek his favour or his rupees; and they probably respected him the more because he was a riddle they could not solve. Also he never swore at them, though on occasion he could make the toes of a delinquent curl with his scathing sarcasms.

If he trusted none of them, except one devoted orderly, he knew them and liked them without any acute sense of a gulf between. For all his faith in the British Raj, he had no strong racial feeling, no superiority complex. There were few of his own race whom he found better company than his right-hand man Bhagwān Das, a born detective, a master of disguise, and a man of exceptional character, who could assess to a nicety the value of any Sahib he served. In Lynch, for whom he acted as orderly, he had found a chief, who was also an ally; and between them they had brought off many a master-stroke of detective skill, in which those outside their amazing service would scarcely believe. If Lynch was better served than most of his fellows, he had largely his own attitude to thank for it. He had no quarrel with the country or its peoples; only with those who were wrecking its peace and prosperity by thrusting on it, ready-made, a form of democracy which had already been weighed and found wanting by many sane thinkers in the West.

So much for his work and his service—the most arduous and thankless service in all India: yet he would not, for thousands a month, be other than a mere Policeman. For himself, in twenty-two years of adult experience, he had learnt, more or less, to manage his own life and to control his passions. He had learnt to travel light in the matter of belongings and hampering human ties. He was fearless, because he had little to lose: ‘a holy man without the holiness.’ Since adolescence there had been but one experience that had upset his equilibrium. It had ended in smoke: and there would be no more. Marriage was not his vocation.

“When a man’s married, he’s not his own man,
He’s got to get on just as well as he can——”

On the text of the old English rhyme, he had preached his gospel of singleness to Lance Desmond; had hoped the boy would follow his own line of wisdom. Yet here he was, at six and twenty, as pleased with himself at having persuaded that girl to put a spoke in his wheel as if he had conquered a city. To-day the whole thing had been forcibly brought home to Lynch; and seeing those two in the flesh, had renewed his smouldering resentment against the lively young woman, who had crossed swords with him in a spirited fashion that suited him better than polite insincerities. She might be as charming as she pleased. She had no business to be there at all; adding insult to injury by keeping him waiting for dinner.

Emptying his glass, he frowned at the unoffending clock and extracted his big shabby letter case, just as the car sounded outside.

Desmond, entering briskly, also glanced at the clock.

‘Only eight minutes! Sorry, old man. But Mirza Khan won’t let dinner turn a hair. And he’s A.1 at duck salmi. As Eve asked after your pet weakness, I told her.’

‘Salmi?’ Lynch cheered up visibly. ‘If you’d told me, I’d have been enjoying it in advance.’

‘More likely you’d have been fuming for fear it might be just not quite! Come and feed.’

During dinner they talked food and wine and Peshawar news, while Ramazān waited on them, dignified and punctilious, pained that the Memsahib should be absent when a guest sat at her table. But the guest, for once, was blessing the Memsahib; expanding under the kindly influences of well-chosen wine and palatable food.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

By the fire in the study they settled down to coffee and cigars and old brandy. Then the letter case reappeared; and out of it Lynch drew a long slip of paper.

Lance asked with interest, ‘Is that the find?’

‘Yes. “Some” find.’ He unfolded it pensively. ‘Clear proof that we’re not romancing about Soviet designs, while authority discourses amiably on self-government without tears. Read that.’

Lance took the paper and read it with his concentrated air that added years to his age. It was written in Persian; and it amounted to a fully worked out constitution for the provisional government of India, when the Imperialistic ‘robbers and usurpers’ had been driven from the country by an organised programme of mass action, strikes, food riots and peasant revolts in every area. It described in detail how India’s ‘fabulous wealth’ would be appropriated and apportioned to bring the down-trodden Indian peasant freedom and happiness ‘as in Russia.’

Lynch, leaning against Desmond’s shoulder, struck at the paper with his thick forefinger.

‘“As in Russia!” The Land of Promise. And they say I’m afflicted with Reds on the brain, that I give them credit for every riot and rising——’

‘Which is a libel.’ Lance flashed a smile at him—and he was once more six and twenty.

‘Yes. You know that. And because you know it, I can tell you the uncomfortable truth. I’m afflicted with too much reliable information, with no power to act on it. That’s my trouble in a nutshell. And those that can act—won’t. There’s been a good deal of kubbar¹⁸ dribbling in lately; and I miss having you handy at Government House. Very decent of Mrs Desmond to give me a clear evening. Do tell her so. I made a hash of it. I’ve none of the gifts and graces.’

Lance smiled at the recollection.

‘I think she understood all right. And she knows I’m keen about Border affairs.’

‘Ah—how much does she know, in that line?’

Lance gave him a quick look. ‘You didn’t need to ask that, Lynch.’

‘I didn’t. I’m a shameless beggar. But I’m not sorry to have the clear confirmation——’

‘Straight from the horse’s mouth?’ Lance deftly turned it off, and reverted to that too explicit paper, which gave him an uncomfortable feeling between the shoulder-blades. ‘Did Bhagwān find this—or nobble it?’

‘Nobbled it off an innocent looking scoundrel loaded up with faked “missionary” papers; relieved him of the lot and sent him off empty-handed. But he couldn’t arrest him—and there you are. “Kutcha bundobast,”¹⁹ says Bhagwān Das; and I can’t say otherwise. He added for my consolation: “Hazúr, we know that you and the other Sahibs are not weak. The weakness is at the top of the tree, and your hands are tied from above. Why does the British Raj keep talking of this and that? Why not govern? Any Maharajah, if beset by these trouble-makers, would send them jut-put²⁰ to the Andamans.” That’s the brutal truth; but I couldn’t admit it. I could only tell him his bundobast was pukka; and reward him out of my own pocket.’

Desmond’s double nod conveyed sympathy and approval.

‘Now we’ve got it,’ he asked, ‘ what’s to do?’

‘I’m passing it on to our Excellent member, Sir Abdul. You doubtless didn’t read his fine speech last month, in support of the Public Safety Bill?’

‘’Fraid I didn’t. I’m no politician.’

‘So best. Modern India’s rank with it: and we’re all involved. The Bill’s a partial affair; but it would at least empower Government to deport all undesirables, British or foreign, who are actively encouraging communism. Of course it should include Indians, as the Russians do most of their dirty work through them. But we daren’t touch ’em it seems. They may well ask why don’t we govern. I went to Delhi while the debate was on, and heard some vigorous talk in support of the Bill. As Sir Abdul said, “The danger exists, and it is urgent. What would you think of a doctor who suspected that his patient had blood poisoning, and waited to treat him till the symptoms developed fatally?” A thundering good simile, clean thrown away on an Opposition impervious to argument or facts. One of ’em gravely compared the Reds to Cromwell and his Ironsides——’

Lance laughed. ‘Good old Cromwell! What the devil did he do to deserve the flattering comparison?’

‘Ask the honourable member! His sort are making the Assembly a thing of nought in the eyes of all intelligent men. It’s a Government measure; so in their eyes it must be pernicious, and must be turned down.’

‘Did they turn it down?’ asked ignorant Lance.

Lynch regarded him in mock reproof. ‘You deserve I should disown you! They did—by one solitary vote. That’s democracy. Government by the counting of noses! Imagine any sound business run on those lines. Yet it’s good enough to decide the fate of nations. The world’s got to put up with the principle of direction so long as a ship sails, or a regiment fights, or a child is born. But the modern political trend is all against it—and there you are. I’m not a religious man, as you know: but better the voice from Sinai than the voice from the arena.’

Lance sighed. ‘The arena has it. Will the Bill come up again?’

‘It will: next session. And if they persist in obstruction, even this least aggressive of Governments will have to pass it by Special Ordinance. Meantime, we others must do what we can. If I could nab one or two of the gang we’re after, so much the better. And naturally I’m counting on you.’

Lance turned quickly. ‘My dear fellow, I’ve got my hands full with this district.’

Their eyes met in a frank look, yet each was aware of a slight inner tension.

‘You’ll get a month’s leave in the summer.’

‘Yes—I will,’ Lance agreed in his level voice: and Lynch went on undeterred by that significant change of tone.

‘I take it you can’t have forgotten our arrangement for you to wander up Chitral way, in the guise of a holy man, with Bhagwān Das. Are you going back on that?’

In the pause that followed, Lance sat stiller than any man at ease can possibly sit.

‘It didn’t amount to an arrangement,’ he said.

‘That’s hedging. It was your idea; and you were tremendously keen. Has it all evaporated?’

‘Of course not. Of course I’m keen.’ There was a hint of controlled temper in Desmond’s low tone. ‘But I happen to have got married since then. Whatever leave I get, I spend with her. No one but you would suppose otherwise.’

Lynch shrugged and emptied his glass of brandy. The affair must not breed discord; and he knew the signs.

‘Oh, I know it’s asking a good deal of you in the circumstances,’ he said placably. ‘But I couldn’t foresee your marriage. I’ve primed you with inside knowledge; and it’s work that no one else in my circle could do so well.’

‘Draw it mild, old man,’ Lance pleaded in evident discomfort. ‘I’m damned sorry to seem like letting you down. But this summer I can’t let her down. We’ve got our plans fixed.’

‘Naturally.’ He took no interest in their confounded plans. But he could not so readily accept refusal: and a hopeful idea occurred to him.

‘See here, Lance. Your wife’s an intelligent girl. If you told her that I’d counted on you for getting at some important information, wouldn’t she—perhaps?’

Lance stared at the cool proposal. ‘Of course she would. It’s I who wouldn’t disappoint her. And I wouldn’t disappoint you either—you inhuman beggar!—for any other reason. But I can’t have it both ways. There are certain things—I must go without.’

‘Does that mean you intend to chuck trans-Border work because you’ve taken a wife? Would you refuse Chitral?’

A shadow crossed Desmond’s face of which he was unaware; but it did not escape John Lynch.

‘I’ll wait till it’s offered I think,’ he said in a careful voice. ‘There’s no sense in hankering——’

He checked himself; and Lynch cut in, ‘“When a man’s married, he’s not his own man.”’ He quoted the old tag in no spirit of jocosity. ‘A true word, spoken in jest. But marriage—in my prejudiced opinion—should not be allowed to interfere with a man’s normal way of life as much as it usually does.’

‘Tell that to Mansell of the 9th Sikhs. He’ll agree with you. In his case—it doesn’t. Marriage is a partnership. The woman drastically alters her way of life.’

‘She’s obliged to; so she jolly well makes the man do likewise. His one chance lies in holding his own—from the start. Women are rank monopolists.’

Lance smiled without looking up.

‘You seem to have done some close thinking on the subject. How to be a bachelor—though married! Some of ’em would be glad to know how it’s done.’

‘And some are born that way. Marriage can’t cure them. You’ll always be half a bachelor at heart, even if you father a dozen ‘

‘Man alive . . . have mercy on me!’ Lance groaned.

At that they both laughed; and the subject was tacitly dropped. Lance—as quiet and courteous as you please—was not to be jockeyed even into an adventure he coveted as keenly as ever. Neither was Lynch to be turned from his fixed purpose by one rebuff. He had spoken too soon; a mistake he seldom committed. Lance had his hands full and his heart full—of that confoundedly attractive girl. Later on, he might prove more amenable. And the leave season was still a long way off.

For nearly five minutes they smoked in silence; elbow to elbow, yet mentally in different spheres. Lynch, looking round for points in his own favour, foresaw that Lance, with his soldier temperament, would find it no easy matter to work amicably with Greg Wharton—a pukka I.C.S. man, and very much alive to the fact, in a world full of soldier-politicals. Able, but limited, blind to the significance of awakening India, he was the very antithesis of Sir Vincent Leigh, whom he frankly regarded as the wrong peg in the Government House hole. But Lance would not hear of that from John Lynch.

When he spoke again it was about their chances of colliding in camp during the cold weather.

‘I hope he gives you a pretty good dose of it. The more you see of these people outside kutcherry, the better District Officer you’ll be.’

And Lance said ruefully: ‘Wish you could rub that into him. He’s keen on camp himself. All the more office work for me. We don’t seem to hit it off. I suppose I haven’t yet got the hang of him. The other day I mentioned something he didn’t happen to know, and he seemed to think I was giving myself airs. Do I give myself airs?’

Lance asked the question as if he really wanted to know; and Lynch looked amused.

‘Can’t say I’ve noticed it. But you’ve a good deal of inside knowledge for your tender years. And as you’re fresh from Government House, he probably credits you with a superiority complex. He’s that sort of snob; the more so for being a shade embittered.’

‘What’s he being embittered about?’ There was more impatience than sympathy in Desmond’s tone.

‘Well, he knows he’s an able man; and he thinks the fact isn’t sufficiently appreciated in high quarters. Backstairs influence is the bee in his bonnet. He’s got a chronic grouse against life and the Government; and it makes him rather a bear with a sore head.’

‘It needn’t make him treat me like a cub with a swelled head.’

‘Ain’t we smart! It’s not like your usual luck that you should have started with old Gregory’s Powder, the only dislikable D.G. in the Province.’

Lance shrugged. Running down his senior went against the grain.

‘The jokes I used to have with Uncle Vinx. It was enormous fun working for him, besides being a privilege. He hasn’t got a one-track mind. Gives me the blues sometimes to think I’ve missed even a year or two of that. With Wharton I feel the rub of the collar all the time.’

Lynch laid a square hand on his shoulder and said nothing. That unusual admission of the blues set him wondering if they ever afflicted Lance at thought of Chitral, where by rights he should be now, free from the paltry despotism that irked his independent spirit. If he never felt an occasional twinge, he must be very far gone indeed. . . .

How far gone, he unconsciously revealed, when the door opened and Eve stood smiling on the threshold, her fur coat unfastened, showing the pale frock and orange-tawny roses. At sight of her, something came alight in Lance that had been extinct all the evening; as if in her absence he was but half himself. Yet he only said, ‘Hullo, there you are,’ in a contented voice, as both men rose and she came forward.

‘Is the pow-wow nearly over?’ she asked, looking from one to the other with her smiling eyes that gave her an air of enjoying some private joke. Lynch, who had known her father, remembered that look in his.

‘Palaver done set,’ he answered as Lance left it to him. ‘Your turn to take the chair.’

She sank into it with a sigh of satisfaction.

‘So much nicer here,’ she murmured. ‘But it was a lovely walk. Stars flashing. No moon; not a cloud. And being on foot’—she shot a wicked glance at Lynch—‘I didn’t once crash into a culvert or topple into a ditch!’

Lynch returned the look with interest. ‘Next time I come, you shall take me out, and show me how it’s done.’

‘Would you trust your valuable life in my hands?’

‘Without a qualm. You can’t pass off fairy tales on a Police officer of twenty years’ service.’

‘It wasn’t bad, for a spontaneous effort,’ she mused, pensively. ‘I must try to be more subtle.’

‘Or try telling the truth for a change!’

‘Look out!’ Lance interposed from the hearth-rug, but she smiled caressingly up at him.

‘Don’t cramp his style, darling. Rude people are so refreshing! Which reminds me, I terribly want refreshing. I could only sip Kitty’s horrid barley water from politeness. Lance, do be an angel——’

Lance, in his capacity of angel, shouted for drinks—lime squash for her, pegs for the men. While she drank, he watched her; and the absorbed look in his eyes made Lynch feel vaguely uncomfortable. He had never been intimate enough with any married pair to hear a mere husband called an angel, or to see him gaze at his wife as if he had forgotten, for the moment, that they were not alone.

It was only for a moment. Before Lynch had filled his pipe, Lance was pouring out whisky.

‘Say when——’

Lynch said ‘When’; and left them to their happy disjointed talk. They talked of Kitty Mansell. They made unadorned remarks about nothing in particular; but one could feel how immensely pleased they were simply at being together again, thinking of nothing but each other—though no doubt they fancied they were concealing the fact from his unseeing eyes. When they exchanged even a casual look something indefinable, yet actual, passed between them. That, Lynch supposed, was the essence of marriage. The rest of it—eating and living and sleeping together—any human pair could achieve. To Lynch, who could see a good deal without looking, it was as if his friend had been lent to him for those few hours; and here she was taking over her husband again, body and soul, under his very eyes. And he did not enjoy the process.

So when Lance turned to him with a laughing remark about his silence, he emptied his glass and stood up.

‘I’ve had my innings. And there’s a long report I’ve got to pitch in to Headquarters to-morrow.’ He nodded to Eve. ‘Good-night, Mrs Desmond. Thanks for the loan of him.’

And he went out leaving them together.

But he could not so readily dismiss them from his mind, nor accept out of hand the frustration of his cherished plan for the summer. A married Lance might need diplomatic handling; but Lynch was apt to get his own way soon or late, because he never contemplated failure, nor haggled unduly over means and ends. He must be content, for a few months, to wait and watch. No human relation was stable; and even marriage could not change the real Lance, with adventure and ambition in his bones. But at present he had got that girl on the brain. Even when she tactfully removed herself, Lynch could feel her there still, an imponderable influence, getting in his way.

Against his will he was impressed; not least by the decisive manner in which Lance had refused to consider that coveted adventure. Yet he still saw it as a phase of early marriage—very potent while it lasted; and its duration depended largely on the quality of his wife. He distrusted the artist type; and he specially distrusted music. But she was no type, and no cypher. She intended to count; and she would count, with a man like Lance. At present, it was he, John Lynch, who did not count. But he had no intention of being politely elbowed aside. He would have chances in camp to study the pair in his own interests.

Time was his ally: and he knew how to wait.

Chapter 4

Love is greater than the lovers. Love is such
That all may love and fail, and yet be rich.
— Humbert Wolfe

Eve sat alone before her small writing-table in the drawing-room, frowning at a long line of figures on the open page of her household account book, her teeth worrying the point of her pencil, her brain prickly with futile irritation. Three times she had added up those perverse columns of rupees, annas and pice. Each time the total had been different; not wildly, but definitely so.

After all, what matter a few rupees more or less, when she had so badly spilled over the edge of her allowance. She hated figures. She hated finicking over money. And very privately, in a whisper, she rather hated housekeeping. It was still new enough to feel almost like a game; but even in a game one must learn rules; and the most troublesome rule in this game was accounting for your wildly spent money—or rather, for someone else’s, which was worse. Though Lance declared he was not someone else and that his money was hers, she could not treat his generous allowance as casually as she treated her own little legacy from her father. That precious hundred and fifty a year could be spent unaccounted for. Chunks of it could even be lost—in a fit of super-carelessness—with no more than a passing qualm. Not that Lance finicked over money. Generosity ran like a thread of gold through his character. In some ways he was extravagant; and he loved gambling at races and gymkhanas. But he had astonishing luck and judgment. With his quick clever brain, he always seemed to know where he stood; while Eve was never quite sure—financially—whether she stood on her head or her heels.

He had warned her that a bungalow to themselves would involve careful management, in these days of high prices and high wages. Till she married she had known nothing of all that; had gasped when Vanessa told her that the servants alone would swallow nearly a third of their pay; because, owing to custom or caste, each could only do special duties; and the wages of all had risen nearly fifty per cent since that mythical golden age, Before-the-War.

With the zest of the newly married, they had planned a monthly scale of expenses, allowing ample margins and a special margin for emergencies. It had worked out beautifully on paper; but money, Eve firmly believed, was a slippery wayward thing that maliciously eluded fixed scales: not perceiving that, in truth, she was the wayward thing, fretted by all fixed scales, in money or life. Delighted with her generous allowance, she had seen herself keeping well within it, presenting her superfluous margin to the ‘State fund.’ And here she sat, facing a total that ignominiously spilled over—margins and all. It was so tempting to plan delicious dinners for Lance and his friends; and Mirza Khan’s gift for cooking made it more tempting still. So there it was—and there no doubt it often would be; unless one could change one’s inner self for love of the dearest man on earth.

The daily account had seemed to be keeping within the limit; but she had overlooked several important, uninteresting items—charcoal and wood, kerosine and the ponies’ gram. They seemed to eat a huge amount, those ponies—if they really had it all. Perhaps she had given Ramazān too free a hand with these side issues and with English stores, because he took it for granted, and it seemed simpler at the moment. Now she must pay the penalty.

It was all bitterly disappointing; she could have cried from sheer vexation. Instead, she sat and glowered at those provoking figures. Lance must add them up himself. He had said he would tackle accounts after dinner. He would be vexed to a certainty. It would spoil their lovely evening; and, although her day was full of occupation, she lived for the evening. It was almost worth having him too long absent for the joy of getting him back. And because he put the whole of himself into all he did—she wanted the more to spoil him over anything that gave him pleasure; but alas, even a virtue could be pushed too far.

The importance of trivialities—that was her constant quarrel with life; their tendency to provoke surface friction, though heart and mind were at one. But on the whole it had been a radiant time, this first month of making a home together: in love with themselves and the whole of life; still seeing it a trifle out of focus; living it not at the scattered outer rim, but at the centre, where life’s most sincere demands trouble the waters; having all they desired on earth because they had each other. When they clashed, Eve knew she was the difficult one. Though Lance had his fads and his alarming tempers, he had the precious, indefinable gift of being easy to live with. There was about him the kind of rightness that is inborn and unaware of itself. Beneath his quick impatient ways he was as sensitive as he was tenacious; and, like most men created to lead—he enjoyed being taken in hand, now and then, by the right person.

If only . . . if only—always an ‘if’ or a ‘but’—he were not so swallowed up by that eternal kutcherry. There was home work too, on some days, and perpetual polo; not much margin of time or of himself left over for an exacting wife. No makeshifts for him. Whatever he did, important or no, must be done as if his life depended on it; and sincerely she admired all that. But the more she admired him, the more she craved his companionship; and there were certain Army wives of her acquaintance who seemed rather bored because their husbands were too much at home—the ingrained perversity of life. Sometimes she was almost base enough to wish he had remained a soldier. But then—how would she have managed on a subaltern’s pay?

Those figures! She closed the offending book with a slam, and was lighting a cigarette when Ramazān brought in two cards on a silver tray.

She glanced at the larger one. ‘Colonel and Mrs G. L. Slade.’ That was the new Brigadier. Bored with the interruption, she hesitated a second. One could say ‘Darwaza bund—the door is shut.’ But this was a Burra Mem——. It was also a new human being; always, for her, a source of interest and wonder.

‘Salaam do, Hazúr?’ Ramazān respectfully prompted her.

‘Salaam do,’ she echoed the formula implying that the door was open.

It opened to admit a beautiful young woman in a close-fitting coat that revealed the lines of her supple yet rounded figure. The folds of ash-blonde hair over her ears contrasted curiously with very dark eyebrows and clear green eyes. It was a face that might coarsen after forty; the lips full and soft, touched up with an unnatural shade of carmine that affected Eve like a discord in music. Before that vision of calculated charm, Eve—in her morning frock, with her shyness and lack of small talk—felt a mere gawk of a girl, as no doubt she appeared to the stranger, who came forward with a slow smile that barely reached her eyes.

Lazy through and through, Eve summed her up as their hands met. She would get the most out of life, with the least exertion. She would have a kind, stupid husband, addled by her beauty, who would wait upon her hand and foot.

‘So glad I found you at home,’ she was saying, as they sat down on the sofa. ‘I haven’t seen you at the Club.’

‘We don’t go there very often,’ Eve said in a practical voice lest it sound too newly married. ‘We mostly ride: and we don’t play Bridge.’

But Mrs Slade was not attending. Her eyes had strayed to the writing-table, where a photograph of Lance stood by a bowl of red roses.

‘Are you a keen rider?’

‘I love it more than anything.’

‘That must be nice for him.’ A glance indicated the photo. ‘I knew him as a subaltern. So I naturally wanted to see you.’

‘To see if he’d made a mistake?’ Eve asked, with a deplorable flippancy. Shyness was apt to afflict her that way, when it did not strike her dumb. Instantly aware of the gaucherie, her cheeks tingled; and Mrs Slade stared at her, lazily amused.

‘Oh well—that hadn’t occurred to me.’

Her full-toned voice had pleasant modulations.

‘I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry,’ Eve began, and was waved aside by a delicately gloved hand.

‘Nothing to be sorry about. You only skipped the boring preambles. One gets sick of them in India, being moved about so much. Such an effort hunting up fresh people.’

‘And then they make rude remarks!’ murmured irrepressible Eve. ‘It was nice of you hunting me up so soon.’

‘Well—I was interested. And you’re a bride. They tell me you’re a clever girl—music and all that.’

‘Very kind of them, whoever they are!’ said Eve with becoming modesty. ‘I do love music. And one doesn’t get much out here. Only bands and gramophones.’

Mrs Slade’s glance had strayed again to the writing-table.

“That’s a very good likeness,” she remarked, shelving the music, which did not interest her. She evidently preferred to talk about Lance; but Eve would not.

‘Yes,’ she said casually. ‘He takes very well.’

‘As keen as ever on polo, is he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s a magnificent player,’ the cool persistent voice went on. ‘But I suppose it’s all kutcherry now. No wonder civilians get narrow and stale. Nothing but files and smelly natives. How about tea and tennis one day this week—would he come?’

‘I’m afraid he isn’t often home in time. And if he is, it’s usually polo, or a ride.’

Mrs Slade smiled. ‘He’s a pukka Irishman. He prefers horses to human beings! But I suppose on Sunday?”

‘Oh, we’re going out to Hangu,’ Eve fibbed, in desperate defence of their sacred day.

‘Then you must come to dinner—and be the guest of the evening, as you’re still a bride.’

‘I’m very nearly not. Just edging out of it.’

The inscrutable green eyes lingered on her face.

‘And you’re still rather shy of all that? I thought post-War girls hadn’t a blush left in them.’

‘They haven’t many. But I suppose some are born shy, even if they happen to be recent specimens!’

‘I suppose so. I don’t really know much about girls. They bore me. But you must be a bride at my dinner.’

‘Positively the last appearance! I’ll be a poor show. I haven’t got a wedding dress or pearls.’

‘You’ve got the bridegroom. That’s more to the point. Shall we say the 9th? Just a few pleasant people.’

‘Yes. That would be nice,’ Eve agreed, glad of being able to accept at last. ‘If we’re not whisked into camp.’

‘You’re never certain? A beastly nuisance. Will you go with him?’

‘Of course. I’m longing to go.’

The beautiful shoulders just hinted at a shrug. ‘You’ll soon get fed up with all that. So will he. I should have said he was a born soldier.’

But Eve was not to be drawn in that direction. They talked people and coming Kohat festivities for the prescribed ten minutes. Then the vision departed with a smiling reminder, ‘The 9th. Don’t forget! ‘

For at least five minutes Eve sat idle on the sofa, seeing in her mind that beautiful face and figure, so skilfully set off by expensive clothes. Some women did have unfair advantages; and that one would know how to use them all. She seemed rather interested in Lance. Perhaps she had tried the predatory touch. She was the kind he would bolt from at sight. The thought of him made her feel impatient for tea-time. Household accounts forgotten, she went over to the piano and took her fiddle from its case.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

She waited for tea till five. No sign of Lance; so she gave the order and sat alone with her gleaming Burmese tea-set on a silver tray, little soda chupatties piping hot in a silver muffin dish. She ate and drank alone, with Bliss and a book for company.

And just before six Lance strolled in, looking rather tired, very unusual for him.

Eve sprang up and flung her arms round him. Then she pushed him, unresisting, into his chair.

‘Fresh tea, darling?’

‘Don’t bother. I’d prefer a stiff peg—and your sandwiches.’ He helped himself and shouted for whiskey. ‘It’s been a hell of a day. What I chiefly want is to get the smell of brown bodies and garlic out of my nostrils. For choice, a clean healthy whiff of stables.’

Eve brought the bowl of red roses and held them close to his face.

‘Better than stables?’

He laughed, and sniffed them—a long luxurious sniff—and kissed the back of her hand as Ramazān came in with the tray.

Tea was removed, except for the sandwiches; and Eve, on a floor cushion, leaned against his knee. It could still surprise her how the coming of one person should send a radiation through her whole body as if a light were turned on inside. For she had the poet’s sense of freshness in familiar things that keeps the bloom on life.

‘What was the special tangle,’ she asked, ‘that kept you so long over-time?’

He smiled into her upturned face; the tired look already charmed away.

‘I was hung up by a very complicated case. The eternal Hindu-Moslem squabble. Two factions at each other’s throats like a pair of bull terriers. But you can’t take each faction by the tail and pull them apart. You’ve got to unravel coils within coils of jealousies and intrigues and subtle motives that would never enter a white man’s head. Both sides trumping up false charges, chiefly for the sake of going to law about it. Their craze for petty law-suits is past belief. And our craze for giving ’em clean justice prolongs the excitement. I begin to wonder if it isn’t our deadliest gift to them. In this case I was half afraid I’d given a wrong decision, as I’m apt to favour the Moslems. And there was great howling in the Hindu faction. So I recalled some of the principals, and questioned ’em over again from another angle. No result. Same decision. And I might have got home an hour earlier.’

Eve’s hand crept up to the one that lay on his knee. ‘Darling, I do think you’re too scrupulous over them and their potty squabbles. I’m sure old Wharton wouldn’t ever hear them twice over.’

‘That’s Wharton’s affair. We don’t see eye to eye in many things. And their squabbles aren’t all potty.

It matters a lot to the poor devils if they win. or lose. This was a case of izzat.²¹ One fellow blackening the other’s face. And they’re awfully sensitive over izzat. That’s why prestige is so important for us in this country. Folk at Home think it’s only our excuse for playing at little tin-gods. Well, India likes gods. She doesn’t insist on equality where none exists. And I’m with her there. What these attempts at abolishing caste will amount to it’s hard to tell. But without the aristocratic principle, India won’t be India. She’ll be worse than a London suburb. And you can’t get away from caste distinctions even in that paradise of democracy!—There’s edification for you! But if you will turn the tap on——?’

‘It’s not so easy. You don’t tell half enough. But doesn’t the work sometimes dishearten you—all crookedness and crime?’

‘It might, if I gave full play to my imagination—as you would! But anyhow, it’s my job. And where’s the use of being disheartened?’

‘Practical person!’ She rubbed her cheek against his sleeve.

‘Well, I’ve got to be practical enough for two in this partnership!—What’s the Unpractical One been up to all day?’

‘Ought to have paid some calls—and didn’t. Ought to have darned master’s socks—and didn’t. Tackled accounts; and couldn’t add them up. And—oh, I entertained an angel unawares. A vision of beauty: wife of the new Brigadier—Mrs Slade.’

‘Slade?’ Lance jerked his head up. ‘I heard he’d got the command, and that she was at Home.’

‘Well, I can vouch that she isn’t. It’s scandalous the way we don’t go to the Club, and don’t hear all kinds of important things. They’ve been here a week. She’s devastatingly beautiful. And she said she knew you when you were with the Regiment. You seem to have made an impression! Rid you know her well?’

‘Yes.’

His brevity, his perceptible change of tone puzzled Eve.

‘Didn’t you like her?’

‘No. I didn’t like her.’

The significant stress on the one word sent a tingling shock through Eve. Their talk at Gulmarg . . .

She looked up straight into his eyes. Question and answer flashed simultaneously.

‘Lance!’ It was a mere indrawn breath. ‘That woman?’

He nodded, frowning; and Eve felt a queer pang far inside, as if a thorn had crept between her flesh and her bones.

‘Damn it all—what did they want to send Slade here for?’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Will she—bother you?’ Eve whispered, hating that beautiful vision with all her strength.

‘Me? Devil a bit. And she’s not going to bother you.’ His hand closed on her shoulder. ‘I know what you’re like inside. I’ve told you it was mere infatuation; that she meant nothing to me, in any way but one. I was damned rude to her the last time we met. That sort of charmer, a man catches like a fever. When it’s over—it’s clean over. To suppose anything else would be an insult to yourself—and to me, you hard believing woman!’

‘Dearest darling, I don’t—I couldn’t suppose anything else.’

She turned and pressed her face against him. The strong whiff of tobacco from the pouch in his pocket made her heart turn over in the queerest way. She was thinking swiftly—under stress of emotion—thinking of the way that woman had looked at his photograph, had tried to make her talk about him, had insisted on a bridal dinner, so that Lance would have to take her in. She was still interested; and she was deadly beautiful. To know that he had been ‘damned rude’ to her was sweeter than honey in the honeycomb. All the same—it would hurt, seeing them together. The abstract woman had scarcely mattered at all. But the concrete woman—beautiful and alluring—would rouse the strong possessive element in her that she recognised as a deplorable contribution from her mother. She must keep it carefully hidden from Lance (who knew what she was like inside!) lest his masculine mind should mistake it for the doubt of which she was incapable.

His arm was round her shoulder now.

‘What are you doing down there, nuzzling into my pocket?’ he asked in a changed voice. ‘Not worrying, are you?’

She raised her head and smiled at him.

‘You didn’t mind when I told you at Gulmarg?’

‘N-no. I knew it was natural. But I do rather mind—seeing her.’

He nodded. ‘I mind it for you. But you’ve got to be a sensible modern wife and behave—inside, I mean.’

He looked at her so searchingly that it was all she could do not to lower her lids lest he read her lurking thoughts.

‘For God’s sake, my darling,’ he said with sudden fervour, ‘don’t go making too much of it, or I’ll be sorry I ever told you.’

Before she could answer, he had leaned forward and was kissing her eyes, her throat, her Ups; telling her thus all the things he could not—or would not—put into words; things that the sane true Eve did not need telling, that the insatiable Eve could not be told often enough.

Then he leaned back with a slow sigh; pulled out the tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe.

‘That’s enough about her. She’ll have half a dozen boys buzzing round her before she’s been here a month. Mansell’s her sort.’

‘Oh, poor Kitty!’

‘Yes, poor Kitty. Wonder why he ever married. The forbidden’s his quarry.—Now then, Unpractical One, let’s have a look at those accounts.’

The hated word, at that stirring moment, produced almost a physical jar.

‘But you said after dinner.’

‘After dinner I’d sooner have music and be at peace.’ He glanced at the marble-covered book. ‘Fetch it here. Have you been doing wonders? I’m counting on your margin to make good my own indiscretions! I had rotten luck at the Gym on Saturday; and Kaye’s last hundred is due this month.’

She fetched the book and laid it open on his knee.

‘There! See how well I’ve lived up to my reputation.’

The touch of defiance was mere bravado, as she hoped he would realise. He ran his eye up the three long columns, jotted down the total and, without a word of comment, examined the little sheaf of bills, worrying his short moustache. He couldn’t be more vexed with her than she was with herself. Because of it her tongue was holden; and she could not nestle down by him as before.

‘It’s a bit stiff,’ he said at last, looking up at her.

‘Yes. I’m awfully sorry.’

‘Didn’t you realise?’

‘No. The accounts seemed all right. I’m afraid I forgot about—those other bills.’

‘Bills, like the rest of us, object to being forgotten,’ he remarked in his level voice and patted the arm of his chair. ‘Sit.’

As she sank cautiously on to her floor cushion, he turned to her and smiled.

‘It’s not a brilliant start. But you’ll do better presently. You’ve given old Ramazān too much rope. And that’s bad of you, because I warned you, Eve.’

‘I know. But he took things for granted. And he’s much cleverer——’

‘Oh, he’s mighty clever. Look at the charcoal—and the gram. I’ll talk to him straight. But unless you hold the reins, he’ll manoeuvre you all along the line. That’s the trouble with a man who’s been a bachelor’s factotum. But I like the beggar. I don’t want to turn him down.’

‘Lance, you mustn’t.’

‘Then you mustn’t let him run amok! Or each month there’ll be the devil to pay—and the devil’s an ugly customer. You’ve lived in high places where the wheels are well oiled; and it’s not easy changing gear. But if you can’t manage a bit better than this, we’ll have to take on two subs or a married couple to go shares——’

‘Oh no—no.’

‘Then I’ll have to cut down my stables.’

‘You shan’t.’

She seized his forearm; and he pressed it against her.

‘God knows I don’t want to do either, if you’ll only furbish up your money sense.’

Eve sighed. ‘I hate money.’

‘So do I—in some ways. I hate the money standard. I’d sooner you muddled my pay to blazes than have you made like that. It’s muck; but it’s jolly useful muck. And you’ve got to treat it with respect or it has a nasty knack of getting in the last word.’

Eve grimaced, and he gently tugged that convenient lock over her ear.

‘What you really hate, Mrs Desmond, is the trouble of fitting means to end. And what I hate is seeing a simple job bungled. You’re a clever creature. Why not put your brains into it for my benefit?’

‘I’d far rather put my money into it, when I spill over.’

‘And wriggle out of the discipline?’

The truth, though quietly spoken, touched her on the raw.

‘Mean of you, twisting it the wrong way,’ she flashed, more hurt than angry. ‘Can’t I sometimes give you a present, you proud beast?’

‘As many as you please. And I’ll salaam to the ground. But bills and things are my job, not yours.’

‘Then I wish you’d do your job. You’d manage it far better than I ever will.’

‘You’re right there,’ he retorted, vexed by her spirit of perversity. He was scanning those fatal accounts again—‘Why, look here—what’s this? You’ve got Chatterji’s bill and Bolton’s down. I gave you cheques for them a week ago.’ He struck his pencil through the two items. ‘Reduces the total a bit. But where are those cheques?’

He brought his right fist down on his left palm; and she felt guiltier than ever. In that direction her mind was a blank. She could only say, ‘If you gave them, I suppose I sent them.’

‘Did you possibly send them without the bills?’

He had found the bills; and he fluttered them in her face, half impatiently, half in joke.

She gasped.

‘Oh, Lance, I couldn’t have been such a duffer. If I’ve done that, I’d better resign!’ She leaned to him appealingly. ‘Are you furious, darling? Aren’t I turning out a wifely success?’

Her dismay was so genuine and disarming that he curbed his impatience and kissed the tip of her lifted chin.

‘You’re an unqualified success in all that really matters. But I can’t say as much for your finance work. At least—not yet. You really must produce those cheques; unless you’ve thrown ’em in the paper basket, which isn’t the true destination of cheques!’

Enable, just, then, to bear being laughed at, she flew to her table and pulled open the middle drawer into which she usually thrust important items that must not go astray. Lance, to her dismay, followed her, and stood there while she fumbled desperately among old envelopes, unanswered letters, note-books and pencils, fragments of sealing-wax and string.

‘“Here’s a pretty mess!”’ he maddeningly quoted. ‘How the devil can you hope to find a mere cheque in that ragbag.’

‘My fingers can,’ she retorted: and mercifully they did. From the far end of the drawer she produced a pale brown envelope addressed in his handwriting.

‘There!’ he laid it down and dumped a brass frog paper weight on it. ‘I even addressed the blasted thing to save you trouble. Where’s the other?’

The other proved more elusive; but she unearthed it from between the pages of a book she must have been reading that morning and had not opened since. Lance took it without comment, which was more crushing than any reproach. He thrust the bills into their envelopes. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘stick them up and stamp them under my eyes. And swear you won’t do it again!’

‘But I might,’ she truthfully murmured.

‘But you mustn’t. That’s the point. You must take yourself in hand, if you don’t want me to take you—and shake you, one of these days. In these little matters, you really are the most exasperating young woman I ever struck!’

At that, Eve drew herself up, ignoring her inner tweak at the conviction in his tone.

‘Have you struck a large selection of young women in your brief life?’

‘Hundreds of ’em—hard,’ he answered with a straight face, though the corners of his mouth twitched.

‘All exasperating?’

‘I suppose they mostly are, once a fellow marries them. Before marriage they keep it dark.’

‘You seem to know a lot about them! I never kept it dark. I was born exasperating. And nobody at home troubled to mince the fact.’

Under her assumed lightness, he detected the hurt she would not show. He came nearer and put an arm round her.

‘Told you so terribly often—did they?’

‘On an average, two or three times a week, every hols. I hoped you wouldn’t notice it quite so soon.’

He pulled her close against him. ‘Darling, you positively asked for it. Swear I won’t notice it again.’

‘You won’t be able to help it. That’s the worst of me.’

She said it with the hopelessness of an unhappy child.

‘And I won’t be able to help adoring you, even when you are exasperating. That’s the best of you!’

His patent sincerity and the fervour of his unexpected kiss made her feel almost glad she had so wrought upon him. He didn’t often enough say that about adoring her; and she still wanted it on an average two or three times a week. She had sense enough to know that husbands—even young and ardent ones—either cannot or will not give themselves away to that extent; but the knowledge has never yet stilled the woman’s natural craving to be told—and told again.

Chapter 5

So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes,
With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise.
— A. Wickham

For Eve—in spite of good resolves—that dinner on the ninth proved more of an ordeal than she had foreseen. It was a small dinner, three women and seven men: a Staff Major and his wife, a Flight Commander and three subs, one of them a good-looking young Rajput, with a King’s Commission, in Lance’s old cavalry regiment. ‘Just a few pleasant people’—as promised: pleasant enough, but for her own foolish preoccupation with the vision at the end of the table.

If Mrs Slade had looked beautiful in a becoming hat and coat, she was a revelation in green satin and sparkles the very shade of her eyes; gleaming white skin—plenty of it, carmined lips and cunningly waved hair, emeralds round her throat and in her ears, and one big emerald set in diamonds, at her breast. Except for two sparkling green strips, her statuesque shoulders and arms were bare. She was bien soignée to the tips of her polished finger nails; and the dress itself, for all its costly simplicity, was out of tune with the simple occasion.

The potent spell of her beauty needed no meretricious aids; and to Eve, with her acute susceptibility, her groundless jealousy, it seemed as if no power of the spirit could prevail against it. Her natural interest in human beings set her wondering how that lavish self-display was affecting all those men. How did it affect the young Rajput, for instance, who sat on her left? She liked his soldierly air of breeding and his lean carved face. The Oriental showed only in his mouth and his eyes, that kept straying to the other end of the table. Was Colonel Slade aware of those glances? Or had custom made him almost indifferent to her beauty, her guile and its effect on other men? Eve, with her sixth sense, could feel the man’s honesty and kindliness under the heavy surface; but oh—he was dull. Quite the wrong partner for a girl of twenty.

And she had been condemned to him simply in order that his wife might sit next to Lance. Did he suspect? Had he ever suspected—before? Did he notice—as Eve noticed, with tingling fury—how she leaned towards Lance in talking; how her arm just perceptibly touched his when she wanted to catch his attention; for he would keep talking to the Gunner sub, on his right. Eve was surprised at the fierceness of her own sensations now that she saw them together. Her troublesome imagination would not leave her alone. She could hardly look at the woman without picturing her in his arms. For it was not the negligible present that hurt, it was the passionate past, the intolerable thought of all that had once been between them—for how long? She was beautiful and beguiling, and she was still interested. That he could ever have wanted her so urgently as to disregard the rights of that pathetic, if uninteresting husband, pained Eve more than the physical fact. But she must keep her primitive self hidden under the outer sheath that so inadequately protected her from thorns and briars.

Her civilised self—Mrs Lance Desmond at a party—was more profitably engaged in exploring her young Rajput, whom she had met once or twice at polo. He was a fine player, a born rider, and all his movements had a panther-like grace, a heritage from ancestors who had never done anything in a hurry. It was Mrs Slade’s only merit that she had invited this boy, and had put him next to herself. Mr Barton, over the way, very pink and polished, was just typical sub. Mr Fellowes, the lively Gunner, was too horsey in the wrong way for her critical taste; and the Flight Commander, whom Mrs Slade called Jinks, was obviously ensnared; seated by his goddess, taking stock of Lance as a possible rival. Eve assessed him as ‘games and women and probably broad stories.’ He was a tall man, lean-flanked, with a narrow head and prominent blue eyes that gave him away whenever they rested on Mrs Slade. It was the gaze of a man forced to look against his will. It reminded Eve of a hungry dog waiting for his dinner; and it hurt her, stranger though he was. He paid scant attention to his partner, Mrs Sterne, a small woman in grey, dark and rather plain, with bright eyes and a quick wit, far better worth talking to than the vision in green.

Lance—very much on the spot this evening—spoke across to her several times; and she returned his sallies with interest. Altogether, he was behaving beautifully, sheathed in his ‘Government House manners,’ a blend of the politely attentive and politely distrait. One might almost suppose he was meeting Mrs Slade for the first time. More than once Eve distinctly heard, ‘Oh, don’t you remember?’ in her caressing voice; but Lance, on each occasion, frowned vaguely into space, making a courteous effort that must aggravate the goddess under her smiling mask.

Under that smiling mask, Ina Slade was more than aggravated. To the born siren, male indifference is the unforgivable sin; and she knew the man well enough to see that it was genuine. For she had her full share of the shrewdness that goes with undeviating self interest—the only form of interest that she found worth cultivating. She was the least curious person on earth. She knew thoroughly the only things she wanted to know—how to enjoy herself and dress herself and how to stir the passions of men. She had ‘no time’—the formula of the lazy—to trouble about things or people for whom she had no personal use. She seldom lost her temper, because few things mattered sufficiently to upset her control. So long as Ina Slade secured the pick of the basket, what matter if other hearts ached with unfulfilled desires? It amused her to tantalise the amorous Jinks. It would amuse her to create a flutter in the heart of that girl with the remarkable eyes, who of course knew nothing of the passionate episode at Bannu. Men did not tell their wives: that was one of the many clichés by which she lived. She had not been prepared to find Lance (she could call him nothing else) still capable of creating a minor flutter in the region she was pleased to call her heart. For three years the memory of that difficult and exciting conquest had been overlaid by other ‘affairs.’ Yet she knew, at sight, that Lance himself had not been overlaid, for the galling reason that he had discarded her before she had wearied of him: a blow no other man had dealt to her inordinate vanity. He had awakened in her, unwittingly, more than mere passion, mere desire to arouse desire. Never had she come nearer to loving a man than on that last painful day when he had scorched her with the lightnings of his clean young scorn. . . .

And now he sat there beside her, as he used to sit in the days of her dominion, magnetic as ever, patently in love with his wife, keeping his hostess at arm’s length with astonishing coolness and skill; an invulnerable air about him, that was an implicit challenge to such as she. And while she talked charmingly, she was pondering ways and means to rouse him; if only for a few mad hours, to get within striking range. At least she could use him to-night to ward off Jinks, who was becoming rather a bore, and to puzzle that young wife of his. In her view the sole raison d’être of other people, was to be used, one way or another for her own ends.

She had already observed, with mild amusement, that her husband appeared to be ‘taking notice’ of her and Lance—the only attaché who had, in her cruel phrase, ‘drawn blood’ since the stormy beginning of things. She had long ago ceased to trouble her head about what he thought or felt. But twice, when he glanced her way, the look in his eyes briefly arrested her attention; and she hazarded a guess that he was thinking of the stiff bill he would have to pay for her Paris frock, ordered for Delhi, wasted on Kohat; donned to-night for the benefit of Lance Desmond.

She had guessed wrong. Godfrey Slade was not thinking of that expensive gown, except to deplore its unsuitability at a small dinner. He was thinking of the woman inside it more critically than his wont. A large heavy man, nearing fifty, he cared for little outside his profession; but beneath his surface phlegm, he was kindly and sensitive. Has wife held him by her beauty, her physical charm and his constant uncertainty as to how far she allowed these dangling young men to go. If there had only been children—— She had never seemed to want them. But he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t tell a thing about her, except that she was damned beautiful: and because of it, because of what had once been between them, she could twist him round her finger in most ways, if not quite all. A pity that good-looking young Desmond had turned up again. She had seemed really keen on him. God alone knew how far matters had gone between them. But she had better not try her tricks on him now; or she would hear, for the first time, what Godfrey Slade had to say on the subject. It might give her a wholesome shock. . . .

Damn it all—worrying over Ina, he had lost the thread of Sterne’s tale about his aggressive Hindu landlord. These Indians went out of their way nowadays to cheek Englishmen.

‘I told him the bungalow leaked,’ Sterne was saying, ‘and the blighter gave me the lie. So I had him in for a demonstration, on a good old rainy day. I manoeuvred him around to all the weak spots; kept him guilelessly arguing for twenty minutes, while nice big drops of water kept splashing down on the back of his neck. When he complained, I said innocently, “Oh but the bungalow doesn’t leak, Babu-ji!”—— It’s not leaking now. That’s the line to take with ’em.’

There were chuckles of amusement from those who appreciated the subtle humour of Sterne’s tactics; and Fellowes remarked across the table, ‘It’s really gettin’ past a joke, these days. Half the shopkeepers are Congress-wallahs. And they let you know it. That oily rascal Chatterji told Mrs Mansell that if it wasn’t for their custom depending on the English, many of ’em would be jolly glad to see all our throats cut. Nice sort of talk I say, Desmond, that’s my foot.’

For Desmond had kicked him under the table; and suddenly he realised—they all realised—the presence of the silent attentive Oriental in their midst.

Fellowes turned to him, reddening awkwardly.

‘I say you know—— I didn’t mean—— Of course you fellows are different.’

‘Yes. My people are different,’ the subaltern from Rajputana politely agreed. ‘We are not a race of babus and pundits and vakils, who think by making noise enough they will sound like the voice of all India. In Rajputana we are sovereign states, allies of England. Agitators who intrude, undesired, are put across the frontier; and they don’t seem anxious to return! They are too well treated in British India, which is a bad business for us all.’

‘Hear! Hear!’ the table applauded him, making him feel shy of having said so much; and a fresh ripple of talk flowed on over hidden currents of thought and feeling.

Colonel Slade passed the salt to Eve with a polite remark, while he contemplated speaking his mind to a probably unfaithful wife. Mrs Sterne laughed dutifully at her partner’s broad stories, while she was thinking with interest of that very young bride, hoping she would not play tricks with her chances of motherhood; since the children whose coming could be cheeked at will, could not, later on, be created at will—which was her own private tragedy.

And Eve—very pleased with Lance, very interested in her Rajput—was discovering that he had a young wife, who read English books and tried to learn English ways, but had not yet the courage to come quite out of purdah.

‘Would she like it?’ Eve asked, ‘if I went to see her?’

His impassive face lit up with pleasure and surprise.

‘You would care to go? It would not be a bore?’

‘Of course not. I might be able to lend her books. Did she go with you to England?’

‘No. She feared to cross the water. Now I think she is sorry. There they are more friendly with Indians. She would quicker have lost her purdah habits.’

‘Isn’t anyone friendly here?’

Again he lit up. ‘Yes, there is one charming lady, Dr Yolande of the Mission, and her assistant Miss Ferris, who is American. They also are more friendly.’

‘Yes, they are,’ Eve admitted, feeling awkwardly responsible for the memsahibs of Kohat. ‘I’ll ask Dr Yolande to take me.’

‘That would be a great kindness.’

‘A great pleasure!’ Eve neatly amended it. ‘Perhaps the others don’t know your wife would like to see them.’

‘That is possible,’ he agreed with more courtesy than conviction. ‘But I think it is most likely they are afraid to be bored. You people fear that more than you fear danger.’

Eve laughed. ‘You found that out in England?’

‘I found out in England—what is hard to find here—that, under all this noisy antagonism, there is some real link between our two races. We cannot do without each other. Though the English are cold and hidden, hard to understand, they have good hearts, when you can dig them out! But there is too much division in this country—among ourselves also. And if we will not step across our own gulfs, it is not what you call playing the game to criticise those others.’

He was very much in earnest, and refreshingly fair-minded.

‘I wish more people saw it like that,’ Eve said. ‘ But it isn’t easy stepping across gulfs.’

‘It is most difficult,’ he agreed. ‘And it can’t be done in a hurry. We are finding that ourselves, in trying to break the dominion of caste. If you are not bored, I will tell you a story about that.’

Now it was Eve who lit up. Dearly she loved a story that might reveal any facet of India to her interested mind.

‘It is the story of a good man, whose son is my friend. He was of high caste, bitten with all this social reform, that we should not spurn those whom we call “untouchable.” So he permitted them to fetch his water and perform other functions. Soon they came to him and complained that the local Brahmins would not accept their offerings at the village shrine. So he said, “Do not heed them. Build a shrine of your own.” He helped them and gave them bricks. He was their overseer. Of course the Brahmins were very angry, and consulted together how they might stop this insult to their caste and holiness. So four of them went to see my friend’s father. They called him out of his house, saying they wished to reason with him. In a friendly spirit, he came out to them; and with their lathis—those long metal-weighted sticks—they set upon him and beat him to death. That is what too often happens when we try to cross a gulf in India.’

Eve shivered. ‘How horrible!’ Then she saw that Mrs Slade had risen; and she must follow suit. ‘I won’t forget about Mrs Prithvi Singh,’ she added as she moved away.

In the drawing-room, the brief ten minutes of feminine talk was left chiefly to Eve and Mrs Sterne, while their hostess, leaning back against a large cushion, drew a mirror from her bag, powdered her face and applied more lip-stick to over-red lips. Eve liked Mrs Sterne, whom she had met at tennis, and at the Club. To-night she felt more actively attracted by the small plain face, so lively in movement, so pensive in repose. She would like to see more of her—not at the Club, where only the frivolities flourished.

Then seven men trooped in, and a bridge table appeared for the Colonel and Major Sterne, Mr Barton and Prithvi Singh, who walked straight up to Eve and stood talking to her till he was detached by Mrs Slade. It amused Eve to watch how skilfully she handled them all, as if they were chess pieces; each move thought out to serve her own designs.

Thus Lance, undesignedly, found himself sitting beside her on the Chesterfield, with Fellowes in a low chair on her other side; while Jinks, perforce, hovered disconsolate near Eve, who had not dared to return an eloquent side-glance from her captured husband. She could only do her best to console the ousted one. What a childish to-do about nothing it seemed, when one’s own emotions were not involved.

It was a relief when they started paper games; a foolish variant on ‘Consequences’ that carried her back to schoolroom days. The free play of personalities made her tingle at times; for this post-war girl had a few blushes left in her. But they kept the men shouting with laughter, and seemed to amuse Mrs Slade.

Not till half past ten could one dare make a move; and while Eve was hunting up a plausible excuse, Lance supplied it in his own fashion. Crumpling a ribald ‘consequence’ paper into a ball, he flipped it at her, and made her jump.

‘Time to be rolling home, Eve,’ he said—after apologies. ‘Sorry to hustle you, but I’ve got some details of a case to look through.’

And all in a moment he slipped on his Government House manners again; shaking hands with his hostess, thanking her for a pleasant evening.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In the darkness of the car, she slid a hand through his arm, as she used to do with her father, when they escaped from some social infliction.

‘You woz an angel to do it so slick.’

‘Some angel!’ he laughed. ‘I was fed to the teeth. And I knew you’d go havering on till eleven if I didn’t make you jump!’ He leaned back and let out a satisfied breath. ‘Thank God that’s over.’

‘Is it over? I feel in my bones that she’ll keep on asking us to things.’

‘Try to get some fun out of worrying you, or tantalising that poor devil, who seems pretty far gone? If she does, we’ll keep on refusing—till she grasps the situation. At a pinch, I’ll do it for you.’

She squeezed his arm, and asked in a carefully casual tone, ‘Did you like her wonderful gown?’

‘Hated it.’ His casual tone was the real thing. ‘She usen’t to over-dress like that. Wouldn’t mind betting that the other men hated it too—except perhaps Jinks.’

‘I thought men mostly liked that sort of thing.’

‘Did you then?’ He sounded amused. ‘To be honest—they mostly do. We’re all animals. But even the rotters aren’t animals all the time—a fact some women are apt to overlook. They won’t let a man forget them or their wretched bodies, even when he wants to be thinking of something else. But let’s quit the subject. You seemed to make the running with young Prithvi Singh. He’s an excellent chap.’

‘Yes. I’m going with Grace Yolande to see his wife.’

‘What a girl!’ The note of approval was unmistakeable. ‘ I wish his Colonel’s wife would look her up. Little courtesies count for a lot with Indians; and they aren’t our strong point. Kindness apart, our women out here—women like Aunt Thea and Eve Desmond!—can do as much as any man to keep our izzat going strong. And the way things are moving now, we can’t afford to lose a crumb of that mysterious virtue. Wonder how much of it we lost, in the eyes of Prithvi Singh, by Mrs Slade’s frank display of the goods this evening.’

Chapter 6

Behold and wonder at the spirit of this woman . . . what strife she wageth here, with soul undaunted, with heart too high for toil to quell.
— Pindar

Eve neither forgot her promise nor unduly delayed her call on Mrs Prithvi Singh—a subaltern’s wife of a very new order. But lacking courage to go alone, she must needs await the convenience of Dr Grace Yolande, whose incessant hospital work left her scant leisure for visits to her Indian friends. Her own people seldom called at the medical Mission bungalow. But among Indian women her devotees were legion. By her medical skill she cured their diseases. By the greater asset of her personality she combated their ignorance and fatalism; their hostility and suspicion—nowhere more deep-seated than on the Border.

In this corner of India’s Frontier she was doing more for British izzat than well-meaning Burra Mems, who talked ‘uplift’ and gave purdah parties, where Indian ladies, dressed like dolls, endured agonies of shyness and answered aimless questions with set phrases and smiles. Those kindly women would have had the surprise of their lives could they have seen their party dolls clad in simple home draperies, squatting on rugs or charpoys, exchanging jokes with the Lady Sahib, who knew all their babies and all their grievances and would stand no nonsense when they were ill.

Eve, herself, on arriving at Kohat, had lost no time in writing to ‘the Lady Sahib,’ mentioning her friend at Leh, begging her to come at any spare moment, and to name her own time. No answer; but late one evening she had come, arrayed in her ‘best cantonment manners,’ prepared for polite intelligent interest; not at all prepared for the swift magnetic attraction that creates friendship at sight no less than love at sight.

And Eve had discovered that rara avis, a clear-cut, positive personality in the young doctor-woman, with her thin eager face and humorous lips; her eyes of clear hazel-grey, darkly rimmed; the whole of her radiating an acute intelligence that did not suffer fools gladly. She could say sharp things, the more astringent for their dash of truth; and she had no respect of persons. Independent to a fault, she seldom took advice; and argument moved her not an inch. She seemed unable to realise danger; and the light of her fearless shining, in priest-ridden homes and darkened minds, went far to show the women that there were no evil powers to placate or fear. Though not yet thirty-five, incessant hospital work and hot weathers had stolen the bloom of youth from her skin, had scored fine lines where no fines should yet be. But neither strain nor pain could quench her zest for life and her chosen work.

When Eve expressed a wish to see the hospital, she had looked frankly incredulous.

‘You don’t mean to say you’re interested?’

‘Why not?’ Eve asked innocently; and the older woman answered with a whimsical smile: ‘Well, I’ve lived many years in Kohat; and I doubt if the average Mem-sahib realises that there are any Indian women, except ayahs and the wives of their servants. But if you’ve enough imagination to care—come and see. The hospital may scarify you; but you’ll love some of the women, once you get past their fatal desire to say what they think you expect them to say. For their sake and the children one can put up with anything. But once I start on them, I could talk the stars out of the sky!’

The seed of friendship had been sown that night. It had blossomed swiftly; and provided Eve with the kind of outside human interest that she could not find in the cheerful yet arid round of cantonment gaieties. Very soon they had shed the formalities: and Eve had been given the freedom of the hospital. She could drop in at any hour on the chance of snatching a few free minutes, or trying to get a little talk with the women, old and young, who came unpunctually, and sat about for hours, awaiting their turn. The hospital did ‘scarify’ her. The strange brown faces and the sight of pain too persistently haunted her imagination: children crippled and diseased; a girl-wife shivering and moaning when they dressed her burns—inflicted for disobedience by a mother-in-law of the old school; a woman with a bloodstained bandage round her face where her nose should be—and was not, because a jealous husband had cut it off to punish her and spoil her beauty. Secretly, and in faith, she had come to the Lady Sahib, who could make the blind see and the lame walk, who could even—it was said—make new noses grow on the faces of unfaithful wives. The new nose had been promised her; and she lay there content, though in pain, thinking her unfathomable thoughts. And there was a handsome young Pathan, with long side-locks and haunting eyes, mortally wounded by one of his own kind across the Border. From Grace Yolande she had his tragic story. After two years with the Frontier Militia he had gone across the Border to see his people; and on the day he reached the village, he had been shot by a blood-feud enemy, who for two years had been awaiting his return. His women folk had brought him to the Lady Sahib, whose name was a talisman; but in the course of that cruel journey he had passed beyond her skill.

Among all these sufferers Grace Yolande lived and moved, apparently unconcerned. But she could work for them to some purpose. Eve could only suffer with them—to no purpose. And the women, though attractive, still baffled her, with their smiles and monosyllables, their obsession with one idea.

‘Where are your babies?’ was the first question always: and interest wilted when you had to confess that as yet there were none. They could only utter a heart-felt wish that you might soon ‘have hope.’ It was families alone that interested them—families and fruitful women.

‘How should it be otherwise?’ Grace argued when they snatched a few minutes in her little sitting-room—‘Climate and temperament keep the men for ever desiring women. How can the women help desiring children? It enhances their status of wifehood; and they can’t understand why so many of us cheerfully waste our lives in other vain preoccupations.’

Had Grace herself, Eve sometimes wondered, never a wish for more personal preoccupations? Here was she, an attractive woman, in a station full of unmarried English officers; yet she seldom spoke to any but Indian men. Even the doctor she worked with was an Indian, a clever Westernised man; and they were very good friends. When Eve asked her to dinner, to meet men of her own race, ‘No time got it,’ was her formula of refusal. It may have been partly evasion, partly pride—because to her own people, she was just a ‘mish’; but it was mainly the truth, as Eve had proof in plenty.

Sometimes Eve went with her to the women’s homes, where she caught glimpses of their narrow lives, their shrill quarrels, their playfulness and charm, their complete lack of companionship in marriage. How could it flourish in that bevy of aunts and grandmothers, sisters and cousins, in an atmosphere of perpetual babies and desire of babies, and men chiefly valued as a means to one end.

It was an atmosphere that Eve, loving men chiefly for their minds, found at times rather oppressive; a strange contrast to the outlook of her fellow women at the Club, who never gave a thought to the unknown lives going on all round them, and who discoursed of husbands and children in quite another key.

‘Of course she’s far too good for him, my dear’—two of them were discussing a recent engagement—‘and they’re marrying on next to nothing a month. I tell her she must study Marie Stopes! No encumbrances for three or four years at least.’

Encumbrances! And those women behind the screen had only one prayer—that they might ‘have hope.’ . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At last all was arranged for the visit to Mrs Prithvi Singh, who had been told of the day and the hour. Eve, entering the hospital verandah, found it full of squatting figures, men, women and children—waiting, always waiting. The eyes of most had a dim, veiled look: for it was the cataract season. Grace had told her how, in spring and early autumn, when that scourge of Northern India was epidemic, a stream of blind folk, old and young, came wandering over the hills, from far-off villages, to have their ‘curtains removed.’

From the room where she treated her patients came shrill voices of women, shriller cries of children, who only knew they were being hurt, not that they were being healed.

Eve, screwing up her courage, opened the door of that spotless room; whitewashed walls, enamelled chairs and tables, and the whiff of carbolic that she detested. On the clean matting a few gay rugs for the women who squatted there; often making a hard task harder by their hysterical lack of self control.

On a low chair, near a table laid with gleaming instruments and antiseptics, sat Grace Yolande, in the familiar blue gown and mackintosh apron, her coppery brown hair—that curled and crinkled of its own accord—brushed back from her low forehead, a wriggling infant wedged between her knees, while she cleaned a wound inside its upper arm; a wound that bled freely.

Looking round, she waved a blood-stained wad of cotton wool at Eve.

‘You must wait your turn, Madam, like the rest! Broken glass and native doctoring. A nasty cut.’

While she spoke, the slippery babe had nearly wriggled free; and the young mother darted forward.

‘Not any more, Lady Sahib,’ she cried. ‘Too much hurting. If it be God’s will——’

‘But it is not God’s will,’ the English woman stated as though she sat in the councils of the Most High. ‘It was your carelessness and the ignorance of your hakim²² who poisoned the wound. If I don’t remove it all, Inayat Ullah will die. And you don’t want to lose him, Miriam-bi?’

She said the last more gently; and the young thing subsided sobbing, on to her rug, while Grace unshrinkingly applied her wad to the small quivering arm.

When the child began to scream again, the mother screamed louder and called on God. It was more than Eve could bear. Swiftly closing the door, she fled to the little Spartan sitting-room, where Grace and her young assistant, Maimie Ferris, snatched hurried meals at odd times.

It was almost as bare as the other; but there were blue curtains and the bazaar cane chairs had blue cushions. On the centre table stood a bowl of pink roses—the little old-fashioned fragrant kind, because Indian women spurned Grace’s beautiful English hybrids as ‘imitation roses.’ Above the fireplace hung a gold-bordered placard, with a saying of Confucius in blue lettering: ‘Make happy the near, and the far will come to you’—a saying amply fulfilled in this little centre of ceaseless service for others. Over, the door another placard: ‘Throughout my day let there be hills to climb.’ For the rest, bare walls, colour-washed in a faint shade of blue.

The placards and the flowers were the work of Maimie Ferris, a fair plain girl fresh to the country, still full of exuberant enthusiasms. Not least of these was her admiration for Grace Yolande, sternly repressed, but unquenchable.

As Eve sat down to wait, like the rest, Maimie dashed in, very pink from some recent exertion.

‘Make yourself at home, Mrs Desmond, I’ve just got to keep an eye on our half-caste dispenser, or he’ll be poisoning the patients. He’s just an ex-clerk; hardly knows one drug from another. That’s the way Government helps on hospitals. It’s a scandal. And there’s a mighty fuss on this minute, because some Moslem meat has defiled a Hindu cooking place! Aren’t they a pantomime, these people? But I just love them.’

She vanished; and left Eve half envying a temperament that could find a pantomime in wards full of pain-wracked fellow beings. Presently Grace appeared in a sun hat and blue cloak that hid her hospital attire.

‘Finished with that little Gift of God,’ she said as they went out. ‘Hope he survives.’

‘I bolted,’ Eve confessed, ‘I couldn’t stand it. Grace, how can you?’

The doctor-woman smiled her tight-lipped smile.

‘Sometimes I almost—can’t. But if I didn’t—who would? That’s the spur that drives, when I sicken and shrink. I found that hakim, putting magic ointment—made of heaven knows what—on the baby’s wound with the end of a filthy penholder! But we must hurry. We’re behind time.’

Yet she paused on the verandah to greet the blind folk, still cheerfully waiting, and assure them she would soon return. To one fine old man, with grey locks and beard, she spoke for several minutes. Then she joined Eve in the car.

‘What a grand face,’ Eve said as they spun along, ‘like an old Bible Saint.’

‘Yes, a grand face,’ the other agreed in a curious voice. ‘And what d’you think the old Bible Saint was

saying? “Doctor Sahib, I have been blind a long while. For the love of God remove my curtain that I may use a gun again and take the budla (that’s the blood-feud exchange) for my son’s death twelve years ago.” If I remove his curtain, I probably condemn to death some fine young man like our Pathan friend. A strange people—a strange country: all stark lights and shadows.’

‘What did you say to him?’ Eve asked profoundly interested.

‘I told him the meaning of a Mission hospital and the kind of budla that we are commanded to take by a greater Law-giver than Mahomed. Perhaps he may think about it, sitting there in the dark. Perhaps not. We have no sentimental illusions about these Frontier folk. And it’s their deadly old law of revenge that we are chiefly out to undermine.’

‘But can you?’ Eve pressed her; for they were quite frank with each other.

‘Honestly—I don’t know. We can but go on trying. You see, we are here to give entire treatment, body and spirit; to teach by example, because deeds count for more than creeds. Our own Scots Highlanders, after all, were not so very unlike these vengeful Afridis a few hundred years ago: and a Greater than ourselves is working through us, Eve. We must believe that, or we couldn’t carry on. I know the world’s grown sceptical. Yet all that He stood for triumphs more and more, whether His modern apostles give Him the glory, or take all the credit to themselves. The Holy Spirit still shakes an unbelieving world, whether we call it morality or beauty or love.’ She suddenly tightened her lips. ‘I’m preaching.’

‘Not to deaf ears’; Eve’s fingers closed sharply on her friend’s hand. ‘You are a wonder. To be with you is to have all my inner batteries recharged.’

‘I wish I could do as much for some of these dear women. Mrs Prithvi really wants to “make companion” for her charming husband. She tries to read English, picks paragraphs out of the Pioneer. But it only confuses her brain, which is clear enough where daily matters are concerned.’

They had arrived; and the house they entered was of the better class. Through a courtyard and curtained doorway they passed; and on up a ladder staircase to a long verandah full of winter sunshine, surrounded by narrow rooms. In it were mats and bolsters, a low chair and table and a string bed covered with a crimson quilt. In an alcove stood a gaudy little French clock. Its hands pointed to twenty past five; and the hour was just after twelve. On the table lay a second-hand English novel and a three-days-old Pioneer. From an inner room came the sound of voices and laughter; but no sign of Mrs Prithvi Singh.

Sitting side by side on the quilt they waited—ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Grace frowned and glanced at her watch.

‘They’ve no idea of time. But I’ll give her another ten minutes—for your sake, not hers!’

Before it was out, she appeared: a fair-skinned woman of good birth, plump but comely, in a shell pink sari and many bangles; a lusty boy of two in embroidered coat and cap, clutching her full skirt, a living bundle at her breast.

‘Oh Lady Sahib, I keep you waiting again!’ she lamented; penitent for the discourtesy, not dreaming that half an hour could be of any account to anyone.

Grace Yolande greeted her sister-fashion; a stately hug to the right shoulder, another to the left; reproved her laughingly and pointed at the gaudy little clock.

‘Oh, that was put to make me tell the time. But it is always at the wrong time. And it keeps on standing still.’

‘Naturally. If you never wind it up!’

‘What use? The sun tells without winding.’

‘You’re bone-lazy, all of you!’ Grace laughed. Having made these people love her, she could say what she pleased without giving offence.

‘How—bone-lazy?’ Gulabi asked, intrigued by the odd phrase, untroubled by the indictment.

Then Eve was presented; and they sat down on the quilt, while Grace took the mannikin on her lap.

They talked indirectly of the husband Eve had met at dinner: and Mrs Prithvi spoke with admiring envy of a young cousin, lately wed, who had learnt in a school, out of English books, things that no purdah-bred woman should know; who had boldly seen and talked with her husband before marriage. And the ‘courageous one’ was now anxious to ‘learn the moto-kar,’ to go out with him like an English ‘Mem.’

Perhaps through being at ease with Grace, she talked more readily to a strange visitor than most of her kind; and she had the peculiar charm of the well-born Indian woman who has partly broken through purdah; the intelligence without assertiveness: the artless mixture of shyness and responsive playfulness. And of course it was, ‘Where are your babies?’—followed by a fervent wish that she might soon ‘have hope.’

‘The Lady Sahib can sometimes give hope to those who have none,’ the young mother added by way of encouragement. No shyness when children were her theme. ‘And will you leave your sons “with low-caste hirelings, like other Mems?’

Her smile, her large soft eyes were irresistible; and Eve explained that for Mems there were difficulties. It was their custom to go out a great deal with their husbands. How could they be in both places at once?

The mother of two sons admitted the difficulty.

‘I also desire often to be in both places. But these have no grandmother here. Sometimes I can leave them with his widowed sister; but not often now, because my Heart Itself demands to be fed.’

The bundle she held emitted a thin cry.

‘Hear him! He knows!’ And opening her bodice she gave him what he wanted without the smallest discomposure, while he caught at her olive-tinted breast with tiny fingers like the tentacles of a sea-anemone.

Suddenly she looked up, smiling at the unblest wife.

‘See how strongly my Heart Itself takes his refreshment! Wah! This will be a man. He will have all he wants jut-put.’²³

As she spoke, the ladder staircase creaked, and there appeared first a lemon-coloured turban, folded round a gold-peaked cap, then the figure of a man—Prithvi Singh: no semi-British subaltern now, but pure Rajput, in a long unbuttoned coat and a soft shirt that hung loose outside his wrinkled white cotton trousers. Two yellow tassels dangled below his shirt and the tail of his turban fell almost to his knees. More graceful than ever he looked in his own attire; more than ever he moved like one of the greater cats of the jungle. In those clothes, in those surroundings, he seemed hardly the same man.

As he smiled and saluted, Eve glanced at his wife. Surely she would fasten her bodice.

She did nothing of the kind. She went on feeding the sacred infant, while the two English women shook hands with him, and he thanked them for coming. Then he exchanged a smile with his unembarrassed wife, who sat there looking up at him, years of slave-like devotion in her gaze. He had brought her a fresh Pioneer, and tossed the old one into a corner.

‘She can read bits of the news now,’ he said to Eve, with a touch of affectionate pride, as though he were belauding an intelligent child. Then he lifted the small boy on to his shoulder and produced a chunk of sugar candy from an inner pocket of his coat.

He seemed on very friendly terms with Grace, talked about the hospital and begged them both to be seated. But Eve—still embarrassed by the baby who so strongly refreshed himself in public—made her excuses on the plea that a friend was expecting her before tiffin; and Grace must hurry back to her verandah-full of blind folk.

Prithvi Singh insisted on seeing them into the car; and at parting, Eve atoned, on impulse, for her flight, lest his sensitive pride had been aware.

‘Your wife must come to see me one day,’ she said, ‘and bring the babies. I will arrange with her.’

His pleasure was obvious: and, as they drove off, Grace patted her knee.

‘Good child! He’s the most charming Indian I know. But I’m afraid she will never “make companion” in the way she wants to do. They might be happier if she remained just woman to his man. But one can’t say so. It’s a problem. This staggering country bristles with problems. Very few of the men respect the women they worship—in theory. And how many women—here or anywhere—respect the men? How much reason have they to do so?’

Eve looked at her—wondering. ‘That’s rather damning them wholesale. I’ve had reason to respect a few.’

‘And you’ve had the luck to marry one of them?’

‘Yes.’

Grace Yolande smiled and sighed. ‘All the same, women are tending everywhere to lose their respect for men. I don’t blame them. But it’s destroying our modern world.’

At the hospital gate she sprang out, turning to wave a hand as she ran up the dusty path between her glowing beds of chrysanthemums. And Eve drove on to the Mansells’ flat wondering again—as she often wondered about the charming yet inscrutable woman who was her friend.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

She was lunching with Kitty—what a contrast! Grace, standing on her own feet, capably handling her own life and countless other lives without making a song about it; Kitty, lovable, warm-hearted and ineffectual, palpably muddling her own life, probably destined to muddle her children’s lives as well; holding her husband by the slenderest thread, if she could be said to hold him at all. And the fault was not altogether hers. It was an unkind fate that she should have started with twins; that the other—dubbed by Claude the Little Mistake—had arrived untimely and had nearly slain his mother. She had had to go Home for three months. Even so, she had never quite recovered her health, and the poor mite himself seemed constantly ailing; altogether a very costly Little Mistake.

Three young children were a heavy tax on her, a heavy drain on a subaltern’s pay, though Claude would be a captain next year. Kitty, zealously inefficient, tried to do almost everything for her children, because she feared and distrusted ‘natives,’ as she persistently called them. She wanted tennis and riding and dancing, like any other young wife. But if she were too long absent from the children, she began to worry, which spoilt her enjoyment and vexed Claude, who was still frankly undomesticated, and (as frankly) a woman’s man. Fond of his ‘Kitten,’ if no longer in love with her, he was distressed over her ill-health, annoyed at her dread of harmless Indian servants; and as she could not or would not play with him, he played with other women instead. At home, the children were always to the fore; and though he joked about the ‘nursery atmosphere,’ his jokes had a sting of truth in them. Let her leave those eternal brats with the ayah, he would say, and come out with him. But whether he genuinely wanted her to do so, Eve sometimes felt uncertain. Perhaps Kitty did also: a pitiful one-sided affair.

To keep love and married happiness alive, it seemed, one must have the means and the skill to maintain an atmosphere in which so sensitive a plant as the finer form of love can survive. Having children, when one could not afford them, having too little money and no time for beautifying oneself or one’s home, it obviously could not be done: especially if the husband were a man like Claude.

Eve wondered if he would be there to-day. She hoped not. He was apt to flirt too shamelessly under his wife’s eyes. And when they happened to be alone he was worse, which angered and embarrassed her even more. She knew perfectly well that he would try to kiss her—for the mere excitement of it—if she gave him the remotest chance; and she would long ago have snubbed him drastically, but for Kitty’s sake she had so far refrained. Now, people who gossiped were coupling his name with that of lively little Mrs Farquhar, wife of the dour Scot out at Hangu. Claude had no car; and she was constantly in Kohat, running him about in hers. How much of all that did Kitty realise——?

A horseman came trotting towards her: Claude unmistakably. He pulled up and saluted.

‘Where are you off to—First Woman? Out for a lark while Adam is sweating in kutcherry?’

‘I’m going to lunch with Kitty,’ she answered, very cool and composed, but he ogled her unabashed.

‘And the deceitful Kitten never let on, never groused when I said I’d be out for tiffin—acquiring merit under false pretences. “Something will come of this. I hope it may not be human gore!”’

Eve laughed. ‘Rather drastic for a minor calamity!’ ‘I don’t call missing tiffin with you a minor calamity.’ ‘Well, it is—whatever you call it,’ she retorted crisply, annoyed at his idiotic behaviour.

As she spoke, a car buzzed up behind her: and from it came the slightly metallic voice of Mrs Farquhar.

‘Hullo, Claude! This is the way you keep appointments.’ She drew up alongside and flung a smile at Eve: ‘I’ve been hanging round the Club gate for nearly ten minutes trying to look as if my engine had gastric trouble!’

She was a small brisk woman, looking very smart and finished in a geranium-red frock and hat.

‘Don’t pile it on!’ Claude glanced at his wrist watch. ‘I left home early. And I’ve not been talking for two minutes to Eve. But here I am: yours to command.’

When his sais came up, he joined her in the car, and waved to Eve.

‘Don’t let the brats eat you alive,’ he called to her. ‘As I left, the Bacha jabbed his hand with my scissors and covered himself with human gore!’

They drove on; and Eve followed more leisurely, keeping clear of their dust. Was Claude in love with that woman—assuming a casual air to fling another sort of dust in Eve’s eyes? And the Kitten all unaware—

Eve found the flat in its chronic disarray. The twins, Victor and Valentine, had commandeered all the cushions to make a nest under the table for themselves and a very unwilling black kitten. Val had Claude’s faun-like smile, his sandy hair and freckles. Vic, a blend of both, had Kitty’s brown curls and blue eyes. They glanced up nervously; saw it was not their father—and carried on.

Kitty was in the verandah, kneeling beside a wizened old dhurzi²⁴ in steel spectacles, telling him that the whole frock must be unpicked, which would not worry him, since he was paid by time. She had one arm round the year-old Bacha,²⁵ a pretty creature, rather limp and white, with bloodstains on his smock and his bandaged hand.

She sprang up and kissed Eve on both cheeks.

‘You darling, to come early. The dhurzi’s muddled my frock; and ayah says she has fever. And of course Bacha must go and cut himself—Bad boy!’ This to the babe who clung to her skirt. But as his mouth quivered, she caught him up and hugged him. ‘Brave boy! Didn’t cry.’

They sat down on cane chairs at the end of the verandah, leaving the twins to their mysterious game. If it did crumple the cushions, it kept them out of mischief.

Kitty’s tweed of two winters ago had many stains on it. Not that she was slovenly, but with three babies to clothe and tend, she had no time to remove them. Her hair had never been shingled, partly for economy, partly because Claude liked her brief bobbed curls. Her round face, that should have been fresh-coloured, was pale, the lips faintly compressed. She talked in a soft rapid voice about daily doings, pouring out her heart to Eve, who, by her blend of sympathy and reserve, drew confidences from men and women alike.

Below and around them were sounds of other voices, shrieks of children at play, incessant barking of dogs. Cars kept gliding into the big compound; and the sun beat dazzlingly down upon them all.

‘I met Claude on the Mall,’ Eve remarked, and saw a guilty look creep into Kitty’s honest eyes.

‘Did you talk—did you tell him?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know it was a secret!’

‘Of course it wasn’t. I just didn’t mention it. I wanted you for myself. And I thought he might stay back and grab you, if it was only Mess.’

Eve, recalling that scene on the Mall, wondered—had he said ‘Only Mess,’ or implied as much? He was that kind. He would skim round the truth—and firmly believe he had told it. After all, if Kitty did not suspect, it kept her happy. Certainly Claude would argue it so. But Eve felt troubled, on Kitty’s account, that such things should be.

After tiffin, in the restaurant downstairs, she took the whole family for a spin along the Bannu road; and a faint colour crept into Kitty’s cheeks. Refreshed and cheered, she begged Eve to stay for tea. But Eve hardened her heart and dashed home, longing for Lance—only to find a note on the mantelpiece, telling her that he had returned sooner than usual, and had been commandeered for a polo match—the Staff team against the R.A.F.—in place of a man who had ‘gone sick.’

Hating that harmless man, she swallowed a hasty tea and fled to the polo ground. Too late. The match was over: people were coming away. The Staff team had won, and had been carried off to the R.A.F. Mess for drinks all round. There she could not intrude; so she drove soberly home again, feeling far from pleased with herself and life, in spite of her good deed.

In the last of the sunset, the savage hills had leapt into sudden beauty; and as she paused, watching them, she noticed a silver-grey car speeding along towards the Hangu road. Its driver, fur-coated now, wore a scarlet hat; and beside her sat a man—obviously Claude. Was he going out there with her at this hour? Would he stay the night, and elaborate some plausible excuse? Poor Kitty! And fortunate Eve, blessed with a real marriage and a real man. She did not now regret having taken them all for a drive, though she had thereby lost an afternoon with Lance. Perhaps he liked larking at the Mess for a change; and in his case it was the Mess, not a secret woman. But oh, they must not—on account of play or work or people—slip away from the close companionship that was the immediate jewel of her soul.

Chapter 7

Thus doth man, whose life is a bubble,
Ask for trouble, and still redouble
His trouble, by asking and asking for trouble.
Selah.
— Edward Thompson

Lance was feeling worried; an unusual frame of mind. He had just lost two first grade clerks in the head office, that was in his charge while Wharton was on tour: but it was not the loss that worried him. It was the episode that caused it: an episode only conceivable in India.

A week ago Wharton had written urgently for some special statistics; and Lance—eager to please his difficult senior—had had the whole staff working at high pressure. He had further stimulated the two brightest babus by promising to recommend for a rise in pay the one who got his figures through first. That sporting offer, designed to encourage friendly competition, had roused instead a spirit of acute personal jealousy—with disconcerting results. The quicker man, greedy for those extra rupees, had so cunningly hampered his slower senior that he had, with ease, shown up his figures first, and earned the coveted recommendation.

But next morning neither babu had appeared in office; and, on enquiry, Lance learnt that the winning man—Naryan Das—had been found with his throat cut. Rahim Baksh, his late rival, had apparently decamped. If the poor devil were caught, he would be hanged for murder. Yet it was Lance who felt vicariously guilty of the deed. Too late he had seen his own blunder in applying the wrong brand of stimulant. Worse, he had inadvertently pitted a Moslem against a Hindu—he who prided himself on the personal touch. But the tragic outcome was the kind of thing no Englishman could possibly foresee.

Here, on the Border, that callous disregard for human life confronted him again and again: a child strangled for the sake of a few cheap ornaments; a woman, after a domestic quarrel, jumping down a well, babe on hip; poisoning, for the sake of petty theft—quite a common affair. And there was that fellow who had hacked his wife almost to death because she answered him rudely when reproved. And a Hindu judge, on the plea of serious provocation, had fined him fifty rupees! India seemed to breed many forms of hysteria. The effect of climate on temperament, on character, was an incalculable thing.

Yet, in spite of checks and irritants, Lance found himself more and more caring for these people—especially the village folk; learning more and more of their hardships and their fecklessness, the little they asked from life—and that little so often denied. As for Indian servants, he knew how much of their untrustworthiness depended on their employers. A Wharton who gave them bare justice, would never be served like a Desmond, who gave them fellow-feeling seasoned with humour, or a Lynch whose hardness cloaked a profound understanding. But these unsporting babus baffled him completely. They had let him in for a stiffly worded reprimand; and the fact that he blamed himself did not make a typical Whartonian rebuke any easier to bear.

Distracted by this onset of extra work and worry, he had seen too little of Eve, who was beginning to complain that the enforced ‘rôle of grass-widow’ under her own roof was not her idea of married bliss. It was not his either; but the work mounted up; and he did not want Wharton to find him in arrears owing to his very human blunder.

Eve herself had been filling her spare time partly with music and Kitty, partly in cultivating Mrs Prithvi Singh. Young wives both, living in different worlds, they were alike in one respect only; neither seemed to have more than a partial hold on her man; and Kitty’s greater freedom counted for little, since her heart was in thrall. Eve, hoping to widen her interests, had planned a meeting with Mrs Prithvi Singh, whose problem was of quite another order; her husband having been partially removed into a strange world whither she could not follow him. When Prithvi was sent away for a course, she and the babes must be packed off to his mother, who lived with a married elder son, rigidly grooved in the old ways: so Gulabi, while there, must conform again to the strict purdah habits she was trying to discard. Cold weather manoeuvres had involved another dose of mother-in-law; and she was growing restive at the prospect of repeating it all this winter. She was even contemplating an appeal to the Lady Sahib, who was credited with the power to solve any baffling human problem.

On the whole, she was a lovable being; wiser than Kitty in her métier de femme. But the ‘bright idea’ of bringing the two together, babies and all, had not proved a striking success. With the best will to meet, they were miles apart: Kitty purely, unimaginatively, English; Mrs Prithvi still more unimaginatively Indian.; and not even the babies could span the gulf.

Lance had applauded Eve’s valiant attempt at bridge-building, failure or no: and in the matter of her friendliness with Prithvi Singh, he had refrained from objections that might irritate her. For he liked the man; so did his brother-officers; though inevitably the Oriental, under his Western veneer, came out in various little ways. Evans—who called him the Brindian—had been obliged to check him tactfully, here and there; to reason privately with certain restive men in his troop—men who would cheerfully take an order or a reprimand from callow British subalterns exercising their natural gift of leadership with an impartiality and detachment that could not be expected of the Indian variety. Risaldar Sher Singh had confessed to Lance that he resented having a raw young Rajput set above his splendid self, with his medals and his record and his private conviction that—officer or no—a Sikh was the better man. In that acute racial sense lay the crux of the whole problem.

When Lance had asked Evans why these Indian subs were not drafted to Indianised regiments, that dark and wiry Celt had twitched an eyelid, ‘My dear fellow, they pray to be delivered from Indianised regiments! That’s the cream of the whole affair. Prithvi himself naively remarked that of course, with an Indian Colonel, the confidential reports would come expensive! Picture a Bengali C.O. set over our men. It won’t work. The sowars and sepoys know as much. It’s those Gadarene swine, the politicians, who are so bally keen on running down a steep place—But they’d better go slow with the Army, if they don’t want India over-run from the North.’

Lance, pondering all that, hoped Eve was going slow with her fragrant of the New Order. In her zeal to waive colour distinctions, she might forget that the colour of underlying thoughts and ideas could not be transplanted into English by a few years of Oxford or Sandhurst. But if he occasionally wished that her interest had fastened on a British subaltern—or on Pat Magill, her Policeman admirer—something in him, other than male jealousy, said a decisive ‘No’ to that. Perhaps it was his own heady experience. But he did not want to see his Eve travel that road. She had taken the annoying intrusion of Ina Slade better than he had dared to hope. All further invitations had been politely refused, except for a tennis ‘At Home’; since Ina must not be allowed to suspect that he was avoiding her, or flatter herself that she amounted to a potential danger. And in her lazy, compelling fashion, she was taking full advantage of his difficult position, as she instinctively would.

Lynch had been over again for another Sunday; and though Eve had sparred with him, they seemed placable, on the whole. A baffling murder case was bringing him back for a few days; and of course he would speak his mind about the babus. But there was no sting in the wounds of a friend.

Wharton, caring nothing for babus, would merely relish the excuse for a reprimand. Trying to keep ‘on terms’ with him was as irksome to Desmond’s quick sensitive temperament as wearing sand-paper next the skin. Hard-working and conscientious, an administrator of the rigid school, he had brains but no vision; and he seemed chary of giving praise even where it was due. Altogether a disheartening man to work under. Last night he had returned from camp. So this morning Lance must present himself, and take his ‘official wigging’ with a good grace. Too well he knew it all beforehand. Wharton’s remarks, on any given subject, were maddeningly predictable.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Entering the head office a few minutes late, Lance found his senior in the familiar swivel chair, a pile of papers under one hand, the fingers of the other twisted in and out of his eyeglass cord—a trick as familiar as the rest of him. His firm tanned cheeks and the set of his thick lower lip told you he was a stalwart of the ‘no-damned-nonsense’ order. It was a thinking compact face; the face of a man supremely efficient within fixed limits.

‘Well, Desmond, you’ve done it this time. . . .’ Out it came, exactly as foreseen, weighted with his heavy Northern seriousness. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

‘Only what I said in my letter, sir.’ Lance accepted the chair assigned to him. Not a vestige of his very real penitence would he reveal to those coldly critical eyes. ‘I expressed my regret.’

‘So you did,’ Wharton grudgingly conceded. ‘And well you might—trying your Public School tactics on a pair of jealous babus. Picking out a Hindu and a Moslem—that was a bright idea.’ The eyeglass waggled irritably.—‘Have you still a lingering faith in the entente?’

for that stupid slip Lance had no excuse to offer. He could only ignore the sarcasm. ‘I knew you were in a hurry, sir,’ he said stiffly, ‘so I chose your two quickest men. . . .’

‘And killed ’em both,’ Wharton rapped out. ‘The police have got Rahim Baksh. They’ll hang him all right.’—It was as if he half enjoyed that calculated stab at Desmond’s sensibilities.— ‘The Judge is a Hindu. And the law can’t countenance murder because a rival cheats, and an official—who should know better—pits a Hindu against a Moslem.’ (Perseveringly he rubbed it in.) ‘You soldiers up here fancy yourselves as administrators; fancy you know Indians better than we do, because you play games with your Sikhs and Rajputs and turn out a few skin-deep sportsmen. The Indian’s out to win—fair means or foul. He’ll never learn to play the game.’

‘Individually, some of them do,’ Lance unwisely insisted, galled by the familiar gibe, ‘You soldiers.’

But Wharton had a short way with inconvenient remarks. He frowned at the papers under his hand.

‘You’ve saddled me with a good many arrears,’ he muttered, which was not strictly true. ‘That irrigation case ought to have been settled by now. And I’m still one babu short, you know.’

‘I’ll send you over my best man,’ Lance said, rising briskly, his patience at an end.

‘Thanks. It would be a convenience.’—He paused and thrust out his lip—‘Hope this’ll be a good lesson to you not to treat habits like Public School boys. I know you’re full of fine theories. And I know where you get them. They won’t help you any, in the practical work you’re doing now. A little more camp’ll teach you that.’

‘When do I go, sir?’ Lance asked, raging afresh.

‘End of the week, if we’ve got things straight by then.’

Thank God that was over. He cantered on to his own kutcherry heartened by the prospect of another spell in camp—camp with Eve: a bit of good news to cheer the ‘grass widow.’

Beyond the transfer of an unwilling babu, there was little doing; and on reaching home he was greeted by Eve’s characteristic rendering of Rubenstein’s Melody in F. The quiet caressing air calmed his inner turmoil: but her music was not for him. She was entertaining Mrs Prithvi and the advanced young cousin, abetted by Maimie Ferris and Mrs Sterne. So he went straight to the study, hoping Lynch had already arrived. For his present state of mind Lynch was the sovereign antidote. And there Lance found him, settled in the largest chair, disembowelling his mail-bag.

He nodded and smiled. ‘Good. I came half an hour ago; and Memsahib being engaged, I turned in here.’ He scanned his friend’s face. ‘Was it a very unpleasant quarter of an hour?’

‘Damnably so.’ Lance sat down in the swivel chair.

‘But, my dear lad, you simply asked for it. Not like you to make that sort of blunder.’

‘And all for his beastly benefit. No thanks on that account; only kicks for my indiscretion. Of course it was “you soldiers,” with a hit at Uncle Vinx—and his chronic dig at Public Schools. What’s the matter with Public Schools that he can’t let ’em alone?’

‘He didn’t get the chance to sample one. That’s usually the matter with men who run them down. I should place him as North Country Grammar School. And when his social inferiority complex clashes with his I.C.S. superiority ditto, it gives him tummy ache—then you get the benefit!’

‘And like a fool, I turn the other cheek. I promptly offered him my best clerk. Let myself in for some blooming “failed B.A.”—Damn!’

Lynch eyed him with mingled interest and concern. It was the first time he had frankly “let fly” on the subject of Wharton. If it was as bad as that, he might be readier to consider Chitral. For Lynch never lost sight of his aim.

But he only said: ‘If that’s your trouble, I’ve just had a billet-doux from one that “passed B.A. in two sittings.”’ He fluttered a thin half-sheet under Desmond’s nose.—‘Swallow your wrath and listen to this.’

Lance, in no humour to be amused, listened perforce. ‘“Most Reverend Sir, you may be pleased to remember me in former Police Office,” (Not I. Bad lapse on my part.) “in which there was no scope to inflate, though I passed B.A. in two sittings; and qualifications, which are unbounded, must flow into mid-stream where brains are measured by Rs. a. p.”’²⁶

Lynch caressed his very square chin. ‘I’ve not always found it so, even in mid-stream. But that’s a detail. “Now believe me, Honoured Sir, I am, as dog says to rat, in tight corner, for domestic troubles come in plural, sometimes in triplicate, causing earthquakes in financial department. My wife—adding insult on injury—is bringing annual incremental successions to heavenly household. And by the Lord, there’s no end to the mischief. All my abilities are drooping like fragile plants unless watered by your kind patronage, in better job carrying some lucre——” What about it, old boy? Can you resist the appeal of those yearly incremental successions?’

Lance was laughing heartily, wrath dissolved.

‘He might add to the gaiety of the office. Ask him along.’—He began glancing through the papers on his table. ‘My man isn’t half so amusing. He’s been misappropriating municipal funds.’

‘Perhaps he also was in tight corner!’

‘Well, he was Secretary and Treasurer of the Board. Run in for embezzlement. Have they no sense of honesty in the public interest?’

‘Not much—so far. They’ve not inherited centuries of the democratic idea. Family interest’s their motive power.’

As he spoke, the door opened gingerly. It was Eve.

‘Any admission—not on business?’ she asked, peering round at Lance.

‘Rather. Come along,’ he welcomed her; and she flung herself into a vacant chair.

‘They’ve gone!—They’re all dears; but rather exhausting. I want someone to play with me. What’s on this afternoon? Tennis?’

‘Polo.’

Eve drooped. ‘You might chuck it, for once.’

‘My dear girl—I’m playing for the sacred Regiment.’

‘Which is the most sacred,’ Eve mused, not looking at him, ‘The Regiment—with, a capital R.—or a wife, with a small w.?’

Lynch chuckled at that.

‘You’re between two fires, my son!’

‘I’m not. Eve knows the answer.’ He flung her a wicked look. ‘All the same, I can’t back out of a match. It’ll be a close fight. Bring Lynch along in the car.’

‘I might. But I’m always terrified of accidents. I’d rather run him round first, and turn up for “the tumult and the shouting.”’—She looked full at Lynch.—‘You said you’d venture one day. D’you dare?’

‘Dare? You’re no novice, Mrs Desmond.’

‘Why so formal? He’s Lance—why not “Eve”?’

He stared hard at her with his strange light eyes, the upper lid almost cutting the top of the pupil. ‘I don’t as a rule take that sort of liberty with attractive young women! But on demand, I’ll do it like a shot—Eve.’

‘And I’ll do it un-demanded—John!’

He looked so quaintly disconcerted that she laughed.

‘Don’t they ever?’

‘Never.’

‘What a confession! I generally call you—Lynch.’

‘That’s better,’ he said with such evident relief that it was Lance who laughed this time. Between them, they had completely cleared the air.

Chapter 8

The big things are the enemies we know;
The little things, the traitors. Which is worse?
— Gerald Gould

Eve, having invited Lynch on impulse, had a sudden access of shyness when she found herself alone in the car with that formidable, unexplored being who intrigued her the more because his veiled antagonism put her on the defensive. He seemed to be liking her better this time; and if he had not wanted to come for the drive, he would certainly have discovered some good reason for refusing her spontaneous offer. That was one advantage about frankly selfish people: you could always feel sure they were not being victimised.

Yet at first she felt ill at ease. For if she had no small talk, neither had he; nor would he trouble to make it. He had none of the surface pliabilities that ease the common strain of fife. And she cloaked her shyness, as usual, by talking nonsense, which he capped in his own fashion; making wild statements that might be incredible facts, or feelers to see how much she would swallow, sooner than doubt his word. She had hoped to make him talk of his work, the one fine thing about him. Most men were ready enough to hold forth; but while he kept fencing with her so dextrously, she had never a chance. Nor did she guess that, in the process, he was discovering a good deal about her that he wanted to know.

She decided at last on a bold line of attack.

‘Do you really think that, because I’m an infant and an ignoramus, I’m meekly swallowing all you say?’

He considered her a moment, with his crossword puzzle expression. ‘I wouldn’t in any case accuse you of meekness. And I credit you with enough intelligence to be readier at doubting than at believing wholesale.’

‘Well, I am terribly good at doubting,’ she admitted, ‘especially the things I most want to believe in. I doubt myself more than all.’

‘But—you believe in your husband?’

It was a statement rather than a question; and the surprising directness of it seemed to force the truth from her.

‘One couldn’t know him well, and not believe in him.’

‘One couldn’t,’ he gravely agreed. ‘And he believes in himself more firmly than he knows. Not without reason. He’s chock full of promise, as no doubt you’ve been told before.’

‘I saw it long ago, in Peshawar, without being told.’

‘Are you always so discerning?’

‘I don’t know. When people interest me, I can sometimes get a little way inside them.’

Again he seemed to consider her a moment. ‘Am I interesting enough for you to have tried it on me?’

‘Waste of time!’ she retorted with her impish smile. ‘You don’t leave any private doors ajar.’

‘Good shot. You’re rather a dangerous young woman.’

‘Not really. I’m only intrigued by my fellow creatures, and I suppose it sharpens my faculties. Like Miss Miggs, “My intensions is excellent!”’

‘Good intentions may be quite as fatal as bad ones.’

She detected, with a qualm, the lurking implication.

‘Are you hinting,’ she ventured, ‘that mine are going to be fatal to Lance and his career?’

He met her challenge with a straight look.

‘No—I was only generalising. But I admit the

possibility. By admitting it yourself, you may avoid it. I don’t believe in dope. . . .’

‘And you don’t believe in wives,’ she dared greatly. ‘You think if we love a man, we must be grasping and selfish. Aren’t men selfish too?’

‘Yes—thank God. I give ’em full marks for that. It’s the sentimentalism of women I bar. The decent, complacent world is rotten with it. Selfishness is the antiseptic that keeps it from rotting root and branch.’

Eve frowned over that fair-sounding heresy. She thought of Grace Yolande and of Ina Slade; of Lance Desmond and John Lynch.

‘It sounds all wrong. And it’s terribly one-sided. You can’t damn unselfishness and sympathy out of hand.’

‘No, you can’t,’ he admitted drily. ‘They’re both full of good intentions. And they do a deal of damage, none the less. The craze for wholesale sympathetic commiseration mostly leads to stomach-ache and ill-temper. It’s virtue run to seed.’ He seemed suddenly to realise that he was speaking his actual thought to a woman. ‘More vain generalising! It was Lance and his future we were talking of. There’s a man with a gift of fellow-feeling that won’t run to seed; a man who may do good work for India in these difficult days, if——?’

‘If I don’t hang millstones round his neck?’ she flung out. ‘You think I would?’

‘You mightn’t be able to help it. If he got a chance to do important work across the Border, or if they offered him Chitral—would you make a fuss?’

So skilfully had he slipped inside her defences that she was past being surprised at his directness or her own.

‘Of course not. It would be unsporting.’

‘But you’d hate it, all the same.’ Again the flat statement compelled honesty.

‘Naturally. I’m human. But I’d try not to let him guess.’

‘He’d know it all right. When two people get really close to one another, good intentions won’t always work.’

‘In fact you’re telling me, months too late, that I’m the millstone. Well—I’ve done it. And I know he’s glad of it. I could only give him a free hand now by committing suicide! And he wouldn’t thank me—or you—if I did.’

‘Good God, no. You mustn’t take it that way.’

‘Then you mustn’t put it that way. I’m a sensitive plant.’

‘Sorry,’ he apologised gravely. Then in a changed tone—‘Look out, Eve.’

For, disturbed by the trend of their talk, she had not noticed the turning ahead of them. Jerking her wheel too sharply, she bumped into the culvert over a drain, and was surprised to feel his hand on her arm.

‘It’ll be suicide, plus murder, if you cut corners so fine.’

‘I’m showing you how it’s done!’ She laughed it off, as she backed across the road almost on to a squatting Pathan, who never stirred a muscle. If it was his fate to be so slain—slain he would be. If not, why trouble to move? It is a philosophy that simplifies existence.

It was not his fate: and there he continued to sit, while a mounted policeman trotted up just as Eve had righted the car. He saluted Lynch, and summoned the fatalistic squatter to hold his horse while he spoke to the Sahib. The Pathan obeyed; very wide awake where a horse was concerned. The policeman had turned his back. He was talking to Lynch in a low tone, when the impromptu sais, perceiving his luck, leapt into the saddle and was off at a gallop before the other men—startled by Eve’s exclamation—saw what had happened.

The policeman cried, ‘Shaitan!’²⁷ The practical Englishman said, ‘Open up the dickey and nip in. We may cut him off at the Peshawar Gate.’ He turned to Eve—‘Can you sprint?’

Eve laughed and ‘sprinted’ at command.

Arrived at the gate in the barbed wire hedge that fenced in Cantonments, there was no sign of the Pathan.

‘The Hangu Gate,’ Lynch briefly commanded; and flung an order at the policeman to make for the thana²⁸ and flash news of the theft to outlying posts. The sentry at the next gate reported a man galloping through when he was at the far end of his beat; so that he had not noticed the rider till too late. And there, far off on the sunlit road, a brown speck was fleeing towards the hills.

‘The slickest bit of devilry I’ve seen in years,’ Lynch remarked, as Eve’s gaze followed that retreating speck. ‘Nothing a Pathan won’t risk for a horse or a rifle. Now—would you run me into the City? There’s a silk merchant I want to see.’

To Eve, the City never came amiss; and thither they went to the silk merchant’s open stall. While Lynch pursued mysterious scraps of information, Eve sat happily in her car and watched the sellers hawking their wares, women bargaining, splendid cavalry sowars scattering mere pedestrians right and left.

It was a full twenty minutes before Lynch returned; and he did not even ask if she had been bored. She liked men who took her catholic interest for granted.

All he said was, ‘One more. D’you mind?’

‘I wouldn’t mind several,’ she said with perfect truth.

‘That so? You’re an unusual specimen. Lance evidently knew what he was about.’

‘I think he mostly does,’ she murmured. The bluntness of his compliment enhanced its value: and it encouraged her to ask, as they drove on—

‘Did you collect some good bits and scraps?’

‘Excellent bits. But I’ve yet to connect them,’

‘Is it a murder? It mostly seems to be.’

‘It mostly is. A simple and direct method of keeping down over-population! Poisoning’s nearly as common out here as a cold in the head at Home. This one’s a red-hot zenana romance.’

‘Can they have romances, in spite of being so very purdah?’

Lynch gravely twitched an eyelid. ‘Male and female created He them. And they have their own methods of getting behind the purdah. For most men, East or West, “thou shalt not” is a stimulant rather than a deterrent; and Indians—holy men excepted—have little idea of resisting any form of passion. I’ve been mixed up, in my time, with zenana love affairs of the strangest and most romantic. Where all is revealed and little forbidden, the bloom is off the peach. Glamour’s extinct.’

‘Not quite—for all of us,’ Eve said in a soft voice; and he looked at her more humanly than he had done yet.

‘The exceptions are rare. In this case the romantics contrived to murder the husband when he was sleeping with a sick brother; and they’re laying the deed on that miserable specimen. The woman’s a beautiful brazen creature and they’re both lying cleverly up to the hilt; but Magill, my Assistant, has a first rate I.O.²⁹ And they’ll get at the truth yet.’

‘When they do, will you tell me how?’

‘Yes—if it’s not too lurid. Thanks very much for giving me a spin. I’m afraid it’s not been a lady-like outing.’

‘That’s why I’ve enjoyed it,’ Eve answered frankly. ‘Now we’ll just tear round the outer road, and finish in style.’

They tore; Eve loving the swiftness and the keen air.

As they passed their bungalow, Lynch remarked, ‘Who’s calling on you in your absence?’ And Eve slackened speed. A car stood outside the verandah. ‘It’s a woman’s car.’

‘But how can it be calling on the ghost of me? I’d better pop in and explore.’

Mildly curious, she ran up the steps. Voices in the drawing-room—a laugh rang out. It was Lance. But how—why?

As she pushed open the door, she had her answer.

There by the fire sat Lance and Mrs Slade having tea together; Lance in the armchair, Mrs Slade at the low round table in the costly coat and becoming hat, handling the tea-pot, and making some low remark that Eve was too stunned to catch. The shock gave her a queer physical sensation, as if someone had struck her in the chest.

Then she knew that Lance had risen; and she pulled herself together.

‘Back again?’ he said coolly, as if tea with Mrs Slade were part of the programme. ‘Where’s Lynch? Did they tell you——?’

‘No. We haven’t been there,’ she answered, still so wrathful and mystified that she forgot even to greet Mrs Slade. ‘I thought you were at the polo.’

‘So I was,’ Lance retorted, with a straight look that steadied her, ‘till that impulsive ass Thompson rode right across me when I was on the ball; bowled Swastika clean over, and I was knocked out of time. Didn’t know a thing about it till I found myself in Mrs Slade’s car swallowing a stiff peg. No bones broken. But Dr Allsop said, “Home you go.” So Mrs Slade kindly gave me a lift. I thought you’d go straight to the ground.’

‘We were going; but Lynch noticed the car, and I came in to see who it was——’ She gazed at him anxiously, her fierceness dissolved in concern. ‘Do you really feel all right now?’

‘Pretty fair. I’m keen to get back and see the finish.’

‘Come on, then. We must hurry.’

Eager to snatch him away, she did not perceive how patently she was discarding the enemy, till a persuasive voice interposed, ‘But Mrs Desmond, don’t you want any tea?’

‘Not now, thank you. Tea can wait.’

As she spoke Ramazān admitted Prithvi Singh.

‘All over?’ Lance greeted him.

‘All over. Four goals to two.’ Prithvi Singh bowed to the ladies with his courtly air—and hesitated, torn between shyness and pride of achievement. ‘I hit the winning goal. The rest went on to the Mess. But I wanted to tell you at once.’

‘Good man!’ Lance clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Refresh the victor, Eve. I’ll haul in old Lynch.’

And as Mrs Slade moved gracefully aside, Eve slipped into her usurped place, mistress of her own tea-pot if not of the situation. One could try to ignore Mrs Slade; but there she exquisitely was, impervious to any seeming discourtesy; her unobtrusive perfection making Eve feel all angles, inside and out.

‘Such a thrilling match,’ she said, graciously accepting another cup of tea. ‘He was playing splendidly.’

‘Oh, I wish I’d been there.’ It came out with undue emphasis; for the pronoun jarred on Eve’s ear.

‘Well, you were lucky to miss that accident. It looked horrid. These polo-players are made of iron wire.’

‘They need to be,’ said Eve; thankful, in spite of all, that she had missed that horrid moment. She turned with relief to Prithvi Singh, looking very handsome in polo kit, ‘I wish I’d seen you hit that goal,’ she said, handing him his tea.

‘I wish it also.’ There was a warmth of more than courtesy in his tone; and it made Eve feel shy for a second, simply because of Mrs Slade. It was a two-edged faculty—that acute sense of other people’s atmosphere.

Mercifully the two men returned just then; and she was free to be busy with the tea things, carefully not looking at Lance, lest he should see too clearly that she had not yet regained her poise. The whole thing had set her nerves on edge. She wondered how long they had been there together. But what did Slade tactics matter, after all, compared with his narrow escape?

He seemed quite himself again. In spite of Mrs Slade’s anxious concern that he should sit down, he remained standing on the hearth-rug, with his teacup on the mantelpiece, talking polo to Prithvi Singh.

Lynch—unimpressed by visions of beauty—took a chair near Eve and announced that he was thirsty.

‘Can I have it in a mug?’ he asked without ceremony: and while Eve filled his large cup, he told the tale of the Pathan. Solid, imperturbable, unaware, he—the late antagonist—seemed almost an ally. With him she could be at ease, if only Mrs Slade would let her alone. Acutely susceptible to her beauty, aware of her calculated charm, Eve steeled herself against both; and hoped that the fact was less obvious to others than to herself.

When Prithvi Singh rose to leave, she remained standing by way of a mild hint, that was either ignored or not perceived. Mrs Slade, talking to Lance, genuinely stirred by his accident, was impervious to everything but her own desire to remain where she was.

When talk grew spasmodic—Eve refusing to assist—she suggested bridge.

‘Here we are, four of us. Don’t you ever play, Mrs Desmond?’

‘No, never,’ Eve retorted with vicious satisfaction. ‘I’m an idiot at cards.’

‘And I,’ said Lynch, backing her up, ‘so invariably empty other people’s pockets that, in their interests—I refrain.’

Mrs Slade gazed eloquently at Lance; and Eve, watching him, caught a strange gleam in his eyes. It was gone in a second, but it made her heart turn slowly over that his eyes should say personal things to that woman.

‘They’ve left you and me in the lurch,’ Mrs Slade was saying. ‘I’m not very good at picquet.’

‘And I’ve no head for anything at this moment.’

The indirect confession re-awakened her concern. ‘You ought to keep quiet after that nasty fall. Make him lie down, Mrs Desmond.’

‘I daresay he will—when he gets a chance.’

The retort flashed out unawares; and Lance twitched his eyebrows. But Eve was impenitent.

And Mrs Slade said sweetly, ignoring his tactless wife, ‘I’ll give you the chance, now, if you promise to take it.’

Lance shook his head. ‘I never make promises. Too liable to break them. But I won’t be after any more violent exertion to-day. And to-morrow I’ll let Thompson know what I think of him.’

‘I’d like to let him know what I think of him,’ she said with unguarded fervour.

‘Better not,’ he gravely counselled her. ‘He’ll get it straight enough from me. Thanks for the lift.’

The finality in his tone took effect.

She was gone at last. And of course he must needs see her into the car.

‘Charming specimen,’ Lynch remarked drily. ‘Not to your taste. That’s obvious.’

‘I hope it wasn’t too obvious.’

‘Couldn’t say. I’m a trained observer. But that woman could look straight at a thing she didn’t want to see and flatly deny its existence. She seemed to like looking at Lance, so perhaps she missed little signs that were obvious to me. Now I must be off, to jot down those “bits and scraps.” Keep him quiet—if you can. Use your wifely influence!’

Eve stood where he left her, gazing at the chair that had held Ina Slade, trying not to be uncomfortably aware of those two in the verandah; but it seemed an endless age before Lance returned.

She saw at once that he was vexed; and he gave her no chance to use her wifely influence. He came straight up to her and grasped her shoulders, firmly but not ungently.

‘Darling, you must not give yourself away like that.’

‘Oh, did I?’ she breathed unevenly. ‘I didn’t mean to. But it was such a shock.’

‘A terrible shock! To find your Don Juan of a husband harmlessly taking tea with a stray woman.’

‘Stray? The tea was harmless: the woman isn’t.’

‘She’s entirely so, where I’m concerned. And can’t you see that your attitude forced me into seeming more friendly than I’ve any wish to be. If it did give you a jar, you’ve only yourself to thank. Larking off like that, instead of doing your wifely duty! It was an exciting match. You’d have enjoyed it.’

‘I wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing you knocked out of time. All the same—I wish I had been there. The way she must have pounced.’

He frowned at the recollection.

‘She doesn’t pounce. Things neatly happen. I didn’t ask to be carried off in her damned car. She probably did it to worry Jinks, who was playing in the other team.’

‘Jinks! You’re too modest, Lance; and too straight to see through crooked people. We’ve refused and refused her. Yet she thrusts herself in. And she stayed on and on. I wonder she didn’t ask herself to dinner. She’s a forward beast.’

‘She’s all that. And she’s got a pair of shrewd eyes in her head. Remember, she doesn’t suppose you know anything. She’d never believe a man could be ass enough to tell his wife of an affair like that. If she thinks she’s touched you up without lifting a finger, you not only make a fool of yourself, you make a fool of me. And I won’t have it.’

He spoke sharply, for the bare possibility enraged him; and he gave her shoulders the least little shake that, in her over-strung mood, had a fatal effect. More annoyed with herself than she would admit, she wrenched them free.

‘And I won’t be dragooned in that tone of voice. I’m no good at pretending; so you’d better keep clear of her.’

He gave an odd, short laugh.

‘What else would I be doing? I can’t help it, if you run off, and she’s on the spot.’

‘Of course she would be.’

‘Having engineered the accident for her own designs—eh?’

‘Oh, call me a fool outright,’ she retorted in a shaken voice—and fled to her own room.

There she lay, pressing her face into the pillow, muffling the sobs that he must not hear. He must come of his own accord. That a worthless woman should make scenes between them stung her to the quick. Yet she was not unhappy, only overwrought; and it was a relief to let herself go. If he did not come—— But he surely would . . .

And presently he did. He came and knelt by the bed and laid an arm across her, resting his cheek against hers.

She drew a long, satisfied breath and her sobbing ceased.

‘You darling girl,’ he said, tightening his arm. ‘And it’s all about nothing at all!’

Her cheek just moved against his. ‘I am a prize owl. But I’ve been feeling nervy all this week. I’m bothered over poor Kitty; and I haven’t been seeing enough of you.’

‘I couldn’t help that, my treasure.’

‘No. But there it was—and there she was. Sitting in my chair, giving you tea. It was as if someone hit me in the face. I couldn’t right myself at once.’

‘I realised that. But we don’t want her to be realising——’

‘Of course not. And truly I’m not fancying—impossible things. Only . . . I can’t bear seeing you two together—knowing how it used to be.’

It was out, in spite of firm resolves, the confession she must never make; and there was relief in the spoken words.

‘Now I do wish I’d never told you,’ he said, a desperate note in his voice.

Detaching himself, he sat on the bed beside her, and she caught at him with both hands.

‘Oh, you mustn’t—you mustn’t. It was fine of you. And it’s sinful of me to be a green-eyed monster—— No, it’s that Slade thing who’s the green-eyed monster!’ she flashed out so furiously that he laughed. And she laughed too. And between the tears and the laughter her taut nerves were relieved.

As she gazed up at him, bronzed and good to look at, in the familiar polo jersey, a wave of passionate tenderness suffused her.

‘If I didn’t love you so fearfully, Lance, I wouldn’t be so troublesome.’

‘My darling, I know that,’ he said gravely. ‘And you know I’m returning the compliment over and over. No green-eyed monsters need apply!’

When he had kissed away her foolishness, she remembered that he should be resting instead of consoling her—about nothing.

‘Now please be good and lie down. Lynch told me to keep you quiet—to use my wifely influence!’

‘Lynch? What next? You can use it best by remaining where you are. I’ll come in along side. My head’s aching a bit.’

Slipping in under the quilt, he smiled up at her as she caressed his hair. And in five minutes he was sound asleep.

Very cautiously she slid down by him, so that her cheek rested against his arm, and the incoming tide of peacefulness that flowed through her, from simple contact with his calmly sleeping form, stilled her foolishness and soothed her nerves, till she too fell asleep.

Chapter 9

A man’s work is the man. . . . What’s the man—or the woman either—without the work.
— Mary Webb

Eve was lying awake on her narrow bed. The stuffy smell of canvas in her nostrils had its own peculiar thrill. It recalled their wonder journey; and it meant camp—a state of life that, on the whole, ‘bettered expectation.’

It was early afternoon; and she was taking a short rest by order between tiffin and tea. They were encamped now, on the outskirts of a Border village, where Lance must spend several days, doing court work and having lengthy conversations with two local zemindars, who were in open feud, all their tenantry and dependants involved; each of the principals anxious to get at the ear of the ‘Stunt’ Sahib, who was being regaled with a one-sided version of the quarrel, while Eve took stock of her new surroundings.

Out of a brief sweet sleep she had been drawn by a strange sound, hardly recognised as human. Then she knew it for the voices of two women shouting gali³⁰ at one another, crescendo, fortissimo, till it seemed as if one of them must break a blood vessel. And she lay there listening; so amazed at their fluency that she forgot to be vexed with them for disturbing her rest. In any case she could not fall asleep again. Lance would soon be returning for tea under the big sheesham that stood near their cluster of tents; and perhaps they might enjoy an hour or so to themselves.

For more than a week, now, they had been alone together in the district; marching through this land of sharp contrasts; keen air and unclouded skies, nights of frost and flashing stars; the northern cold weather at its exquisite best. At the villages where Lance must halt for work, supplies were pressed upon them; and in all respects they were treated with the generosity and courtesy that unspoilt Indians accord to the Sahib whose manner is friendly and who tempers justice with understanding. Only here and there they had encountered hostilities and covert insolence, due to congress men, who roamed the country instilling subtle poison into ignorant minds.

It was the first time Eve had seen Lance in contact with his work, handling, with his keen sense of justice, these simple yet sensitive people. He seemed to know by instinct what to stand and what to withstand. Master of their idioms, he could chaff them all in the friendliest fashion; yet within his small kingdom he held undisputed sway.

And her own delighted awareness of the whole sun-dazzled world was new every morning, quickened by her sense of the incipient splendour in simple things; so that she entered into all she saw: a molten sunset, with a flight of homing birds etched upon the brilliance; the reflected glow in a narrow canal, its water turned to wine; women trooping to the well in the thin clear light of early morning; a return to camp after dark—keen cold and frosty stars; lights moving here and there, blue smoke drifting from the village; the acrid smell of dung fires, the sweeter incense from their own nightly bonfire; the quick leap of flames in the windless air, dancing like mad passions—the very spirit of the wild.

And again she began to be aware of music stirring within her, luring her into dreamy moods. For there were long empty hours when Lance was away at his work, trying cases and settling disputes between people who enjoyed a quarrel for its own sake, people for whom time was of no account at all.

Once, for a day and night, they had run into Patrick Magill, the cheerful and madly energetic A.S.P.³¹ of Kohat, touring like themselves in perpetual pursuit of criminals;—Irish all through, from his red hair and freckles to the marrow of his prominent bones. Blest with more zeal than method, he lost everything he laid hands on from his tie-clip to his despatch box. If he found them again, it was usually thanks to his slow-moving sagacious bearer, who would not have exchanged his service for that of any other Sahib in the Punjab. But whatever went astray, Magill kept his flag flying, and feared no man—except John Lynch, who never made allowance for human frailty, and expected the impossible as a matter of course.

Eve, addicted to human frailty, liked Magill and always gave him dances, though he steered erratically and trod on her toes. But she considered it tactless of him to be arriving in camp to-night. Lynch also had sent word that he would be joining them to-morrow; an end to their happy isolation.

Oh, those women! They were at it still. Springing up, she slipped into her frock, and was busy with her pocket-comb, when Lance strolled in.

‘Had a good sleep?’ he asked, as his arms came round her from behind. ‘Hark at those women. I’ve sent an order to tell ’em “chuprāo.”³² It’s another local scrap on—a crazy affair. Hence that little duet on muted strings! Come and give a jaded administrator his tea; and you shall hear.’

Tea was ready awaiting them under the sheesham. The heart-shaped leaves and clusters of pods fluttering in a light wind made a shadow pattern where the sun struck through them. The kettle was hissing. The dogs were in attendance. From the servants’ region came a subdued chattering. The duet ‘on muted strings’ had ceased. This was their peaceful hour.

When Lance had emptied a large cup of tea, he told his tale of the ‘local scrap,’ between two Jāts,—Hindus of caste—in which two Untouchables had become involved.

‘They’re tanners,’ he explained, ‘called chamars. Have to live apart, and do all the dirty work of the village. It’s pathetic the way they accept their degradation. But when they’re roused, they sometimes hit back—in their own style! Well, the two Jāts happen to be neighbours. So the two chamars crept along in the small hours and dumped a heap of refuse and manure in a lane between their houses, simply to insult the high caste pair, who couldn’t touch the stuff without being defiled. Ordered to remove it, they promptly brought more; knowing the other chamars would back ’em up. They’ve been adding to the pile and enjoying their little joke for days. But this afternoon the Jāt’s wife caught one of their women at it—as you heard! They were just after a little self-expression. Here comes my man.—What now, Nur ud Din?’

The peon informed the Sahib that the men of both factions had arrived on the scene and set upon each other with lāthis. One of the Jāts, cruelly belaboured, had been knocked on to the refuse heap; and his old mother, hoping to protect him, had flung herself on the body. But their blood was up; and the brave old lady had been battered to death. The police had arrested two men.

‘There you are,’ Lance turned to Eve, who had followed most of it. ‘Another murder case on our hands. All from trying to make a snook at a superior being.’

Eve shivered. ‘And that plucky old woman——’

‘Don’t let it haunt you, darling. We’ve got to accept these people as they’re made; and do what we can for them. Little enough at best.’

She gave him a very soft look; and they fell silent, sharing their tea with expectant dogs; while familiar groups of dust-coloured figures approached from the village. Squatting at a respectful distance, their turbans nodding, their brown hands fluttering, they talked and talked

Eve, troubled by the peon’s tale, eyed them with frank disfavour. They were waiting for Lance—their lawful prey. Nothing would discourage them. They were persistent as flies; and she almost hated the poor harmless things.

‘Look at them—waiting to pounce again,’ she said at last. ‘You can’t get away from them ever.’

‘I’m not out here to get away from them! It’s only these camp wanderings that give ’em any chance to know what that very strange beast, an Englishman, is really like. Even the villages, now, are simply crawling with lies about his Satanic habits and intentions.’

‘It’s a shame!’ Eve flung out hotly. ‘And nobody of our lot troubles to run round and tell them the truth.’

Lance looked uncomfortable.

‘We’re poor hands at blowing our own trumpets. But some of us try to show ’em the truth, when we prowl round like this. The motor car is the villain of the piece; doing away with the personal touch. In the Army, the men are working or playing with British officers all the time; and there’s quite another spirit. But we, in the Civil, are tied up with eternal court work, and treasury business—except in camp. So we have to make the most of it. And there’s only one way—to be always accessible.’

‘There’s much virtue in being accessible,’ she pensively agreed. ‘Even when it’s wives!’

He flashed a sudden smile at her. ‘If this one hints so flagrantly, I’ll pull her hair.’

‘She won’t hint, then—she’ll beseech. Do send them all away this once; and be accessible to me. After dinner there’ll be Magill. Do, please.’

He looked at her for several seconds, still smiling.

‘If that isn’t living up to your namesake! You really mustn’t try on those tactics, Evelina. I can’t dismiss the poor devils. But I’ll prolong the sweets of anticipation, to please you—and myself,’ he added honestly.

‘Thank you, darling,’ she said in a demure voice, breaking up her last biscuit for Bliss.

He brooded on her a moment, thinking of her urgent request, hating the need for refusal. But not realising how it would console her to be told so, he only said: ‘It’s a shame having to leave you alone so much, with never a woman handy.’

‘Well, I’ve got the precious fiddle. And, except for Grace, I don’t much miss the women. I like men.’

‘So I’ve observed! And they return the compliment. ’Ware Magill. He’s an inflammable specimen.’

‘He’s my friend. I’m not the flirting sort.’

‘No. You’re the magnet sort. More fatal! God knows I didn’t want to fall in love with you. Another man’s property and all. And look at Lynch—prepared to hate you.’

‘But I said I wouldn’t let him!’ she triumphed. ‘And I’m liking him better than I did. He’s hard as nails; and selfish; but he has a few good points carefully tucked away.—D’you think he’s ever been in love?’

‘I’ve never asked him.’

‘I wished I dared. I wonder what he’d say?’

‘He’d lie like a trooper and keep a warier distance from you ever afterwards.’

‘I don’t believe he would.’

‘Of course you don’t! I’m a truthful man—as men go. Why did I marry a girl who won’t believe what I say?’

‘Because she was a magnet!—But you never can tell with Lynch. It makes him—rather fascinating.’

‘Lynch——? He’d shout with laughter if he heard you.’

She drew herself up. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘There you go again. Bet those were the first words you ever uttered.’

‘Let’s write and ask Mummy. She must have heard; but she probably wasn’t attending. I was an unpopular baby. I ought to have been a boy. And I terribly wanted to be.’

‘Luck for me, you failed. And you’d have lost the fun of being fascinated by Lynch. Don’t let him turn your head.’

Piqued by his coolness, she glanced at his profile, the decisive nose, the calm poise of his lips that half concealed their firmness.

‘Lance—have you a spark of jealousy in you?’ she ventured; and he turned quickly, the gold flecks glinting in his eyes.

‘A whole powder magazine—in the basement; the proper place for it. So don’t go flinging matches about.’

‘Oh, I won’t—though I’d rather like to see it flare up, once in a way.’

‘You wouldn’t want to see it twice in a way. So I warn you.’

She flung out her hand; and as his fingers closed on it, an ekka in a halo of dust approached at full speed.

Behind a half-starved country bred, all bones and flying mane, it jolted and jingled gaily, that queerest thing in carriages—a tangle of bamboo shafts and crosspieces, with never a nail in its anatomy. From the flat seat sprang four uprights, supporting a rounded crimson canopy with side curtains that suggested a portable shrine for a Hindu deity. Long bamboo shafts were loosely attached to the pony; bells on the harness jingled gaily; and at one corner of the seat crouched a half-naked driver, clutching the shaft with his toes. But the god under the canopy took the form of a cross-legged, bare-headed Englishman in khaki.

The flaming hair, the long legs doubled up like foot-rules were unmistakable. It was Pat Magill, tactlessly arriving several hours too soon; and beside him his little fox terrier sat gingerly, small shivers running through her body.

At sight of the two, he emitted a piercing war-whoop; and as the flat seat tilted, he took a flying leap, dog and all, on to the dusty road, where Lance stood awaiting him.

‘Why promoted to an ekka, old man?’ he asked. ‘And who’s pinched your topi?’

Magill laughed and smoothed his wind-blown hair.

‘Oh, me topi took dog’s leave. I just set him beside me, not giving him a thought. And the bally thing decamped.’

‘Being yours, it would! And the little car also?’ Instinctively he was caressing the mare’s rugged forelock. ‘A shame to use her so hard.’

‘No, the car let me down with two punctures and a damaged spare. So I commandeered this old train de luxe, no aircraft being handy!’ At Eve’s approach, he held out a large hairy hand. ‘Can you do with this bad penny again, Mrs Desmond? It’s a treat to see an English woman and a human tea-table after a surfeit of brown houris!’

‘Come along then, and refresh,’ she said, almost forgiving him the untimely intrusion.

And Lance, still gentling the overdriven mare, spoke his mind to the man who ill-used her mechanically, as most animals are ill-used in India. Then he hurried away to hold his open court and bid those patient squatters approach at last.

Eve, meantime, under the sheesham, was quenching the thirst of her wild Irishman, whose face was all freckles and fine gold hairs and whose blue eyes beamed at her from between pale lashes. A long scar disfigured one eyebrow, where he had been cut at by an anti-British Moslem, anxious to rid India of one tireless ‘white devil.’ But the ‘white devil,’ who lost everything, had managed not to lose his life that time. He had taken the reprieve more lightly than, at the moment, he was taking the loss of his shikarri helmet—no hatter within sixty miles. There was also a deeper concern, that presently slipped to the surface.

Eve had just filled his cup for the third time when she found herself receiving one of the many uninvited confidences bestowed on her by her fellows.

Magill had lately returned from long leave in Ireland, where you could lose anything you’d a mind to, and nobody worried. There, among lesser trifles, he had lost his heart to a certain Nora Gwynne, whom he shyly described as ‘a peach of a girl’; adding more shyly still, ‘The queer thing of it is—you so often put me in mind of her. Just a turn of the voice and the way you laugh with your eyes. A sort of sparkle inside—and a kindness with it that’s malting me blurt out all this, when it can’t be any mortal interest. . . .’

‘But it is,’ Eve insisted; and the truth was in her voice. ‘Did she—are you engaged!’

He smiled at the dusty horizon. ‘Well—not to say in black and white; though, God be praised, she’s willing, when I can run to it. They work us like niggers and don’t pay us a living wage. But we’re sinners if we run into debt. And we can’t afford the little human weakness of falling in love—unless it’s with luckier men’s wives! If I have “stepped out” a bit here and there, it’s only to say I’m flesh and blood. A woman’s just a woman—till you find the girl that’s a star among candles. She’s the one thing on earth I mustn’t be losing; but the money’s the very devil. . . .’

It was at this confidential moment that the sagacious bearer approached and salaamed.

‘Protector of the Poor, that bag of rupees is neither in the box nor the bedding. I have searched many times.’

Magill stifled an oath unfit for feminine ears. ‘Well, you must just go galloping back in that old ekka, and see if you can’t make it blossom out of the dust.’

‘Hazúr,’ the man gravely assented; and as he withdrew, Magill turned to Eve with, a curious blank look in his eyes.

‘Oh what is it?’ she asked in dismay.

‘Just a dirty little bag of a hundred and fifty government rupees,’ he answered, braving it out. ‘If they’re gone, I must fork ’em out of me empty till. And Lynch will be damned sarcastic. He’ll fix me with those queer eyes of his till me spinal column turns to water! And I’d reckoned to please him with a tale of a zenana murder case we’re after.’

That pricked Eve’s curiosity, and offered a chance to divert his mind from those vanished rupees.

‘Is it the brazen beauty and her lover, who murdered the superfluous husband, and laid it on his poor sick brother? Lynch told me. And he said you would get at the truth. Have you?’

‘I have.’

‘Which did it? The man, or the woman?’

‘Well—neither. The beauty was a clever one. She bribed a confidential servant to do her dirty work—and we’ve got him.’

‘Oh, do tell.’

He twinkled at her; and told—lost rupees forgotten—how Ramji Lal, his resourceful I.O., had spotted the murderer, and screwed a confession out of him by an unorthodox inspiration.

‘You see the fellow’s a Brahmin,’ he explained, ‘and not above trading on his sanctity. So first he accuses his man; then he publicly announces that till the sinner owns up he—the holy one, the arm of the law—will forswear his clothes and his food. Of course he knew all right that the people would put pressure on the culprit sooner than let a Brahmin go naked and unfed. But the fellow held out for a day or two. So did my Brahmin. And into the thick of it came a raging red-headed A.S.P. demanding further information. Awkward moment for the holy one, who could neither face a Sahib mother-naked, nor put on a stitch of clothing! So the Sahib was diddled with a tale of malaria, and returned to camp.

Next morning came Ramji Lal—no word of malaria—bringing his trophy with him! But whether the beauty hangs, or the poor beggar, who simply took baksheesh and obeyed orders, remains for the law to decide. As for my man, pressure’s illegal; and he ought to be suspended. But Lynch’ll wink at such a damn clever dodge. No such luck for me, over those mislaid rupees. He’s a hard man to serve. I can’t abide him.’

Eve nodded feelingly. “I couldn’t either—at first. But he gets more abideable when you know him better.’

‘I’ll never know him better,’ Magill stated dismally.

‘He’s not flesh and blood. Makes no allowances.’

‘Perhaps he will this time.’

‘Not a dog’s chance.’

And she did not dare tell him that, in a flash, she had boldly resolved to approach the inflexible one herself on the subject of those vanished rupees. It would probably make him think a woman more than ever out of place in camp. Let him think it, so long as she achieved her end.

Chapter 10

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours,
Our valours are our best gods.
— J. Fletcher

‘Just as well old Lynch is coming our way,’ Lance remarked at breakfast next morning. ‘There’s a fresh rumpus on now, because a Moslem butcher is accused of enticing to the slaughter-house a sacred cow that bolted into a Hindu’s compound, seeking sanctuary! Simply an excuse for a scrap. The Moslems are always jumpy at the end of Ramzan.’

‘I can’t blame ’em after a month of fasting!’ Magill said rising and warming his hands over the oil stove. ‘They’ve a great tamasha on this evening; and I’m wondering . . . did they first find out that it’s the very time the Hindus are giving their local goddess a little jaunt? Both processions wanting the same route at the same hour. Coincidence——? I don’t think.’

Lance grinned. ‘They’re out for a lark.’

‘They’ll have Pat Magill and his merry men to reckon with. I’ve sent an order—Hindus first. They were first in the field; and it’s a holy affair. My men will be on the spot. It has to be about sunset because of the young moon.’

‘Don’t forget my zemindar’s tea fight. We’re all bidden. Zamān Khan’s a good fellow; if he’d only drop this bally feud. Now then, Pat, time to skedaddle.’

‘See me put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes!’

And Eve, looking after him, wondered if the mercurial creature had forgotten all about those vanished rupees; wondered still more what she meant to say when Lynch arrived—if she found courage to say anything at all.

Meanwhile, alone in her canvas living-room, all time at her disposal, she was happy. A few favourite odds and ends gave the place an atmosphere of home. On the cleared table, Ramazān spread her blue and silver cloth and a silver bowl of roses—an attention from Zamān Khan. She had smuggled in two mellow Persian rugs, and cushions for the camp chairs. Her music stand and violin case, Lance’s despatch box, a few books and illustrated papers satisfied her nest-making instinct, and gave Lance a background of restfulness after hours of dust and glare, talkative Indians and persistent flies.

She liked to begin her day with music; but when Lynch arrived, if he heard her playing, he might not come in. He had no music in him; and the sense of it so curiously affected her that she could not play in his hearing. The violin must wait.

She was absorbed in her diary letter to Anne when the car sounded outside: and Lynch came straight in.

‘Bit of luck,’ he said, shaking hands with her, taking in all her treasures at a glance. ‘You’ve bedded him down in luxury.’

‘Yes. Any harm in that?’

He smiled at the hint of challenge in her tone.

‘Might make some young fellows lazy. Comfort and laziness are near relations. Magill turned up yet?’

‘He came in yesterday afternoon.’ Here was her lead, and she tried a diplomatic first move. ‘He’s very bucked about that zenana case. You said they’d get at the truth.’

‘And he’s told you all about it?’

‘Yes. I made him.’

‘Didn’t I say you were a dangerous young woman?’

‘Did it amount to an official secret?’

‘No. But I was to tell you myself!’

She smiled at the friendly implication. ‘Well, I wasn’t sure if you would. So don’t blame it on him. He’s rather worried, at the moment, over losing a bag of rupees. . . .’

‘Government money?’ Lynch struck in sharply. ‘He’s the limit. Flinging it round the country.’

‘He didn’t fling it round. It was supposed to be in his box. His man’s gone back to look for it.’

‘A goose chase. He’ll have to stump up. And he’ll get the sharp rap over the knuckles he deserves.’

‘No, he won’t—he doesn’t. It’s bad enough having to pay——’

Her protest was out before she realised the folly of it; and Lynch treated her to a level gaze, unpleasantly penetrating.

‘Which of us is D.I.G.?’ he asked in a voice as disconcerting as his gaze. ‘If I have to jump on my Assistant, must I submit a draft of my proposed remarks for your approval?’

Her cheeks flamed at the sarcasm; but, having gone so far, she would say all before he could pulverise her again.

‘It wasn’t meant for impertinence. You know that. And I know how badly it’s upset him, when he’s trying so hard to live on his wretched pay and not run into debt.’

‘A laudable aspiration!’ The edge was gone from his tone. ‘I know almost as much as you do, Mrs Desmond, about the joys of living on Police pay. Most of us are in debt. I didn’t suspect Magill of being so original as to keep out of it.’

‘Well, he’s trying to. He’s keen to get on. And a thing like this. . . . It’s a crushing set-back. I hoped you wouldn’t jump on him too hard—that’s all.’

‘Ah—-if you’d put it that way at first. . . .’

Vexatiously he left the sentence in mid-air; but belated wisdom counselled her to say no more. And while she stood there, tidying her letters and papers, she could feel him watching her.

Suddenly he said in a different voice: ‘May I meal with you, Eve? Or have I been too objectionable?’

‘Very nearly—not quite!’ Tone and look veiled her inner triumph. ‘Of course we expect you to join the Mess.’

‘The lion is graciously permitted to feed with the lamb? Thanks very much. I will. ‘

‘And to-day we’re having tea with Zemindar Zamān Khan.’

‘Good. I’ll be back for tiffin.’

At the door he turned and looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Friends?’

‘Friends,’ she echoed, smiling at him.

‘That’s all right.’

When he was safely gone, she whisked out her fiddle and played like a mad thing. Though still uncertain of the issue, she had triumphantly ‘cheeked’ the formidable Lynch, in another’s cause—and he had meekly asked leave to eat of her hand. She would hear the result from unsuspecting Pat Magill; but she fervently hoped that Lynch would say nothing to Lance.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

He did say nothing to Lance: and the little he said to Magill, when the moment came, made that warm-hearted young man feel half ashamed of his own confession of antipathy.

‘Mislaid ’em, have you? A heavy bag of Government rupees?’ The pale eyes held the culprit a second or two in suspense—and let him go. ‘That amounts to an achievement—like the man who lost the big drum! But you’d better not make a habit of it,’ he added gravely, ‘if you’re keen to get on. We’ll settle about the rest, when the loss is confirmed.’

And without waiting for a reply, he went on to talk of the murder case and the best means of avoiding a clash over these childish processions that aroused passions far from childish.

‘The chances are they’ll try tricks on your men. Pick Hindus for duty, to hustle the first procession. Then the press can’t accuse us of setting Moslems on to them, and making bad blood, when its these precious Reforms that have added political animus to the clash of religion. I don’t blame Moslems who suspect the Hindus are out for a clean sweep of all minorities, A big race conflict’s quite on the cards. The Swarajists are after revolution—inspired by Moscow; and, in my opinion, it’s virtually begun.’

‘Cheerful look out!’ Magill commented, glad of the diversion to a less personal theme.

‘Proof positive that our presence in India is justified by necessity. And we shall pay the piper—every way. They might all be happier—even Gandhi and Co.—if we’d not quite lost the robust faith of old John Lawrence in “our own moral superiority, the force of circumstance and the will of Providence.” Very sustaining to feel so cocksure of Providence! We’ve not a rag of conviction left in us. But we’ve got to carry on.—Do all you can to prevent a clash. I can trust Desmond to handle his zemindars.’

Magill departed, thanking Heaven for his chief’s moderation, never dreaming that thanks were due in another quarter. And while Lance pitted his racial common sense against the acute social sense of his rival zemindars, Lynch brought the brain of an administrator to bear on a locust plague of files and police reports—monstrosities of tabulation and statistics that, to most men, conveyed nothing at all. He was at work, now, on a cherished scheme to reform those printed futilities—a scheme that would probably end its days in some official pigeon-hole or paper-basket. Wisely sceptical of results, he worked like an optimist, with a fine impartiality, for India’s people or his own; contributing his mite to the solving of a problem that was in essence, social and spiritual rather than political; since it was mainly the problem of a manifold people’s mind. Politics took no account of spiritual factors; and out here spiritual and human factors were supreme. The Pax Britannica was no empty phrase, as India would find if she discarded the hand that held the scales. Neither in Delhi nor in Westminster lay her true hope of salvation. It lay, so he believed, in the revival of closer contact with the decent average Englishmen on the spot—discouraged, of late years, but undismayed. All over the land, in districts and offices, in hospitals and colleges, while politicians wrangled—the work went on; men of all grades policing, law-giving, teaching and doctoring, unconcerned for political issues, profoundly concerned for the Job Well Done.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And later that afternoon, when the three men met again at the house of Zemindar Zamān Khan, the work still went on—under surface courtesies and pleasantries that dispelled the awkward sense of race.

Tea was served in a high windowless room, opening on to an inner verandah. They sat on hard cushions—eight of them—at a long low table set with blue-rimmed cups and tea-pot, as obviously of British origin as were the mixed biscuits, the tins of butter and jam. But there were curly Indian sweets and Kabul grapes in round boxes. There were chupattis cooked by an unseen wife—probably enjoying the party from behind the fretted panels of a distant door. Eve was to see the women afterwards; to exchange smiles, if they could achieve no more.

Meantime, she sat in the seat of honour between Lynch and Zamān Khan. Too shy to say much, she envied Lance his free-and-easiness with these people. He was having great jokes with the tehsildar,³³ a large and jovial Mahomedan in long dark coat and flesh-pink turban. Zamān Khan, though short and spare, was a finer looking man, in spotless white and a gold-embroidered belt. But the big Afridi, who sat next to him, eclipsed them both with his eagle aspect and long locks and his robust sense of humour. They laughed over the squabble between the Jāts and Chamars, with small concern for its tragic issue. They spoke of the coming tamasha; and Zamān Khan was frankly sceptical of Magill’s efforts to avoid a clash. He knew his people.

‘Doubtless the plans are good; but it is all as if to milk the ram. The Hindus are eager to make trouble because of one worthless cow. Always, now, it is the same. No longer can we enjoy our festivities, as in my youth. Instead of fun and laughter, they bring bloody noses and broken bones.’

‘Not this evening, Khan Sahib,’ Magill insisted. ‘I take my oath.’

Zamān Khan shook his head. ‘Holy men are not devoid of cunning. I am friendly myself with many Hindus, but there is too much ill-feeling now. The Brahmins, by their quick brains, are seeking to get all power into their hands. And we of the North will abide no Hindu Raj.’

The Afridi grunted approval. ‘No Brahmins, no babus, brown or white, for the Khels of the Border. They would receive bullets for greeting. And they would run like jackals!’

He laughed at the pleasant vision; and as Lance looked round, he turned to his host.

‘Is that one English?’ he murmured in Pushtu.

‘What else would he be?’ Lance countered in the same language.

‘Wah! Wah!’ The Afridi laughed again, unabashed. ‘I asked, because there be several kinds of English.’

At that unexpected retort Lance opened his eyes.

‘If you put it so, this kind is more than half Irish.’

‘Ah ha!’ The man’s eagle face lit up. ‘Then the Sahib is as one of us. The Irish are the Afridis of England; always fighting among themselves. I knew the Sahib was not English!’

And Lance wondered privately which race could claim the compliment.

‘That one,’ he said, indicating Magill, ‘has the honour of being a pure Afridi! I didn’t think your people had such a keen eye to the distinction.’

‘Not all, maybe. But for two years I fought in Irak under Irish officer Sahibs.’ He nodded genially at Magill. ‘The lai bāl wallah³⁴ who laughs so much—I should have guessed. But I was listening to the other Sahib and his way with the tehsildar. When the Irish are not fighting, they are laughing—also like Afridis.’

‘Cocks of the walk, both—in their own esteem,’ Lynch remarked drily. ‘This one, being merely English, is of no account.’

‘Not so, Hazúr,’ the Zemindar courteously protested.

‘They are greater than all. They are the riders, the race of the King Emperor. They give us straight dealing, without respect of race or creed. When the Brahmins are ready to do as much, let them talk of a Hindu Raj—What now?’ he asked abruptly.

For there appeared in the doorway a yellow-trousered sergeant of police, who reported trouble with the Hindu priests. They had set down the palki containing their goddess; and nothing would induce them to move on before the other procession arrived. Being holy, none could lay hands on them; and the people were much excited. Would the Sahib give orders what was to be done?

‘“Tiger jumping about on platform. Please arrange,”’ Lynch quoted the famous telegram of a babu station-master. ‘The Sahib had better see about it. You’ve taken your oath, Magill!’

He winked at the departing Policeman, and exchanged a look with Lance. Then he turned to his host.

‘I think, Khan Sahib, as the route’s on our way back, we’d better be leaving, in case of accidents.’

‘It is well,’ said the Zemindar. ‘Those priests will certainly make trouble.’

As they three glided through the dusk, in Lynch’s big car, mounted policemen clattering behind them, he glanced sidelong at Eve, sitting by him, muffled in her nutria coat.

‘Nervous?’ he asked.

‘No. Excited.’

‘That’s better. But you’ll get no fun, if I can prevent it.’

They were soon on the outskirts of a crowd, excited like herself: and as they scattered, Lynch slowed down. For those resourceful priests were dancing round their goddess with wild cries, their matted locks and half naked bodies weirdly silhouetted on a clear space of sky, where the young moon was setting in a tangle of branches, taking colour as daylight waned.

Magill hurried up to them. ‘As you see, sir, those lively gentlemen have us beat. Not a step will they stir till their very dear friends arrive. Trading on their holiness—the devils they are in saints’ clothing. If you can call it clothing!’

Lynch laughed; but his brain was working swiftly.

‘If they won’t remove the lady, order your men to do so.’

Magill chuckled. ‘Wish I’d thought of that meself.’ Striding forward, he pointed his cane at the palki.

‘If it is not removed ek dum,’ he said loudly, that all might hear, ‘four policemen will remove it.’

The priests went on dancing. With a gesture he summoned his men—all Hindus.

‘Remove the palki.’

Before they could stir, it was briskly snatched up; and four holy ones ambled away with it, followed by shouting, laughing villagers, most of them alive to the joke, and innocent of any desire to injure their Moslem brothers.

Magill sprang in by Lance; and the car, hampered by scattered human fragments, moved on slowly.

As Lynch halted to avoid running over two children, a shadowy figure darted across the road. Two revolver shots rang out. The shadowy figure fled. And Lance, who was leaning forward, fell back with a startled exclamation: ‘God! I’m hit.’

Instantly Magill dashed out again. There was a scrimmage and a scuffle: Lynch shouting ‘Pukkerao’³⁵in a voice of thunder; Eve kneeling on her seat and leaning over, distracted by the darkness and the fear at her heart.

‘Lance—Lance! Is it bad?’ she called to him; and would have scrambled into the back of the car, but that Lynch caught her by the arm.

‘Sit down,’ he commanded almost roughly. ‘I’ll see to him. Stay where you are—and be ready to drive.’

‘Can’t I help?’ she pleaded: but he was out of the car. He had sprung into the vacant seat by Lance, who lay back breathing unevenly, his sleeve already soaked in blood.

‘Touched an artery,’ he murmured. And Eve, cold all through, pressed both hands over her eyes.

Half dazed with anguish, she heard movements behind; heard Lynch calling for a stick to make an impromptu tourniquet. Twice she heard Lance groan.

It seemed an age before she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard Lynch say quickly, ‘He’s all right, Eve. But I must stay by him. Now drive—for all you are worth.’

Blinded by tears, her hands shaking, she pressed the accelerator—and drove, as bidden, praying that she might not crash into some unseen obstacle, keeping thought at bay.

Her first and only obstacle was a wooden tent-peg. The car jolted, and Lynch swore under his breath. The peg crumpled up. They had arrived.

‘Well done indeed,’ Lynch said gruffly, half lifting her out. ‘Bring brandy quick to the other tent.’

Then he turned to Lance.

‘Come on, old boy. We’ll soon make you more comfortable,’ he said in a voice that seemed hardly the voice of John Lynch.

By the time she returned to them, tears had been dried and courage screwed up to face the sight of pain and blood.

She found Lance lying with eyes closed and set lips, his face a queer colour, his blood-stained shirt sleeve ripped up, the tourniquet cruelly compressing his arm. His coat, flung on to a chair, had the sleeve also ripped up and soaked with blood. She sickened at the faint smell of it. And on the far side of the bed sat Bijli, gazing at his master, sniffing the smell all animals fear; now and then emitting a whine so human that Lance kept a hand on his head to comfort and silence him.

Ramazān would have held the basin of warm water for Lynch, but Eve took it from him. This was her right of service.

Soon Lance opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Better now. Go away, darling,’ he said feebly; but Lynch pressed his shoulder.

‘You shut up. I’m bossing this show; and she’s my Aide. I give her a chit for her dash through the dark.’

Lance stole a look at her, pleased that she should have earned a ‘chit’ from Lynch; and Eve herself wondered if that strange man realised the lift he had given her, at a shaken moment, by his unexpected word of praise.

Her ordeal, though brief, was bad enough. Lynch, having removed the tourniquet, must examine the arm. The bullet had passed through the underside, grazing the chest—a slight though painful flesh wound. She knew, the process must be hurting Lance; but he kept making faces at the wrong moments, so that she could not tell when the bad ones came.

Presently Lynch nodded. ‘With a good firm bandage, you’ll do, old boy—pro tem. A branch of the main artery, touched but not severed. The tourniquet’s stopped the bleeding, thank God. I’ll run you into Kohat to-morrow. Allsopp’ll settle the arm.’ And having firmly applied the bandage, he turned to Eve.

‘Thanks for sticking it so well. Just swallow this.’

He mixed her a weak brandy ‘peg’; and laughed at her grimace.

‘Now go and sit down. I’ll put him to bed. Then you can see to him. But he’s not fit for much—except sleep.’

Meekly she obeyed; her limbs shaking as she hurried across to the living tent. There warmth greeted her. Ramazān had lit the oil stove. On the table laid for dinner stood the lamp, under its gold silk shade, and her bowl of roses. It all looked so familiar, so welcoming, that the last half-hour seemed a crazy dream. Yet it was no dream——

And suddenly—because it was well over—she collapsed on to a chair by the table, her face buried in her arms, her body shaken with stifled sobs.

Lost in her mixed emotions, she failed to hear a quiet footfall that paused in the doorway, and advanced more quietly still. For a big man, Lynch had a very light tread.

As Eve became aware of it, his hand was on her shoulder; and she looked up, conscious of red eyelids, shaking lips.

‘You? I didn’t mean anyone to hear.’

‘I didn’t hear. As I was coming in, I saw you. I couldn’t leave you like that. Nothing to cry about now, Eve.’

‘Oh no. It’s just—relief.’ She pushed back her hair. ‘Is there really no damage—his riding arm?’

‘No serious damage, thank God. The fellow fired wildly. Magill’s come in. They’ve got him. A mere boy. But he meant murder—the young devil. Wish I could deal with him.’

He spoke without heat, but she saw the glint in his eyes.

‘You would be cruel,’ she said with a small shiver.

‘I would. And you’re a sensitive plant!’ he reminded her with an odd smile. ‘These hysterical boys who play with firearms must take the consequences. But I doubt I’ll have trouble with Lance in the morning. Now mop up your tears and thank the Powers we’ve still got him with us. By the way,’ he jerked aside from the personal issue that touched him too nearly, ‘Magill’s man is back from his goose-chase. No sign of those rupees. Gross carelessness—whatever you’re pleased to say about it. But I am making good the deficit; and he can settle with me by instalments. Does that satisfy you? It’s more than he deserves.’

She stared at him, hardly able to believe that her boldness had taken effect; that he should admit it

‘Oh, I never imagined. . . . He doesn’t guess?’

She cheeked the foolish question.

‘Not he. If there’s any credit going, you can trust me to collar it.’

His look and tone gave her an odd twinge inside. Two days ago, she would have said the same herself; but she had seen a new Lynch this afternoon. She had seen, under his coolness and his anger, how deeply he cared for Lance. And she would never judge him quite so hardly again. It was thanks to his promptness and skill that Lance might be well enough to assert himself in the morning.

Chapter 11

The noble temper of thy sires shineth forth in thee.
— Pindar

Lance was definitely better next morning. Alter a night of sound sleep—partly induced by bromide—he woke early, his arm stiff and painful, his brain no longer blurred.

He lay very still so as not to disturb Eve, sleeping close beside him in her twin camp bed; nothing visible but dark ruffled hair on the pillow and her fingers closed on the edge of the coverlet, pulled up to her ears. For these November nights under canvas were bitter cold. The coverlet just moved with the rhythm of her quiet breathing—that ceaseless throb of heart and pulses never missing a beat, yet so easily stilled that it seemed a wonder how men lived and worked and planned with an unreasoning sense of reliance on a to-morrow that might never arrive.

Last night for instance—a mere fluke that those shots went wide. The thought shook his nerve, as if the firm earth trembled underfoot. At sight of Eve sleeping there, secure in her insecurity, a swift rush of tenderness suffused him; and a sudden thought darted like a serpent through his brain: ‘God! If I lost her now, what would become of me?’

A moment he lay rigid under that stab of foreboding. Then his natural sanity reasserted itself. No man could live and work to any purpose in the full glare of life’s shattering possibilities; and deliberately he shifted his thought to the question of immediate interest: What did that young Sikh, from a distant village, want with taking pot shots at a harmless unknown Englishman? Unless it were an excited, congress-minded student, the average young Indian was little more given to random murder than the young of his own race. More readily inflamed perhaps: there lay the danger.

And here was a chance to talk the thing out with one of them, man to man. Before they carted him hack to Kohat, for further unpleasant attentions to his arm, he intended to take his chance, let old John never so furiously rage. Had Lynch been hurt, he too might have raged. As it was, he could not work up any active ill-feeling. He simply wanted to get at the other fellow’s point of view, to show him how senseless and useless were these random murder tactics.

Last night he had manoeuvred a brief talk with Magill; had learnt that the boy—Purān Singh—was a half-educated young Sikh farmer from a village in the foothills, that he was sullen and defiant; that Lynch had ‘let loose a thunderbolt or two and put the fear of God into him.’

Lynch—questioned about those thunderbolts—had merely retorted, ‘Mind your own business, my son, and don’t get excited over that young devil, who ought to hang for his good intentions.’

This morning, as he lay there, longing for a cup of tea, he frankly recognised that the young devil was not his business. The case would not come before him; and that very fact stiffened his intention to see the boy, while he had the right to insist. He was fit for that much. It might mean a tussle with Lynch. But mentally he felt fit for that also——

Eve’s head stirred on the pillow and she drew a deep breath.

‘Are, you there, my Beauty?’ he said; and, lifting a face flushed with sleep, she smiled at him—adorably.

Next moment she was out of bed, a thin boyish figure in her blue pyjamas. She was kneeling beside him, her lips on his; stroking his cheek and promising him a large cup of tea ‘in the twink of an eye.’

They drank several cups of tea, in peaceful isolation, before the intrusion of Ramazān; but Lance protested, in vain, against breakfast in bed. And the moment it was over he tackled Lynch, who flatly refused to countenance the interview.

‘You keep quiet,’ he said. ‘That’s your job at present. You’re a casualty. And I’m in charge.’

‘If you excite the patient, he’ll retaliate by running a temperature! But, rotting apart, I intend to see that boy before I go. I want to get at the “why” of these senseless shootings. And anyway, you aren’t my Burra Sahib.’

‘If I was, I’d let you know it! Wharton wouldn’t allow any fancy interviews—if he knew it.’

‘Which he’s not likely to. I can trust you and Magill.’

Lynch eyed him with frank affection. ‘You’re a young devil yourself!’ The look and the inverted compliment told Lance he had carried his point.

‘Perhaps that accounts for the fellow feeling. You can prop me in a chair, stuff a cushion under my arm to look a bit pathetic—and I’ll do the rest. But I won’t have him brought in handcuffed. I’m not a blooming Stunt Sahib, questioning a prisoner. I’m one young man talking to another.’

‘And I’m a hard-bitten policeman, who’ll have the sense to keep within earshot.’

Lance shrugged one shoulder. He recognised gratefully that Lynch had spared him the stiffer tussle which would have been his portion had he been fitter to ‘stand the racket.’ He had got his way, in his own unaggressive fashion; and he meant to make the most of it.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Seated in his camp chair, his painful arm raised and supported on a cushion, a pipe between his teeth, he confronted young Purān Singh—would-be murderer.

The boy stood in a slack attitude, that might or might not be insolently meant, scowling at the rug under his feet. The policemen on either side of him stood to attention, as if emphasising his ill-behaviour. His heavy face showed signs of intelligence and good humour, discounted by the sullen mouth and brooding eyes. Allowance must be made for their owner’s frame of mind. And Lance was there to make allowances.

Dismissing the policemen, he turned to Purān Singh.

‘I’m the man you shot last night—as you can see.’

‘Yes. I can see.’ That he added neither ‘Sahib’ nor ‘Hazúr’ was clearly a part of his pose; and in view of that sulky half insolent attitude Lance felt puzzled how to go on.

‘Well, I’m not angry about it,’ he said simply. ‘And I’m not going to abuse you, or pester you with questions. But I want to know why you did that foolish thing? We are both young men. You love your country and I love mine. But I love India also. What cause is there for enmity between us?’

The boy drew a slow breath. ‘You are a white man,’ he said, still with his air of smouldering defiance.

‘Yes. And you are a brown one. Have I, or any of my people ever done you any harm?’

‘No—sir.’ It came out that time with an odd jerk.

‘Well then?’

The boy hesitated, wrestling with some inner obstruction—his obstinacy or his faked animosity.

‘Speak up,’ Lance encouraged him. ‘What was the sense of letting off that pistol at me?’

The boy gazed at him half mollified, but still suspicious.

‘It was for India, bleeding and in chains, I learnt to shoot the pistol,’ he said, still on the defensive. ‘The English, who suck her blood, are devils. It is a holy act to kill them.’

‘What advantage to your country, if you had shot straight—and been hanged?’

The boy’s clenched hands moved uneasily.

‘Man does not like to suffer,’ he said with a touch of his unconscious dignity. ‘It is of course better to kill so as not to be killed in turn. But youth must be selfless, not calculating peril in the good cause. Youth is the hope of the Nation.’

He was palpably quoting. One might dismiss the whole incident as an enacted quotation from the fire-brand press.

‘All the greater pity,’ Lance suggested, ‘for the young to kill each other—without provocation. Have you met many English devils besides this one?’

‘No, Sahib.’—Lance noted, hopefully, the change of address.—‘Few come in our hills, except for shikar.’

‘Haven’t they treated you well?’

‘Yes, Sahib. They give good payment. If any is hurt, they give dewai.’³⁶

‘Yet you hate them?’ Lance pressed the point, ‘because you are told to hate them?’

‘Yes, we are told—because the English are bloodsuckers, trampling on our sacred country——’

He was off the rails again, saying his piece.

‘Have you been all over the Punjab? Seen your country trampled on and bleeding?’

‘No. I learnt all from the words of wise men who write in newspapers. One paper was given to me by a man who told many strange things—how daily the power of the white man was growing less; that if we should stir ourselves up to slay and slay, all would soon vanish, because we are many and they are few.’

Lance frowned. His arm was painful. He would not have dealt so placably with the man whose lies were indirectly responsible for that wound.

‘And you swallowed it all?’ he asked.

‘Words printed in the newspaper must be true,’ the boy ingenuously excused himself. ‘With help from a post office babu, I wrote to that learned man saying I wished to read more of his papers that told me of unknown wrongs done to my country. Living in a distant village, I did not feel any oppression from the Feringhi. But his burning words had inflamed me to learn the explosive weapons and help to drive them away.’

‘And he sent you more burning words—-free of charge?’

‘Yes, he sent papers telling all that the Feringhis had done against my people. So I grew more inflamed. And leaving my home I came in the Plains to strike a blow with my own hand.’

‘And by God, you struck it!’ Lance flashed out so sharply that the boy looked startled and furtive again.

‘Will these things be used against me in the law court?’ he asked with a touch of his earlier defiance.

Desmond smiled. ‘No law court over this affair. It’s a matter between ourselves.’

‘No law court?’ the boy gasped, incredulous. ‘The Burra Sahib of Police, very much angry, said there would be heavy sentence because of intent to kill.’

‘The Burra Sahib is rightly angry. You have injured his friend. And he knows that I am here—like all Englishmen—to give your people justice when they quarrel, to help them when there is damage to cattle or crops. If you had killed me, another would have come. We may be few, but we are enough for the work. And by the way, how did you get hold of that pistol and learn to shoot?’

Purān Singh shifted his gaze uneasily. But for that surprising remark about no law court, he would probably have lied on instinct. As it was, under the potent influence of a friendly atmosphere, he told the truth. Fired by the fabrications and distortions of an irresponsible press, he had spent his small savings, and borrowed the rest, to buy an automatic pistol and ammunition. A shikarri, who went out with English men, had taught him how to use the ‘infernal machine’ without any knowledge of his secret purpose.

Unconsciously, through his own case, he revealed the damage done to hundreds of simple minds all over the country by the poisonous influence of uncontradicted lies that were tending more and more to stultify all honest work and endeavour.

When the tale was ended, Lance said simply: ‘A shame that you were deceived into wasting money on a pistol. If it’s any good, I’ll buy it for what you gave.’

At that cool offer, Purān Singh’s heavy face lit up all over; for the Sikh loves money only second to life.

‘But Sahib—I . . . it was taken from me,’ he stammered, aghast at losing so rare a piece of luck.

‘Don’t worry. I can get at it and see what it’s worth. And look here, Purān Singh, as you’ve swallowed so many lies about your country, you may as well hear a few truths for a change. If any damage has been done to India during these troubled years, it has been chiefly through Ghandi’s civil disobedience and the congress-wallahs. The Government they abuse strives only for peaceful progress. The white devils you would banish try to give you justice, feed you in time of famine and doctor you in disease. They bring water into the desert and make crops grow, where even grass never grew before. Go to the Canal Colonies in the Punjab, and see for yourself the trampling and blood-sucking that’s going on there! I could tell you a lot more, but boasting is not our custom; and I’m not worrying to defend the English in India. Their own actions are their defence. I know many of you think we have stayed too long. It may be so. I’m not defending that either. But others are waiting and watching. If we cleared out to-morrow they would soon come in, without any desire to bring peace or justice. That is true talk.’

He paused—astonished at his own fluency—and scanned, the stolid face wondering how much impression he had really made, for all his genuine effort at an exhausted moment. The brain behind that forehead and those eyes would move slowly.

And the puzzled young Sikh looked back at Desmond, his unhurried brain wrestling with statements he would have countered, in flamboyant terms, a week ago. The world was a more bewildering place than he had conceived when he had fancied himself a saviour of India. So far he had known only one kind of man and woman, one way of life, through fulfilling his own emotional impulses and physical needs. He had not, so far, given a thought to the English in India. Their presence in no way affected his daily life. It was as much a part of the natural world as the trees and the hills. Only by degrees he had absorbed the idea that they were alien and evil, that his country—that large vague abstraction—was suffering untold ills at their hands; and he could not swiftly re-adjust his mind to a flat contradiction of all that.

In theory, he hated that godlike young Sahib, who might be dressing up evil designs in fair words. In theory, he wished he had become a better shot; though it was the young Police Sahib he had desired to hit for his zubberdast³⁷ over the palki. Yet his eyes and ears bore witness that this white man, though injured and in pain, showed neither anger nor the supposed arrogance of his race. He was friendly and pleasant in his speech; and he would not bring his assailant into the law court. He might oven buy that fraudulent pistol. These were facts. The rest were tales. Not perceiving how the gas-bag of his own heroics had been pricked by this unorthodox attitude of his country’s foe, he was much perplexed—and on the whole, much relieved.

So when the Sahib with the smiling eyes said, ‘You believe it is true that I am no enemy to you or to India?’ he answered with unconscious shrewdness, ‘A man is revealed by his actions. As are the Sahib’s words, so are his acts.’

‘Very neat that,’ Lance mused. His mind was working rapidly. For the simple statement had suggested an idea.

‘If I judged you by your late actions,’ he said, ‘I’d consider you a dangerous person to leave at large. But as I’m letting you off the law courts, I give an order that you attend my kutcherry—when I’m at work again—while I’m camping in the district. Then you can see and hear for yourself what we English are trying to do for your people, and judge if we are really devouring India. For what I’m doing here, others are doing elsewhere. Afterwards you can return to your own village, and tell what you have seen. You tried to take my life. That is the exchange I ask in return. Is it a fair exchange—brother?’

The boy’s face was a study. When the gist of that astonishing proposal penetrated his brain, he stepped forward and salaamed.

‘The Sahib is merciful.’

‘The Sahib knows you acted in ignorance. He wishes to give you knowledge—from life, not from newspapers. You can talk freely with all these Border people. But you stay in my camp and you attend my court. If you want to ask me about anything I’ll see you when I can. Now there is no more to say. You may go.’ He held out his hand. ‘Shake hands on it, English fashion.’

The Sikh, in mute amazement, held out his hand; and when it was released, he salaamed again. Then he went out of the tent—a free man, yet held in shackles stronger than handcuffs of iron. To that young Sahib, he was bound henceforth by the intangible power of personality, of kindness and generosity in a case that called for anger and stern measures. Not invariably is kindness mistaken for weakness in the East. There are ways and ways of making the same gesture. Personality is all. Lance Desmond had made a generous gesture, but the note of authority had sounded in voice; and it is possible that the young Sikh appreciated his friendliness the more because there was an order to be obeyed.

As he left the tent, the angry Burra Sahib passed him and looked as if he would speak. Instinctively Purān Singh salaamed, as he had not done at their last encounter. The Sahib gravely returned the greeting; but no word was said.

Lance, left alone, leaned back exhausted, yet well satisfied with his latest experiment in the ‘human touch.’ He frowned only because his wound was hurting him again; and as Lynch entered he flung out his right hand.

‘A peg, old man, for mercy’s sake. I deserve congrats. But I don’t expect them from you!’

‘Well, it’s a truism that the unexpected usually happens.’

An odd light in his eye, as he shouted for that peg, made Lance ask, ‘Have you been eavesdropping?’

‘No. Too busy. But I came along, thinking you’d had enough of it. And as you seemed to be finishing in style, I waited a bit. So I did chance to overhear your astute proposal.’

Lance, suspecting sarcasm, searched his face.

‘Astute? I thought you’d be calling me a young fool.’

‘You’re young all right.’ Again that odd gleam in the pale eyes. ‘And you may be a fool—the sort that puzzles and captivates these people. The sort that certain friends of mine were after when they wanted their case tried by a callow Englishman instead of a Hindu Magistrate. “The young Sahib may be a fool,” they unflatteringly conceded, “but he is honest—and God helps him!”’

At that implied tribute, Lance glowed; but he only said, ‘I did my best to be honest with that poor deluded chap. And God helped me right enough.’

Lynch smiled. That was not his view of the matter. But, like many genuine sceptics, he accorded to genuine faith the respect that was its due.

When Ramazān had set down the tray and departed, Lynch mixed a three-finger peg and pushed it towards his friend.

‘Were you after that master-stroke,’ he asked, ‘when you insisted on seeing the culprit?’

‘Not I. But when he said men were revealed by their actions, I thought he might as well take a look at ours, which show us in a much better light than our manners or our words.’

Lynch nodded thoughtfully and mixed himself a superfluous peg. ‘You’re a born administrator, you inspired young villain. I’m fourteen years ahead of you in knowledge and experience, yet I should have antagonised that mugra³⁸ specimen, if I’d handled him; and after a short imprisonment he’d have been turned loose again, his blood lust increased—a patent distiller of poison. You’ve done the reverse; and in his own fashion he’ll “tell the world.” The Sikh’s a bit thick-headed. He’s vain, and he’ll do almost anything for money; but if you get him—you got him. That boy will probably want to enter your service; and it’s worth adding even one loyal Sikh to the dwindling number of our friends in that community. We ourselves are largely responsible for the political fairy tale, India—a nation, cemented by our language and by hatred of the British, to whom they owe it all——’

He took a long pull at his drink. ‘As to that lad, what was biting him? Agitators, I suppose, and the extremist press?’

‘That was it.’

‘And we don’t trouble to counter their lying Moscow-fed propaganda. Pack of idealists that we are: damned as gross materialists. And we take it lying down. We’ve a splendidly convincing case; yet we’re too proud to put it forward: too damn proud even to fight open revolution. Is it surprising that our many thousands of Indian friends don’t know what to make of us?’

He pulled a letter from his pocket. ‘I got this only the other day from a loyal, broad-minded Sikh gentleman. “Things are too sadly changed in India, with anti-British agitators stalking through the land, and the Government acting as a puzzled body, not using their strength in time. They are losing their own object and putting us (who are standing and will stand by them) in a very awkward position.” That’s a fact. Our ex-enemies get all the palaver. And the incessant stream of calumny, from the unfettered press, beggars belief. No lie is too gross, no innuendo too base. I keep an eye on their unclean rags; so I speak by the book. The C.I.D. accused, the other day, of faking evidence to support unfounded charges! It would never occur to an Englishman. But Indian readers don’t know that. . . . I suppose we’ll muddle through— as usual. But scores of honest men will lose their lives. Hullo, here’s Eve. A truce to Indian politics.’

She came in gloving from her exertions, in her small green hat with its flash of a kingfisher’s wing. ‘ Rammers and I have packed everything. Are you two ready to start?’

‘Yes: when you’ve kept him on his back for half an hour.’ Lynch answered her: and stood up to go. ‘Your man’s done a good stroke of work this morning, though he is a casualty! Wish I could send his name up for a D.S.O. There’s as much distinguished service in peace as in War.’

Chapter 12

Out of nowhere came suddenly that lovely thing and nestled in my heart like a seed from the core of love.
— Mary Webb

There is no way of safety in happiness or in love. Though marriage provides a gilded cage for the ‘winged thing,’ though flesh and spirit burn with a steadfast flame, neither flesh nor spirit can evade the rhythmic law of life. Even to the truest married pair come dismaying times of friction and strain; the hidden pull of separate entities, merged in the first ardour of mating, yet remaining in essence alone and apart; secretly aware of hidden impulses, attractions and repulsions—the root tangle that underlies the surface of any vital union.

So it was with these two. For Eve, the joys of camp and the spell of happy idleness, while Lance recovered, had given place to the difficulties of dividing her brain and time between a budding composition and a week of intense festivity, not to mention the minor burden of housekeeping, from which Lance had given her a welcome holiday out in the district.

Change and movement and the long lone days, that reawakened her musician’s brain, had wrought in her that mysterious transition from one sex to the other, not uncommon in the two-fold nature of the artist, though seldom recognised as anything more profound than a shifting of mood or mental impulse. So Eve only felt that her mind was more alive than it had been for months; that it was haunted with exquisite first stirrings of musical utterance, shy yet urgent; a mental state curiously akin to falling in love. Presently those stirrings would crystallise into a sonata for violin and piano, half planned with Vanessa before her marriage. In camp, free from the pull of conflicting influences, she had spent a part of each day writing or playing, enjoying the very difficulties of her medium. As love possessed her heart, so music possessed her spirit; both, in essence, a receiving and a giving, a reciprocal relation of body and spirit, each throwing fresh light on the other.

In her present state, she needed no outside distractions. Lance and her fiddle and long spells of isolation—at the moment, that was all she asked of life. And, at the moment, events perversely conspired against her.

Soon after their return from camp, they ‘fell into the maw’ of a wild and whirling race week, which she would normally have enjoyed well enough. But now it was an automatic Eve who went from gaiety to gaiety, often only half aware of what she was saying to these perpetual people. But it was good to see Grace again—Grace, who was not involved in this fever of festivity. She had not (she said) the right kind of frocks; nor could any important race week stem the tide of human demands on her tireless body and brain. Yet she had found time—as only the busy can—to consider Mrs Prithvi’s problem, and had persuaded Prithvi Singh to let his family stay with her when the Regiment went off on manoeuvres. That it meant giving up her own small sitting-room was a detail she had not pressed upon their notice.

Maimie Ferris, in love with everything and everybody, darted about under the wing of Mrs Sterne; and Kitty was looking fresher and happier with two new frocks given her by Claude, on the condition that she should take a holiday from ‘the brats.’ Yet he danced so often with Mrs Farquhar that it looked as if the husbandly attention had been a mere salve to his accommodating conscience, which allowed him to snatch all he could from another man’s wife with one hand, while he stroked his Kitten’s ruffled fur with the other.

Ina Slade—busy ensnaring a new boy—was giving no trouble just then. She asked them to a big official dinner and made inviting eyes at Lance; but he kept his distance, most politely: and when Eve gave him full marks for it, he was as pleased with himself as a schoolboy over a fine cricket score.

And there was Pat, enjoying a brief respite from ‘mopping up criminals,’ backing the wrong horses, losing his false teeth, dancing as badly and treading on her toes as zealously as ever: a most endearing person.

Though her sonata was a wonder and a joy, there were days when the very young Eve of twenty craved a respite from haunting themes and harmonies. But the thing had laid irresistible hands on her. It would not be denied. Other worshipful objects were content with worship; but this power not herself—‘the beloved, inescapable enemy ‘—challenged her to continual combat, often at inappropriate moments, as now. Why must one be dragged away from natural desires and delights? Why exchange the easy fluidity of life for this exacting mental stress. Let her ask why a hundred times, there would never be an answer, nor ever a serious thought of resisting the irresistible.

But the pull two ways had its effect on her nerves. It plagued her with neuralgic headaches; it made her feel sick and queer for no accountable reason. But as Lance seemed unaware, she refrained from bothering him. For his work also was putting an extra tax on him at the wrong moment: and outside his work, it was horses, horses, all the way, renewing her earlier prick of jealousy. Grey Dawn was the treasure of the moment. Neil had been training her for racing; and she jumped like a bird. Lance had entered her for the steeplechase; had told her she was to win the Bachelor’s Purse for him; and of course he believed she understood. He would not be riding himself; but he had faith in Neil—a fine soldierly boy, though not his equal in brains or character. He himself had to go carefully because of his arm, that must be firmly bandaged when he played polo; and he was conserving all his energies for the inter-regimental tournament. Evans, laid low with fever, had appointed him Captain of the team, that was steadily winning its way up and up to the exciting strain of the finals.

On that great day the Peshawar road buzzed with cars. For the match was to be followed by a big At Home, with dancing afterwards, at the Piffer Mess. John Lynch came in from the district; and from Peshawar came the whole Government House contingent—almost as eager for victory as Lance himself. What it meant to him, this chance of winning a cup for the Regiment, even they could only guess because he said so little even to them.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

It was a blazing day; the watered dust inches deep; their opponents, a crack Lancer regiment, in splendid trim, with a fine lot of mounts and a good conceit of themselves. The ponies of his own team, if less showy, had points in their favour; yet he suffered all the agonies of stage fright during the last excruciating five minutes before play began.

At the click of the crossed polo-sticks, that foolish inner tremor was stilled: and when a splitting smack sent the ball whizzing through the dust, seven delirious ponies after it, there was nothing in life to match the sensation. There was neither mind nor body, only the spirit of speed—one current between man and horse; a mutual excitement that no machine-made flight could rival. It was bound to be a close fight; and defeat would be no dishonour; but he himself coveted the glory of winning that cup for the Regiment he had surrendered his right to serve, as he had not coveted anything in life, since Eve captured his heart.

First goal to the Lancers in seven hits. They were playing superbly; and he, roused to a tense pitch of excitement, must keep a cool brain if he was to baulk them of victory. Abetted by Wyndham, he led their costly ponies a distracting dance. But it was Paul who at last got clean away with the ball, down the length of the ground, and scored his goal by an inspired stroke that called forth yells of applause; cheers and counter cheers; shouts of congratulation from ‘the enemy’ as the teams changed ends.

After that—anything might happen. It was a great game: neck and neck, from start to finish.

Two to one: Lancers ahead again. Two goals all: the last chukker; excitement at fever pitch in the close-packed crowd; Lance on the beloved Banshee, who played with his head as well as his heels. Imminent victory twice averted. Now a hot pursuit from end to end in open order; now a close scrimmage in a forest of sticks and ponies’ legs. Where the devil was the ball——?

At last it emerged; the Piffers scampering after it for dear life.

And this time it was Lance who hit the goal—the ultimate goal——

Then came the ‘tumult and the shouting’: several bands playing at once; the Lancer captain wringing his hand and saying all the right things; the Banshee expecting and receiving his full share of honour. At that intoxicating moment, Lance loved nothing on earth better than his prince of ponies. Yet later on, when he snatched a few minutes alone with Eve, her kisses seemed worth all those earlier unmatchable sensations put together.

The Family stayed on in Kohat for two nights; Tony and Mary with Lance and Eve, the rest with Colonel Myles. He and Sir Vincent and Thea Leigh had been ‘subalterns together’—as Thea expressed it—in this very Kohat before the Tirah campaign; and Eve heard for the first time, how she had been wooed and won in Gulistan Fort on the Samāna ridge, ‘by the most backward lover who ever forced a desperate girl to fling herself into his arms!’

‘I’d have you remember there’s Irish blood in her veins,’ was Sir Vincent’s comment on a statement not far short of the truth.

‘Well, I’m just pointing out’—Lady Leigh waved him aside—‘that we “Bright Young Things,” in those stuffy old days, had as much fun and more romance than you blasé beings of to-day!’

‘Eve blasé? That’s a libel,’ Sir Vincent upheld his special friend, Ian Challoner’s child. For they had many small weaknesses in common and a deep mutual understanding.

In spite of the hurly-burly, they manoeuvred two peaceful early rides together, that carried Eve back to romantic, irresponsible engagement days. But even to him she did not speak of the sonata that was really taking shape at last.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

They were gone. The ‘week’ was over; all the wild races run, except the important steeplechase, deferred, on account of an accident, till the next big gymkhana.

Lance, meantime, was busier than ever; his temper rather short about the trifles that so constantly tripped her up. For the complexities of her secondary theme were distracting her mind from the daily round—that other ‘inescapable enemy,’ not beloved. And in all innocence, he must needs choose this very moment to suggest inviting the Sternes for a week, while their ramshackle bungalow was being patched up again by the anti-British landlord.

At any other time she would have welcomed the chance to see more of Mrs Sterne. As it was, the prospect of another woman constantly in and out of her sacred drawing-room made her skin prickle with a foretaste of frustration. And when Lance hopefully suggested that she might ‘drop the sonata’ for a week, she recognised the futility of trying to explain that one could not check, to order, those inner activities demanding isolation, those moods of torturing happiness—more torture than happiness till they found release in music. For all compulsions of the soul—in art or faith or love—are apt to seem fanciful to those not so compelled.

And the fact that she urgently wanted to get these difficult passages written, before the Sternes ‘came tumbling in,’ seemed to act like grit in the machinery. That inner check, and the very real difficulties of an intricate theme, put a severe tax on her nerves when she was feeling far from well; trying to compose a sonata with one hand and run a house with the other. And there was Ramazān’s daily total mounting up again. There was Lance fussing over Grey Dawn; and she getting into trouble for not keeping a stricter eye on Shastri, the sais; also for losing another cheque that Lance had given her—a very important one. This time he had not seen it as a joke. He had said in the sheathed voice of suppressed temper: ‘Of course if you’re too busy with the music to look after little things like that, I must find time to do your work as well as my own.’

And she had gone straight out of the room in an access of blind misery; too proud to cry, too fair-minded to snap at him for a rebuke that she entirely deserved.

Of course, after that, her little dark imp had improved the far from shining hour with his malign whisper: ‘You’re flying too high for your untried wings. You’ll probably never be a real composer; and you may be risking the best thing in life, while you try to snatch at the stars.’

That hint of a partial truth was peculiarly unwelcome at this dejected moment, when an indefinable cloud seemed to hang between her and Lance, dimming their happy natural delight in each other. Perhaps he felt as jealous of the music as she did of the work and the horses; a jealousy of the spirit, more subtle and poignant than her possessive jealousy of Ina Slade. On the whole he was very understanding over it: but this difficult sonata had caused one or two serious clashes. Not much said, but a good deal felt and repressed—as she knew from the closed up look that came into his face when his temper was rising and he would not let it flare.

That hovering cloud, partly nervous, partly physical, shadowed their first peaceful evening, when all the surface excitement was over: she in a low chair by the fire, an open book on her knee, scribbling music on a stray sheet of paper; he sitting aloof, Bijli at his feet, frowning over some hateful reports, seeming hardly to realise her presence. Childishly determined that she would not speak till he did, she felt oppressed, for the first time, by a vague sense of flatness in being thus alone with him: a feeling inconceivable two months ago.

As the minutes passed, and he made no sign, she rose abruptly, and said in a casual voice: ‘My head’s too full of music. I can’t read. I’m going to bed. Are you coming soon?’

He looked up and smiled at her. ‘Not just yet. Wharton wants these to-morrow.’

She pouted at him, only half in joke. He flung out a hand and pulled her nearer.

‘What’s she being sulky about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s always “nothing” when people turn sulky. And they ought to think shame of confessing it—or fibbing about it! You’re fagged out between the racket and the music. When will the thing be finished?’

‘It’s not a “thing,”’ she rebuked him. ‘It’s a sonata.’

‘I beg its pardon! But I can’t forgive it for washing out your fine colour and making smudges under your lovely eyes.’ He pulled her down to him, still half reluctant, and kissed her squarely on the mouth. There—go to sleep. Don’t fuss over that old music. And don’t be a precious little fool about nothing.’

The double injunction spoilt the effect of his kiss.

‘It’s not—I’m not——’ She pulled away her hand and went quickly out.

But at heart she knew he had spoken the husbandly, unflattering truth. And she lay awake a long while, too tired to sleep, wishing he would come and kiss away her folly. This innovation he had started of sitting up late over work was not at all to her taste.

Suddenly, all unbidden, memory after memory swept over her of their brief and beautiful prelude to adventure: they two, in perfect harmony of heart and body and mind, untroubled by gritty irritants, social and domestic, free from irksome constraints, steeped in the only realities that mattered—their inner selves and Nature’s serene impersonal reality of desert and mountain and sky. Now life, with its difficulties and demands, seemed to be thrusting a stealthy wedge between them. And she would not have it, at any price. Music or no, in him she lived and had her being. . . .

If he would but come now, he would find her no longer a precious little fool.’ But he did not come: and at last, tired out, she fell asleep.

Chapter 13

The world was you.
The world was what your loving is.
—A shaft of light through dust of mysteries.
— Gerald Gould

Lance left alone promptly laid aside those urgent papers, flung out his arms and yawned—a yawn that ended in a sigh.

‘What’s come to her?’ he reflected, troubled and bewildered. ‘It’s not like her to be so moody. In camp she was the dearest thing a man could desire.’

Thought of her—that was one with love of her—stirred a natural impulse to discard the work and follow her at once. But, out of pure consideration, he refrained. She was tired out, with all that music going on in her head. The absent look in her eyes, the way she started when he spoke, as if recalled from a distance, were clear signs that she was off on her winged steed; and she didn’t half realise how well he understood. He would wait till she was asleep; and then creep quietly to bed. That she might not be blessing him for his consideration, was a detail that did not enter his masculine head.

Uncle Vinx had said: ‘Take care of her, she’s a treasure; but a bundle of nerves. She needs ballast—a child.’

And Aunt Thea had said with a significant smile, ‘Not too soon, Lance. You can’t afford it yet, with your stables!’

As to that, they were taking their chance; though he had felt shy of saying so. Dearly he would like to have two or three children.—presently; but if the coming of a child would mean cutting down the stables—his major extravagance—he hoped, in the strictest privacy, that it might be ‘not too soon.’ He must learn to practise little economies, since she had not the knack. He had not quite realised in advance how expensive it would prove being man enough to marry; and he seriously needed that Bachelor’s Purse he was so keen to win. Grey Dawn had a cough, which was the very devil; but he and Neil would pull it off between them. Since his return, he had rather run wild over the racing and polo; and with Wharton in camp, the work had pinioned him. A curious case had seized his interest. And there was Eve, in her ‘rôle of grass widow,’ wanting his companionship, as indeed he wanted hers.

Yet in his own fashion, he too felt, now and then, the tug of his bachelor self, that Lynch had dared to prophecy would always remain unwed. Though love, that is more than loving, inspires the whole personality, when it has reached fulfilment, other things are bound to reassert their own importance. It is one of the critical turning points in a relation where two are never merged, nor ever should be. And these two, without any tall talk, were aiming high in this difficult matter of marriage, this ‘final union of two persons beneath which lies all the buried meaning of life.’

Already, through one person finely and truly known, he had come into closer contact with life at all points. His love of Eve, his need of her, ran like a refrain through all his zest for work and play: but the fact remained that a man’s work, if it meant anything to him, must be paramount; a clear call to achievement. That call he respected in Eve’s case also—not without a private qualm that it might stress the inaccessible, intangible elements in her that made for separation. He delighted in her playing and her artistry; but, in depths rarely probed, there lurked a vague fear of her creative genius: the natural man’s fear of the thing that is not of nature. It was all part of her queer dangerous charm, her infinite, capacity to please or pain him.

Of the last he had been made acutely aware during these two difficult weeks; and he, who feared so little, was terribly afraid, deep down, of her power to hurt him as nothing and no one else could do. Yet he had no fear of outside influences. If there were any lurking danger, it was from the pull of individual interests that made them independent of each other. Eve, lost in her music, needed nothing and no one outside it, for the time being: and he could not, if he would, shut his eyes to the fact that the streak of genius in her was a power greater than herself, the one thing stronger than her need of him. If he told her so, no doubt she would reluctantly admit it; for both were afflicted with the troublesome honesty of a generation mortally afraid of self-delusion.

In any case nothing could deflect him from loving her; but he sincerely wished the music obsession had not coincided with the racket of a race week. These last few days she had been looking a washed-out rag. When he came home tired, sick of Oriental verbiage and sinuosity, looking to Eve for the restful background of shared thought and feeling—that is everything to a hard worked man—he found her tired also and distrait, needing the refreshment for which he looked to her.

And one could not rely on her to remember important little things. There were those plants young Purān Singh wanted for the garden. He would see the boy about them in the morning. . . .

For Lynch had prophesied truly in the matter of that sulky young Sikh, who had come to slay and remained to serve. Day after day he had seen and heard things that gave the lie to many burning words imbibed from that fount of truth, the printed page. He had spoken with men in the Sahib’s service, had learnt that there was good money available for easy work. So, when the time came for him to go his ways, he had begged leave to remain and serve the Sahib. Though he knew nothing of white men’s houses, he could cut grass for a pony; he could make things grow! And here he was transformed into a pukka māli,³⁹ willing to learn what he did not know; as pleased with his new tools, his broom and his packets of seed, as any child with a box of toys.

And Lance, on the whole, felt justified of that which he ought not to have done. If only Wharton could know! The thought recalled him to his neglected papers: and it was after midnight when he crept quietly to bed.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Next morning the cloud had lifted; they were kind lovers again; Eve penitent over those forgotten plants; not a word from Lance about the music or the moodiness that had spoilt their evening. They were still young enough for a new day to create the sense of a fresh beginning, a sense that all things must be possible because it was morning and the sun climbing an unclouded sky.

After tiffin, they were to ride to the polo. Lance wanted her to see how Shahzada was shaping; and she was ready enough to go with him. But the long first movement of her sonata was working up to a dramatic finale; rushing through her brain on wings that swept it forward to its own end—the supreme experience of the artist in any medium. And just before starting she had heard the climax, note for note; violin and piano in unison, sustaining and enriching one another.

So Lance must ride on alone; and she, at the full pitch of her inner excitement, must fling down what she could; then go off and watch polo and make correct remarks, while half her brain was miles away. She would hurry home early. Lance had said he must go on with Neil to ‘The Chummery,’ a nest of subalterns, to advise about a pony. But it might be a matter of two hours—-two centuries!

The crowd, the onlookers, the flying men and horses snatched at her preoccupied brain; polo, with Lance playing—the fiery fascination of it, hoofs pattering like hailstones on the dust-muffled ground, the ball darting here and there like a live thing; and always, beneath the excitement, the lurking fear—for Lance. Then the sight of Claude and Mrs Farquhar in the steel grey car, drew her thoughts away to Kitty. And Colonel Myles, a delicious person, was moved to tell her stories of Uncle Vinx in Kohat days, as a very shy subaltern, whom he himself had tried—in all good faith—to rescue from the clutches of Sir Theo Desmond’s adorable daughter.

So it went on; till at last the match was over and Lance came up to receive condolences because the Airmen had won ‘by the skin of their teeth.’

‘Fine stiff tussle though, wasn’t it?’ he appealed to her for approval. ‘And Shahzada played like an old stager. Now I’m off with Neil. Are you dashing back to your crochets and quavers! ‘

‘Yes—dashing!’

But as she turned Zaidée homeward, he rode up alongside. ‘Look here, darling, before you’re quite dead to the world, I want you to make straight for the stables, and see that Grey Dawn has her bran mash and the stuff for her cough. She wasn’t so well yesterday; and Shastri’s a slacker. I may be late, or I wouldn’t bother you with these domestic trifles!’

He gave her a few rapid directions which she hung on to mentally, fearful of forgetting them because they conveyed so little.

‘Mind you do it the minute you get back, or it won’t be done,’ he concluded urgently. ‘And if it isn’t. I’ll be in a proper rage.’

Only half impressed by that awful threat, she rode away: but, being Eve, she did not ride home at once. Chilled by long sitting and watching, she decided that a short canter would help her to set brain and body in a glow.

It was an exquisite evening; the air keen and still; the sun a blood-red disc setting among coppery clouds crisp and flat as if they had been pressed against the sky. Naked branches and square bungalows were darkly patterned on a fierce crescendo of colour.

Too soon the blood-red disc slipped behind a black tree trunk, dwindled to an angry spark—and vanished. The world seemed bereft of a living presence. Too soon the glow faded; light and colour departing on unheard, invisible wings—the very spirit of the Largo that was to follow her dramatic first movement. . . .

The sonata had seized her again, enriched by that brief receptive mood. No more fingering and dreaming in the frost-sharpened air. A brisk canter for Zaidée; then home to the firelight, the piano and the fiddle. She was eager to try the violin part of those exciting passages flung down under the spell of inspiration—that lit fervour of mind and spirit, that craving to communicate news of reality to those whose ears and eyes are, in a measure, holden till the artist cries, ‘Listen—look!’

By the time she had reached the bungalow and handed Zaidée over to the sais—who sat awaiting them rolled up in his horse-blanket—Grey Dawn and her cough and those urgent instructions had slipped completely out of her mind.

Tea in the firelight was but a parenthesis, her brain absorbed in the scrawl she held in one hand, while she fed her inattentive self with the other.

Then out came the violin; and she played and played—and heard that it was good. Not till she cooled towards it, would she find the flaws, the unconscious echoes.

And from the sonata she passed on to other things; letting the spirit of music carry her where it would. . . .

She was still playing when Lance appeared. She had not even heard him canter up; and he laughed at her startled face.

‘Lost to earth, were you? I’ll be back in a few minutes. Must have a look at Grey Dawn. Kiss her “good night!”’

Grey Dawn—it all rushed back upon her.

‘Oh, Lance!’ She let the fiddle clatter on to the piano, alarmed at the look in his eyes. For he needed no telling.

‘God damn it all——’

His temper flared up in a rapid outburst of profanity, such as she had never heard from him, or any man, but Angus on one terrible occasion. Though it shook her nerve, it repelled her and froze up her very real penitence. She could not know how much of earlier suppressed anger and lurking jealousy of her music found vent in that disproportionate explosion of wrath, startling as a thunderclap. To her it was simply not Lance. It was a strange and hateful man, whom she could not conceivably love or respect.

‘I’m fearfully sorry,’ she heard herself saying in a far from penitent voice. ‘It wasn’t callousness. I clean forgot.’

‘Forgot? You were riding straight home; a matter of seven minutes——’

‘I didn’t ride straight home.’

‘I told you to. And you said you would.’

‘Yes, I meant to. But I can’t always be certain what I’ll do next.’

It sounded so lame that his temper spurted afresh.

‘That’s obvious. And a poor sick beast might go to hell for all you cared.’

‘I do care. You know I do.’

Her voice shook in spite of herself. For though he was still angry enough, there was a different colour in his anger. He was Lance again; no hateful blaspheming stranger.

‘I did mean to go straight home and do all you said. But there was a gorgeous sunset and I felt cold. So I went for a canter. And then—the music. . .’

“Yes, it’s all the music with you now. My special injunctions didn’t matter a damn.’

‘They did matter. I’ve said I’m awfully sorry.’

‘You don’t sound much like it.’

‘Well, I’m not going to grovel over it.’

They confronted one another wrathful, defiant; all their love and dignity overturned by that hostile impact of their primitive selves. And the triviality of the reason struck at Eve’s heart.

‘Grey Dawn won’t die of having mash and medicine an hour behind the time,’ she urged more placably.

‘Who said she would?’

Eve stared at him, defiance dissolved in bewilderment. She did not see—and in her hostile mood he would not tell her—that the oversight itself mattered far less to him than her casual treatment of his urgent request.

‘Then why are you so furious?’ she asked, nervously fingering the end of her fiddle-bow, trying to hold her own against cold waves of physical sickness. ‘I couldn’t help it. You know I do try. And I’m not always like this.’

‘No, thank God, you’re not. But when that cursed music gets hold of you nothing and no one has a look in——’

‘It’s not true,’ she interrupted him, hurt to the quick. But sooner than collapse she drew a cloak of young dignity over her chilled misery. ‘It’s only—I’m trying hard to get this movement finished before the Sternes come. And as I don’t seem to be very popular in my own drawing-room this evening, I’ll take the fiddle and get on with it in my room till dinner time.’

‘That you won’t,’ he retorted sharply. ‘You’ve been at it for nearly two hours. And here am I back again simply to be with you. If it comes between us, I’ll confiscate the damned fiddle one of these days——’

At that she turned on him, shaken with a fury of anger. ‘Lance, if you dare touch my fiddle, I—I’ll never. . .’

Her voice trailed off. Everything slipped away from her. She was dimly aware of a queer cold nausea surging through her—of Lance springing forward, catching her in his arms

Then blackness—her soul flickering out. . . .

Slowly her senses returned; and with them the remembrance of what she had nearly said. Remorse stabbed her wide awake.

She was lying on the sofa, Lance leaning over her. He was pressing his fingers under her ribs, calling to her low and desperately, ‘ Eve—Eve!’

As she drew a shivering breath, the look of terror vanished from his eyes. He sprang up. He tried to give her brandy; but she clutched his arm, spilling it down her neck.

‘Dearest darling—I didn’t mean a word I said.’

‘Nor did I,’ he told her in a shaken voice. ‘Not a single word. Drink this. And don’t spill it again.’

She drank it, spluttering and choking; and he smiled—the strangest smile as if a knife twisted inside him.

‘God! I thought I’d killed you.’ He passed shaking fingers over her hair. ‘My treasure—what made you do that?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I fainted. I’ve never done it in my life before.’

‘For God’s sake don’t do it again. Does it mean you’re ill?’

‘I don’t think so. I think perhaps——’ Very straightly she looked at him to see how he would take the news. ‘It might be—a baby.’

‘Never!’ He rose and stood gazing at her, his world spinning round him.

‘It does sometimes happen so,’ she demurely reminded him.

‘It does,’ he agreed in an absent voice, marvelling at the mysterious inner changes those few words implied. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘Because I didn’t rightly know. I don’t now. I’ll ask Grace about it. She’s terribly proficient over babies. Oh Lance——’ She laid a hand across her eyes, suddenly shy of his intense gaze. ‘I can’t all at once take it in.’

‘Nor can I,’ he gravely agreed; realising, as he spoke, that her news increased his own responsibilities tenfold; and she herself—a wonder he could never fathom, making all that music; and now—making their child. And he, swearing at her, not ten minutes ago, in terms that he recalled with acutest shame

‘Darling—are you honestly pleased?’ she asked in a small voice, puzzled at his silence, not shifting her hand.

Very gently he removed it and turned her face so that she must look full at him. ‘Would I be pleased?’

By his own quaint question she was answered. A warm lit feeling set her aglow, and impulsively she lifted her arms. As he knelt down, she laid them round his shoulders, straining to him with sudden passion; and the fervour of their kiss was shot through with a disturbing yet satisfying sense of achievement.

Still holding him, she said at last, ‘I somehow didn’t expect it would come so soon.’

‘It is a bit soon,’ he frankly admitted. ‘A serious consideration, these days. But we agreed to take our chance; and I’m not grumbling.’

‘Nor am I.’ She smiled dreamily. ‘It is rather exciting, isn’t it? All the more so because perhaps we oughtn’t—just yet. When I told Vanessa we were taking chances, she said we were a sweet pair of fools—not very severely. And she hoped we wouldn’t have to pay a long price for the luxury!’

Lance considered the wisdom of that—a few months too late.

‘Clever woman, Vanessa. It’s easy talking. Bet she’d be glad of one herself.’

‘She did have one, in her first awful marriage. And she lost it in a few months.’

‘Oh, poor soul.’

He said it very low, and with an unusual intensity that told Eve more clearly what her news meant to him than any lame attempts at expressing the inexpressible.

Chapter 14

Woman has a secret that resists
The magic of the half-gods . . .
Woman has a secret not all their webs can bind.
— Humbert Wolfe

In a deep armchair by the fire, with a board across her knees, Eve sat writing music; little black lozenges, with tails that cocked up and tails that hung down; groups of them ‘holding each other’s tails,’ like the bandarlōg; while their heads jerked up and down— fascinating things, each one striking a clear note in her brain. And above them danced the little lean imps of the violin score.

It was the climax of her first movement that must be finished to-day, because to-morrow the Sternes were invading the bungalow. She had been at it since breakfast; brain prompting hand, the hand’s response rekindling brain—the working in unison of mind and body and spirit, that is art.

Now and then she paused and stared into the fire, hypnotised by the in and out movement of flames licking and devouring logs. Not thinking of the fire, or even of her music, she was telling her incredulous self that in eight months time—it would happen. Only two days ago, Grace had told her, ‘It’s true, dear; and I trust you’re glad of it. You have hope.’ But those two days could not be measured by mere minutes and hours, so mysteriously disturbing was this new state of life, and she so imaginatively aware of it. In certain moods she felt amazed at herself. In other moods amused at herself for being amazed; since it happened to some woman almost every day of every year. Yet to each in turn it seemed a mystery and a wonder, because each human experience had its own unique, incommunicable quality. So skilfully does Nature’s spirit of diversity disguise the infinite sameness of life. It filled her with wonder and faint apprehension, this first promise of a new human being; an incalculable thing to bring into the world: music and the child—twin mysteries of art and life—using all her faculties for their own ends.

But though her sense of proportion saved her from making too much of an everyday affair, she could not talk of it casually like little Mrs Casson, whom she had heard the other day confiding to a friend, ‘Oh Nina darling, isn’t it grim? Doctor Inman says I’ve got a baby coming on.’ (As if she had said, ‘I’ve got a cold coming on.’) ‘And when I told Clarry the glad tidings, he said, “Damn!” Nice paternal sort of remark!’

If Lance had said ‘Damn!’ to her, she would have hit him. Though he had said far worse things ten minutes earlier.

Just at present, she did not want anyone to know. Christmas, they had agreed, would be soon enough to tell the others that they had done what, perhaps, they ought not to have done——

Swiftly she jotted down the last great chords, flung out her arms in an ecstasy of satisfaction; and suddenly, on impulse, decided to run round and see Kitty. That simple-hearted mother-creature would be one of the first people in whom she might confide her news.

Arrived at the Mansions, she ran upstairs, opened the door very quietly to surprise the Kitten—and lo, it was Kitty who surprised her: Kitty crumpled up in the big cane chair, her body quivering with stifled sobs.

As Eve hesitated, she sat up and revealed a face distorted with weeping.

‘Darling—what’s come to you?’ Eve cried in dismay; and quickly shutting the door, she fixing her arms round an unresisting Kitty, whose tears could not at once be stilled. ‘Anything wrong with the babies?’

‘Oh, the babies are all right,’ Kitty flung out, as if they were of no consequence. ‘It’s Claude—— Mrs Farquhar. You probably know. Everyone seems to know—except me.’

Eve held her closer, wishing she did not feel the other’s pain in every nerve.

‘I know he goes about with her a good deal,’ she said at last, since this abandoned Kitty gave her no help. ‘But she’s that sort. Men don’t take her seriously. I thought you understood; and you didn’t mind.’

‘I didn’t understand. And I do mind.’

‘Well, I wish you’d tell me what’s made it worse. I can’t bear you to be heart-broken.’

Reluctantly Kitty faced her ordeal. Claude, it appeared, had spent the last week-end up at Fort Lockhart, on the Samāna.

‘At least—he said it was Fort Lockhart.’ Kitty’s lips quivered again. ‘But Mrs Casson was here just now, and she said—Did we have a nice week-end out at Hangu? Bobby Wick had seen Claude at the Farquhars’.’ I felt as if—she’d hit me in the face. I could only say blankly that I hadn’t been to Hangu, that Claude was at Fort Lockhart; and he must have gone down to Hangu for the day. But I know—I know he wasn’t at Fort Lockhart at all.’

And Eve knew it also, squatting there on the hearthrug, smitten to the heart for a wife who could not trust her husband’s word. To her—for whom the spiritual values counted most—that seemed worse than any passing unfaithfulness in the technical sense. But she could only ask, after a pause, ‘Will you—say anything?’

Kitty looked woe-begone. ‘How does one say such things? Besides . . . there’s more to tell,’ she added, shelving the issue: and in broken phrases she told of a talk with Claude, that came back to her now with a new and painful significance. A detachment of the 9th Sikhs, including his company, were under orders for the Samāna after Christmas. Kitty had taken it for granted that she and the children would go too, but had found that Claude fully intended to go alone. Hurt and unhappy, she had believed his fair-sounding excuses. But now——

‘He only wants to get rid of us all,’ she flung out her tragic conviction—‘just to be near that woman.’ She clenched her small hands in an anguish of jealousy for which Eve would never have given her credit. Yet there was neither anger nor malice in her. She was like a hurt child. And, the barriers being down, she poured forth all the doubts and miseries of many weeks.

‘I wouldn’t say a word of this, Eve darling, to anyone else; but I know in my heart it’s not only other women. It’s the children that come between us. They’re supposed to bring parents together, but they don’t. Lots of men are jealous of their children. And Claude hates what he calls “the nursery atmosphere.” Of course we oughtn’t to have started so soon. And heavens! Why did I need to start with twins? Oh, Eve,’ she leaned forward to the younger wife who sat motionless, fingering her jade beads. ‘You two are such a perfect match. Don’t start having children too soon. They make such complications out here. And—it’s so unbecoming. Sometimes it quite puts a man off—— Mrs Casson told me——’

Eve could bear no more.

‘I wouldn’t believe that,’ she said vehemently, ‘if fifty Mrs Cassons told me. It could only be true of the rottenest men.’

But cold fingers seemed to be closing on her heart. Clearly Kitty was the last person to whom she could confide her hope.

And Kitty—who had seemed wrapped up in those three small people—was saying in an odd reluctant voice: ‘You see—it’s Claude I want really. If I thought it would bring him back, as he used to be, I’d send them all to my sister Polly, at Home. She’s devoted to children; and of course she hasn’t got one. But I can’t feel sure about Claude. And they want me if it’s only cupboard love.’

‘Kitty, don’t talk so. I think you’re crazed,’ Eve said in a low pained voice.

‘Perhaps I am,’ Kitty agreed, as if it were a side issue. And suddenly ashamed of her lapse from loyalty, she fell fathoms deep into self-reproach. ‘I’ve never talked like this to anyone. I can’t bear the way women turn their husbands inside out over tea and cigarettes. Men don’t do it. Claude may be selfish, but he wouldn’t ever talk like this to anyone—about me.’

And while Eve hesitated, there came a rush of small footsteps outside. The three children hurtled in, glowing from their morning run with the old ayah, who had been trusted to-day because Kitty’s heart was too sick with mistrusting Claude for lesser anxieties to disturb it.

They flung themselves upon her, babbling in high clear voices; and in less than five minutes it seemed as if that distraught, unmotherly Kitty had never been.

Eve, having done what she could, had only one desire —to escape. In vain Kitty pressed her to stay longer and clung to her at parting.

‘It was lovely of you to come. I don’t know what it is about you, Eve, that makes me able to tell you things I couldn’t tell anyone else. I feel better, now I’ve talked about it.’

And Eve herself—wishing others would sometimes refrain from these undesired confidences—did not know that they instinctively recognised her as a real person, and proved it by giving her their realities rather than the small change of the market place. Kitty’s painful realities had left her feeling vaguely apprehensive and depressed, had robbed her lovely secret of all its exciting quality.

She walked home with a less alert step than she had set out, as though her thoughts weighed upon her physically. One could not compare Lance with that despicable Claude; but even he had admitted that it was rather soon. He knew it would mean more economy; and she a bad manager at best. They were radiantly happy, sufficient unto themselves: and a child shifted the centre of gravity, whether one would or no. She naturally wanted to stay with him here, till his leave was due. But now, on account of That Other, he would probably hustle her off to Kashmir in May. And so it would go on. . . .

Arrived at home, vexed with herself for being cast down, she ran straight into John Lynch.

He came and went spasmodically, and the spare room was always at his service. But this time he had given no warning; and she was amused at finding herself half disappointed that he might have to go elsewhere. Perhaps he could do with a bed in the dressing-room.

Lynch came forward and shook hands: a friendly gesture in which he seldom indulged.

‘Nice little surprise for you!’ he remarked, scanning her face with his intent yet abstracted gaze. ‘Unforeseen circumstances: or I’d have let you know.’

‘I wish you had. The Sternes might have changed dates.’

‘Don’t say you’re full up. Why are the Sternes?’

‘Because we offered them shelter while their crumbling bungalow is being mended. Would you spurn a bed in the dressing-room?’

He set his hands palm to palm in mock obeisance.

‘If Lance can manage with me there, for three or four nights——?”

‘That’s settled then. The spare room’s free for tonight.’

‘Thanks very much.’ Again his eyes lingered on her face. ‘What’s wrong with you, Eve? Out in camp you were looking a daisy.’

His question made her feel hot all over; but her voice was cool enough, as she answered: ‘ It’s just reaction after that wild week. And I’ve been composing—hard. A double strain. So for the moment, my beauty’s in eclipse!’

‘Is it?’ he gravely queried. ‘You do seem a bit off colour. Sit down; and I’ll account for myself.’

She sank gratefully on to the Chesterfield; and he sat down beside her.

‘It’s my all-round Indispensable, Bhagwān Das, down with persistent fever. I suspect lung trouble; and these Indians have no stamina. I brought him to Kohat because his family’s here. And his mother’s clamouring that he should be sent to the Mission Hospital: says the “Lady Sahib” can work miracles.’

‘She probably can. She does wonders for them.’

‘She’s a missionary,’ he stated bluntly. ‘And Bhagwān’s a sound—if not very orthodox—Hindu. I don’t want my prince of detectives missionised into an unsound, half-baked Christian.’

‘Grace wouldn’t half bake anybody,’ Eve protested hotly.

‘Grace?’ he echoed in an odd voice. ‘A friend of yours?’

‘My best friend in Kohat. She hasn’t time for gaieties. And some people are snobby about her, because she’s a “mish.” But she’s worth more than any of them. She’s a real person.’

‘She’s real, all right.’

Eve stared blankly at him. ‘D’you know her?’

‘I did know her—once. We’ve not met for years.’

His cool statement seemed intended as a corrective to Eve’s ardour; but the fact itself kindled her interest.

‘You must have heard of her work,’ she persisted, refusing to be quenched. ‘The people hero worship her. She’s known all over the Border. Was she doctoring when you met her before!’

‘Just started. Immensely keen. Going to move mountains.’

The faint note of scepticism spurred Eve to further championship. ‘Well, she has moved a few. You’re a man. You can’t even dimly know what she’s done among the women.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘From Maimie Ferris—and from the women. I talk to them. And I sometimes go to see them in their homes.’

‘The devil you do? And Lance doesn’t object?’

‘Why should he?’

‘Anglo-Saxon human nature I suppose. East and West are not growing friendlier. And a good many Englishmen do object to their wives mixing too much with Indians.’

‘I’m glad I didn’t marry that kind of Englishman, or there’d be ructions! But the point is . . . do trust your Bhagwān Das to Grace.’

He looked obstinate. ‘I’d prefer the station hospital.’

‘Where he’d be treated like a stray sick native; while Grace would take a personal interest; and she has a very clever Indian doctor there. She wouldn’t mish him. She isn’t the narrow Churchy kind. But she can’t help living and acting what she believes.’

‘No—she can’t help that,’ he admitted, and sat silent, rubbing his square chin, as if he were turning something over in his mind. Then he said gruffly, ‘Well, if she’s so damn clever, I’ll trust her with Bhagwān. His mother and wife would probably give him hell if I didn’t. The enslaved Indian female isn’t near so meek as she’s painted. But we’re reckoning without the lady. She may be full up.’

‘We’ll drive round after tiffin and find out.’

He seemed amused at her handling of the reins.

‘I’m to be personally conducted?’

‘Yes. It’ll give you a better chance.’

He chuckled at that, but said nothing: and Eve, cheered by the new interest, added, ‘I’ll dash off a note now.’

‘No. We’ll take our chance,’ he said decisively ‘I can see the doctor fellow anyhow.’

Lynch was no more arguable than a steam roller. So she left it alone; and hoped Grace might be free.

After tiffin they drove round together in Lynch’s car: and there was Grace herself in the verandah talking to the unfaithful wife, whose new nose had increased her vanity and audacity ten-fold. At sight of the big car driven by an Englishman, she scuttled like a rabbit into the nearest room.

Grace turned and stared. A startled, eager expression flickered like a light across her face—and was gone. She smiled and waved her hand. Eve thought she had never looked more arrestingly alive than she did just then—standing in full sunshine at the verandah’s edge, in her blue frock and unbleached apron; little tufts and curls of her rebellious hair gleaming where the light caught them, like fine copper wire.

Eve sprang out and ran up the steps. ‘Don’t be terrified!’ she said low and quickly. ‘It’s not a caller. Mr Lynch—a great friend of ours—wants you to take in one of his men. He says you knew him years ago.’

‘Yes—years ago. We won’t count up how many!’ She held out her hand to him, as he mounted the steps. ‘A wounded policeman, is it?’

She went straight to business, wasting no time on ‘frills.’

‘Not wounded—and more than a policeman; a genius at his job,’ Lynch answered, scanning her with his vague light eyes. ‘He’s in rather a bad way. Lungs, I’m afraid.’

‘And you’ll actually entrust him to a Mission hospital!’

The swift thrust, and the smile it drew from Lynch, told Eve they must have known one another fairly well.

‘It’s his women folk you have to thank for that. They insist on “the Lady Sahib”; and Eve guarantees you’ll cure his body and not go fishing for his soul.’

‘I didn’t put it that way,’ Eve protested.

‘Of course not!’ Grace smiled and reverted to Lynch. ‘Doctor Savarkar is a lung specialist. Your man would have a better chance here than under Army doctors. I’ll sign a formal declaration, if you like, that the patient shall run no risk of becoming tainted with Christianity!’

Her light tone had an edge to it; and Eve had never seen Lynch look more nearly uncomfortable.

‘Your word’s good enough for me,’ he said bluntly. ‘Can you take him over to-night?’

Of course she could; even if her small wards were packed, she could always make room for an urgent case.

‘Would you care to look round the place?’ she asked in a changed voice, as if atoning for her rapier thrust.

‘I’d like to very much, if you’ve the time to waste on me.’

She twinkled at his unwonted humility. ‘I never waste my time! But I’ll gladly take you round. Eve won’t be bored.’

Eve, miles removed from boredom, accompanied them through the men’s wards; interest and curiosity quickened by a growing conviction that these two had never been friends. Under their impersonal talk she caught, here and there, a note of personal significance, a just perceptible undercurrent of mental antagonism that could not co-exist with friendship, but often with frustrated love. Was it possible—those two?

She had never liked Lynch better—except when Lance was wounded—than during that brief time when they three wandered through Grace Yolande’s little kingdom, where every detail, every inmate, said more for her than she ever could, or would, say for herself. He spoke and moved with a curiously subdued air; and he was apt to show at his best with Indians. He talked to the patients; said ludicrous things, in his dry way, and made them laugh. Eve caught Grace watching him once, when he was exchanging sallies with a young Pathan, whose face was horribly plastered up; and the thought flashed there must have been something once. Was it quite extinct? Had she, by any wild chance, done a good day’s work for a very difficult pair? She could not see either of them in the closest and most exacting of personal bonds; but they had an odd unmistakable effect on one another. She was intrigued and deeply interested. What would Lance have to say about it?

During the short drive home Lynch was silent—the kind of silence to which one could not offer a casual remark.

When he halted the car outside the bungalow, he said gravely, ‘Thank you for taking me there.’

She smiled at the inversion. ‘But you took me.’

‘I handled the wheel. That was all.’

‘Are you satisfied?’

‘I’m satisfied.’ A pause. ‘There’s a woman who’s found her métier. She’s doing more to uphold the Rāj and create good feeling than half a dozen administrators on princely pay. If she’d only cut out the missionising——’

‘If she did that, she wouldn’t be Grace.’

‘No—she wouldn’t be Grace,’ he agreed in a curious tone, and added briskly: ‘Out you go. I must be off and see after Bhagwān.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lance came home late, gave Lynch a rousing welcome, and heard all about the hospital from Eve while they dressed for dinner; she darting in and out of his room, as usual, when the coast was clear of Ramazān. Perched on the corner of a table, in her yellow silk petticoat, she ran a fine comb through her hair, making it stand on end ‘like a golliwog,’ and poured forth her tale, while he wrestled with his collar and tie.

He listened with interest, making sceptical faces at her in the glass. But Eve refused to see it as a joke.

‘Isn’t it astonishing?’ she insisted, ‘Grace—and Lynch? I feel in my bones there must have been something between them.’

‘Rot!’ was his comprehensive comment on that. ‘Your bones are more sensitive than most people’s nerves. But I know Lynch. His “reaction” to women (as Americans say) is mainly physical. And Grace isn’t that sort. She and Lynch are not compatible in any sense.’

‘Incompatibles have an odd knack of falling in love,’ she mused. ‘I back my theory. But I don’t suppose we’ll ever discover which of us is right. Whatever it was, I rather think it’s gone fut. And oh, talk of incompatibles—Kitty and that wretched Claude. I was there this morning. I’m afraid she’s up against a crisis. And it aches my heart——”

‘Poor Kitten. He’s a swab. But he won’t be bolting with the Scarlet Woman, if that’s any comfort to her.’

‘He can break her heart either way. She won’t ever know the truth about him and his vagaries; and he will always believe he has told her. It’s tragic——’

‘Look here, Eve,’ he swung round quickly, his fingers at his waistcoat buttons. ‘I’m not heartless over the Kitten. But you can’t do her any good by worrying. And you’ve got to keep off it—just now. For the next eight months you’ve got to practise optimism. Very good discipline!’

Eve, remembering that clutch of fear, stifled a small sigh.

‘Can I keep it up for eight months? I don’t want to saddle you with another pessimist! Is he allowed to be musical?’

Lance, having turned back to the dressing table, grimaced at her in the glass without looking round.

‘Don’t see how the poor little beggar can escape that fatality!’

Without warning she sprang at him, caught him by the shoulders and bit the soft rim of his ear just hard enough to make him jump. But he only put up a hand and pressed her head against his own.

‘We’ll disinherit him, if he isn’t! Quite finished that first movement, have you?’

‘Quite—till Vanessa gets to work on it. I meant you to hear some violin bits this evening; but Lynch does hate it so. I’m paralysed, if he’s in the room.’

‘We’ll bundle him into the study for half an hour; and I will hear it. I want a little cheering up. We’ve had to scratch Grey Dawn for the Purse——’

‘Oh darling—did it matter all that?’

He flung an arm round her shoulder. ‘Didn’t matter an O.B.E.! She’s been a bit off colour for some time. I’m running Swastika for a place.’

‘But the Bachelor’s Purse—you’re needing so.’

‘It would have come in handy,’ he admitted, collecting handkerchief and cigarette case and thrusting them into his pockets. ‘I’ll get another chance. And anyway, I’ve won the Benedick’s Consolation Stakes!’

She laughed at that—a shaky little laugh; for she knew his disappointment must be keener than he would admit.

A booming sound echoed through the house, and she flung up her hands in dismay.

‘There’s the gong—and look at me!’

He laughed. ‘ I do a fair amount of that! But I’m agreeable.’ Taking her cool bare shoulders between his hands he looked at her steadily; so clear a blaze of love in his eyes, so clear the lurking thought in his mind, that the blood stirred under her skin. Seeing it, he smiled, kissed her lips with a deep gentle pressure, and pushed her back into her own room.

‘You must be more punctual, my Beauty, while the Sternes are here. He’s a bit of a martinet.’

‘He’s also a bit of a bore!’ Eve retorted unimpressed. ‘But she’s a dear. They seem to me good friends: not much more. Perhaps I’ll discover more at close quarters.’

‘You and your discoveries! Quit the Sternes and whisk into your frock, while I go and pacify old John.’

If the Sternes, at close quarters, provided no scope for dramatic discoveries, they confirmed her impression of them as good friends. Though he snapped at her, in his ‘breakfast mood,’ and she exercised her wit on his masculine failings, one could feel the undercurrent of an abiding affection between them. If the early glow had faded, it had left them something stable to live upon. But to Eve, at the height of her new-married fervour, that seemed a lukewarm exchange for her vivid sense of unity with Lance. Must they too, simmer down inevitably to a sort of ‘friendship recognised by the police’? She scouted the idea. And in that other marriage she divined some radical lack that gave Mrs Sterne’s face its pathetic aspect in repose. Was it by chance or design that they had no children? To have or not to have seemed as thorny a question between husband and wife as the eternal discord over money. She would like to know how it was with Mrs Sterne.

And before they left she had her answer to the question she dared not venture to ask.

Sitting over the fire one evening, between tea and dinner, their talk tinned on Kitty, and the ironical twist that made the very children, on whom she was squandering her youth and health, the main stumbling block to a happier relation with Claude.

‘Oh, but he’s no husband,’ Mrs Sterne said impatiently. ‘She’s lucky to have the children; luckier than she knows—yet. Of course they do complicate things out here; but, good gracious—life without them. . . .’ She caught her breath with a swift clenching of one small hand ‘My dear Eve, I can speak of it, now we’re friends. Frank and I thought we were being very sensible and prudent when we decided to keep clear, for a time, of the extra expense, the complications. And there was no one to warn me I might be taking another kind of risk that I should regret all my days. I may have been doomed in any case. But if I’d let things alone, I wouldn’t feel quite so badly about it——’ She said the last very low; and Eve could find no word of comfort for the fierce grief that vibrated in her tone.

‘We can check Nature,’ she went on, in a more controlled voice, ‘but we can’t say at will, “Let there be life”—and there is life. That’s what many young couples forget. Did it ever strike you, Eve?’

‘No. It didn’t,’ Eve confessed—and realised, on a sudden, that it was to this childless woman rather than to child-encumbered Kitty that she could speak of her hope. ‘We aren’t being prudent,’ she shyly admitted. ‘And I was afraid we ought to be.’

‘No, my dear—don’t be, if you value the ultimate things. Marriage isn’t easy out here, in any case. And I don’t believe we improve matters by shirking the old-fashioned end for which it was ordained. It’s the childless marriages that are breaking up homes—breaking up civilised fife. There—I can’t talk of it. I never have. But one can say things to you. . . .’ She checked herself: ‘It would be a thousand pities if you two failed to carry on.’

‘We are carrying on,’ Eve said in a small voice. ‘We’re hoping It will arrive in the summer.’

Mrs Sterne leaned sideways and put an arm round Eve.

‘I’m glad,’ she said at last. ‘ And I’m glad you told me.’

She would have been still more glad had she known that, by all she had said and left unsaid, she had banished the lurking fear that poor desperate Kitty had implanted, in Eve Desmond’s heart.

Chapter 15

The man was my whole world all the same
With his flowers to praise and his weeds to blame,
And either, or both, to love.
— Browning

Claude Mansell, owing to that unwise week-end at Hangu, found himself in a cleft stick—an undignified position for a comfort loving man. Those few days of playing at orchard thief—while Farquhar was up on the Samāna—had brought his gay little affair with Farquhar’s wife to a swift and serious crisis.

At first things had gone swimmingly. But on the second evening, Esmée had produced champagne to grace a recherché little dinner. And its extra dry sparkle had got into his blood. Tantalised by her cool command of the situation, he had said unguarded things; had found himself, before the evening was over, saddled with a woman who had accepted, in good faith, a proposal that he had certainly not intended to make. Essentially a man of half measures, he had never seriously contemplated wholesale surrender on her part, or wholesale desertion on his. Yet he had no desire to give up the pleasant habit of running round with her; and he could not tell her flatly that this insistence of her sex on a permanent relation was the very devil from his own innately promiscuous point of view.

Tactfully he had made the most of a natural reluctance so to hurt his wife, a chivalrous concern for Esmée’s reputation, which she had laughingly dismissed as mere masculine weakness for doing even the wrong thing decently and in order.

‘And it’s not the least use my darling man,’ she had assured him, rubbing her sleek head against his. ‘There’s no decency in passionate love—which is half the fascination of it, in this stiflingly decent world!’

That was the truth, of course; but he had not liked her the better for seeing it so clearly and stating it so frankly. In fact, her dashing proposal, oddly enough, had given him an unexpected tilt towards Kitty, his lawful property; Kitty who believed in his half truths, his uncandid candour, as Esmée would never do. Though he could not be faithful to her, or resist the desire of the strange, he still loved her in his shallow fashion. Yet, in order to snatch a few nights with Esmée, he had told her a barefaced lie; and he now felt unreasonably aggrieved because his stolen pleasure had entangled him in the kind of complication he could least endure.

It was a positive relief, on his return, to find the 9th Sikhs down in orders for musketry practice. That would mean a fortnight in the butts all day. The break would give Esmée leisure to think things over; and would give him a better chance to exercise his talent for evasion: a talent that had so far served him well.

On the evening of Kitty’s enlightenment, he came home tired from the butts, looking forward to a few quiet hours in her company. For she was a restful, lovable creature, not built for tragic issues. He found her looking prettier than usual in a simple evening gown of the year before last; subdued and a little withdrawn; barely returning his husbandly kiss.

During dinner in the restaurant, she cheered up a little. There were no signs of a ‘sulk’; yet she was just sufficiently different to pique his interest.

Upstairs, in their room, she sat down by a tall children’s work-stand full of garments: and Claude stood watching her, a cigarette dangling from his lips, while she tried to thread her skewer of a needle.

Then he put down the cigarette; and coming round behind her, he leaned over the back of her cane chair, took her hands—one in each of his own—and pulled them apart.

‘You can’t do it, Kitten. What’s the matter?’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m quite ordinary.’

‘You’re quite un-ordinary. You aren’t behaving properly.’

Turning, she gazed at him with embarrassingly candid eyes. ‘Are you always behaving properly?’

The directness of that, gave his heart an odd jerk.

‘Now we’ve got down to brass tacks!’ he said lightly. ‘If I am a miserable sinner, I propose to behave properly this evening.’

In proof of it, ignoring her rebuff, he kissed her averted cheek and blew softly into her ear.

‘I don’t propose to yawn my head off over a stale thriller, while you prick your poor fingers. You can let the brats go unmended for once. You’re going to play with me. Game of Mah Jong?’

He knew her little weakness, and seldom troubled to give her the pleasure. What possessed him to-night he could hardly have explained, had he given the matter a thought.

She sighed and smiled; loving him, hating his duplicity; wondering what he was after now. Always she had a sense of something concealed behind his calculated frankness.

But he only saw the soft alluring face, that hid her thoughts; and in his lithe fashion he slipped round on to the stuffed arm of her chair. Flinging his own sock into the work-stand, he gave the tiresome thing a push that sent it sprawling, and littered the floor with its contents. At her cry of dismay he laughed boyishly and pulled her against him, kissing her lips and calling her a darling idiot of a Kitten; making love to her, competently, irresistibly, till her heart and brain were in a fine confusion.

Impossible to clutch her injured wifehood and stiffen her body, that had only one desire—to yield utterly; to go on feeling the pressure of his arms. If he really loved her like this, why must he go making love to that hard smart woman, her very antithesis? She was genuinely puzzled. Even four years of marriage with Claude had not quite rubbed the bloom off her innate simplicity; or she would have known by now that, for the average man, loving and lovemaking are not of necessity one and the same thing.

For Claude, in his present mood, they happened to coincide. For Kitty, nothing mattered greatly just then, except her immediate sensations and the bliss of yielding to them—to him. . . .

A scream from the children’s room toppled her out of the clouds.

‘Oh, there’s Val, having a nightmare,’ she cried in distress. ‘Let me go a minute, darling.’

But when she tried to disentangle herself, he would not have it. ‘Leave the little baggage alone,’ he said irritably. ‘You spoil them all. She’ll tumble off to sleep again.’

‘She won’t. It terrifies her so.’

‘Mummy—Mummy!’ cried Val, as if aware of their altercation.

‘Mummy’s coming,’ Kitty called to her; and again tried to wriggle free of Claude.

To her amazement he pushed her away almost roughly.

‘Oh, go on, then. I’m of no account beside those eternal brats.’

She could say nothing. His lightning transition from lover to husband hurt her too keenly. And because Claude had been cross to her, she was cross with Val; giving her a little shake; bidding her go to sleep and not be a baby—though what else was she, poor mite?

Fearful of finding Claude embedded in his own chair with his ‘thriller,’ sulky and estranged, she found him standing with his back to the fire. He had actually tidied up the work-stand; and he looked at her quizzically with his Puckish smile.

‘You’ve been very quick about it.’

‘Oh, she was soon all right. And I wanted to get back.’

‘Come on back, then.’ He held out his arms, and she nestled against him with a little crooning sound.

‘Now you’re for it,’ he said and pulled her down with him into the big chair. ‘I’m due for a bit of spoiling to-night. You never give me a look in.’

‘Claude—how can you?’ she reproached him, laughing and struggling. He was at his old trick of twisting things the wrong way. But nothing mattered while his hands stroked her bare arms and he blew kisses down her neck.

Suddenly she thought of the Samāna. In this mood he might be readier to see her point. ‘If you like a look in sometimes, why not let me be with you on the Samāna.’

She felt him stiffen all through. ‘Damn the Samāna. Why can’t you leave it alone?’ he said so sharply that she shrank into herself, hurt and alarmed. Had she spoilt everything again? Married life was full of these innocent-looking pitfalls. A pause too long, an inadvertent remark—and lightnings flashed. She could not know that she had too abruptly reminded him of what he was trying to ignore. She could only feel the sudden change of atmosphere. So she fell silent, turning her face from him. And he, as usual, evaded the issue.

‘Don’t be sulky, you darling fluffy owl,’ he said in her ear.

‘I’m not sulky,’ she murmured. ‘And I wouldn’t be an owl, if you were more often—like to-night.

She was venturing again; and it might be disastrous. It was nothing of the kind.

‘I will be—if you give me a chance,’ he said, rubbing his cheek against her hair. And suddenly recalling the very different rôle he had almost agreed to fill, he said with genuine feeling, ‘I’m a casual beggar. And I suppose you find me a pretty unsatisfactory husband?’

It was the kind of remark that called for flat denial; but Kitty was in no mood for ministering to male vanity.

‘Perhaps you are—sometimes. I can’t tell,’ she said in honest perplexity. ‘I’ve never tried any other!’

‘Would you like to, just for a change?’

‘No.’ She pressed closer to him. ‘ I’m not that kind. I’m the sort of fool that can only go on loving you—hopelessly on and on. If I ever really don’t feel sure you love me back—I shall simply die.’

‘And leave the kids untended? You couldn’t,’ he turned it off lightly, because that simple statement gave him a stab of pain.

‘I could,’ she insisted. ‘Polly would mother them far better. Where’s the use of them—if I lose you?’

‘Bible truth, sweetheart?’ he asked in a low tone, as if suddenly in awe of her. For all his self-complacence, he had long ago accepted the fact that it was the children first and all the time.

‘Bible truth,’ she said simply, without emphasis or fervour.

‘Kitty!’ he cried in a strange voice: and disarming her faint resistance, he began kissing her in quite a different fashion, whispering the old love-words in her ear.

‘We’ll see about the Samāna,’ he amazingly told her, between the kisses. ‘You’re my Kitten. I can’t send you away.’

And she lay in his arms half startled, wholly enraptured, wondering what on earth she had done to evoke all that. . . .

‘Come along, darling,’ he said at last; and carried her bodily into their room; all hers again—for the time being.

And as they clung together in the darkness, passion resolved all discords. Tired but content, she fell asleep in his arms.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

For the next two days a rain-washed calm prevailed. In Kitty’s heart the sun shone as it had not done for nearly two years, while Claude cursed himself for the fool he had been at Hangu. But acts could not be undone; and Esmée was no pliable Kitten, for all her feline instincts. She intended to have him. And he—when he saw her, when he touched her again . . . how would it be? Luckily there was no time for her just now; and so far she had made no sign. If she guessed at his reluctance, she might seem to hold back. She knew all the moves of the game. But suppose she tackled him straight, was he prepared to desert the trusting Kitten, who had said that if he did not love her, she would ‘simply die’? Not that he believed it for a moment. Women could always get over things. They gave you hell—and themselves also; but they washed away their grief with the tears they shed so easily. All the same, Kitty felt that way; and it was the measure of her love for an unsatisfactory husband. For the first time he saw himself in that unbecoming light; saw himself, with more bitterness than humour, as the traditional donkey between two bundles of hay; Kitty insisting on one thing, Esmée on another; he afraid, at heart, of that formidable power—the endless assertion of the female will.

His own inner clash made him feel more than usually impatient of musketry routine; irritable with his men, annoyed that they were not doing him credit. To-day his Havildar’s platoon, in particular, was shooting unsteadily; and when Mansell told him so, he turned sulky. The men were tired of shooting, he said. They wanted their evening meal; and the light was bad.

Mansell admitted as much. He too was tired of shooting; but the Colonel, ‘a keen little beggar,’ was keeping them later than usual.

A hint of covert insolence in the Havildar’s manner touched up his temper. It did not do to overlook that sort of thing, in these days; so he called the man aside and, in a few straight words, bade him mind his manners.

The Havildar flung him a half insolent retort.

Mansell, controlling his temper, merely said, ‘If that’s your style, Havildar, I report you for insubordinate behaviour.’

The Havildar, muttering further insolence, swaggered away.

Directly the shooting was over Mansell went straight to Colonel Myles and reported the man.

‘You’ve had trouble with him before?’ asked the Colonel.

‘Yes, sir. He’s a sulky devil, with a swelled head.’

‘Perhaps I can reduce the size of his head!’ suggested kindly Colonel Myles, who could not, for his life, be stern with any man.

The sun was slipping down behind the desert and a nip of frost sharpened the air, as the 9th Sikhs, in sections, tramped along the dusty road to cantonments.

Mansell, riding at the head of his own company, was looking forward to a peaceful evening, when with sudden irrelevance, it struck him that the Colonel had overlooked the usual order to examine arms and pouches and collect the spare ammunition before leaving the ground. Perhaps he thought it was too late, the men being hungry. Perhaps he simply forgot. For a few seconds Mansell considered the advisability of riding on and offering a tactful reminder. But they were more than half way home—what matter?

At an angle where the long line of men swerved towards cantonments, a shadowy rider cantered into the main road from a cross-country track; and Mansell recognised Lance Desmond’s unmistakable seat on a horse.

‘Hullo, Lance!’ he called, as Desmond rode up to him. ‘Where’ve you sprung from?’

‘Been out at Khattak all day,’ Desmond answered riding alongside. ‘You had a cheery little Bisley?’

‘Oh, damned cheery. My men were not shooting in Cup style.’

As he spoke, an order came along giving the men leave to march at ease; and the rhythm of tramping feet changed to a medley of footsteps, talk and laughter. Mansell was telling Lance about the Havildar, when a shot rang out behind him and a stinging pain between his shoulder blades told him he had been hit. Sharper than the pain was the dagger thrust of fear. The Havildar——?

As he reeled in the saddle, he heard himself swear—a long way off; felt hands grasping him; heard, still farther off, a shouting and shuffling of many feet. And the hideous thought flashed—‘It’s over. . . . It can’t be over. I’m not thirty——’

A sudden clear vision of Kitty’s face; a lightning flash of his early feeling for her through the mist that clouded his brain. . . .

Then thought and feeling and life itself blotted out, as though they had never been.

That which was no longer Claude Mansell lay crumpled up on the dusty roadside with Desmond’s arm under its shoulder. And beside them stood Colonel Myles, swearing at himself, in a broken voice, for having overlooked an order never overlooked before. The small matter, which was not Claude’s business, had settled the question he had barely known how to decide.

And around them, in the darkness, the uproar and scuffle went on.

‘Hyder Ali! Shaitan!’ The Havildar’s name flew from mouth to mouth. He was known among his fellows for a dangerous character.

‘Seize him! Disarm him!’ The shouts went on; and the Havildar, attempting a bolt across country, was overpowered by four of his own men, struggling violently to the last.

Those same four sepoys asked leave to bear the impromptu stretcher on which Claude Mansell must journey back to Kohat; and when all was ready, Colonel Myles stood a moment looking down at the dim face of his not very promising Senior Subaltern.

‘I shall never forgive myself for this,’ he said so bitterly that an excitable Major, who had been blustering about, ‘Hanging the fellow where the crime was committed,’ ceased from futile anger and tried to soothe him with the reminder that it might have happened to anybody.

‘But it happened to me,’ the Colonel stated in a toneless voice. ‘And his poor little wife——’

Those few words roused Lance, who had been helping with the stretcher, to more urgent considerations. The news would reach Kohat in no time. Kitty must not hear it by chance. He would gallop straight to the flat and tell her himself. Since he alone could shield Eve from the ordeal.

Galloping through darkness and flashing stars—his mind haunted by the man of whom he had said many hard things—he found himself recalling that tragic episode at Sonamarg and poor Mansell’s shrinking from contact with death. Now, at nine and twenty, death had come on him like a thief in the night. They had not spoken more than twice of Grant’s tragedy; and Claude, in giving further details, had not given away the name of the woman, which was decent of him. Lance welcomed any good that he could think of him just then: while Kitty, whom he had betrayed, would doubtless worship a glorified image of him for the rest of her days.

And there right ahead lay cantonments—a huge constellation of ‘guard lights’ and electric globes set at intervals along the barbed wire fencing.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lance went straight upstairs to the Mansells’ flat, and entered unannounced.

Kitty sprang up with a cry of, ‘Darling—how late you are!’

Confronted by Lance, she laughed shyly and held out her hand. But something tense in his whole bearing chilled her like an icy draught of air.

‘Lance!’ she exclaimed, ‘why have you come? Nothing the matter with Eve?’

‘No—no,’ he said quickly.

‘Then—why?’

‘Because something terrible has happened.’

‘Claude?’

‘Yes—Claude.’

‘An accident? Is he hurt?’

‘No—not an accident.’ Instinctively he delayed the worst. ‘It was his Havildar. While they were marching at ease the fellow—shot at him——’

His throat constricted, and he knew he need say no more.

For a second Kitty was smitten motionless. Then her hands went up to her head; and as she swayed, he put an arm round her, easing her into the nearest chair, keeping a hand on her shoulder. A strong shiver ran through her, and she looked up at him—a dazed, blind look, as if a sponge had been passed over her face, washing all the life out of it.

‘Isn’t there—any hope?’

He shook his head. ‘My dear—it was all over in a few minutes. He can hardly have felt more than the shock.’

She stared at him, trying to take it in, her soft chin quivering with a pitiful attempt at control. It was useless. Turning away she hid her face in the cushion, and broke into unrestrained weeping.

And Lance could only stand there, warming his chilled hands, divided between acute sympathy and the normal man’s discomfiture in the presence of abandoned grief.

The important point was to consider what could be done, in the way of practical help, for a singularly helpless being so cruelly bereft. She would, he felt sure, be mortally afraid of remaining alone in the flat with her dead husband. He would see Mrs Pollard, a cavalry Major’s wife, in the next flat. She was fond of Kitty. Perhaps she would put up with a bed in the dressing room, if Kitty slept in with the children. And after the funeral?

He himself had just enough room to squeeze them all in; but he frankly did not want Eve to be pained and harassed, just now, with a heart-broken widow and three spoilt children. Perhaps Mrs Sterne might take them under her wing. To suffer loss or sorrow in India is to discover that the much maligned Anglo-Indian is still, as ever, ‘a very present help in trouble.’ Every woman in the station would do what she could. The regiment would subscribe as handsomely as Indian army pay would allow; for the poor little soul would have a mere pittance to live upon

At the slight sound of a door pushed open he turned quickly to guard her from intrusion. And there, in the bedroom doorway, stood her small, pale-faced Bacha. In his arms the hapless kitten hung head downward, its hind legs jerking close to his eyes.

Swiftly and quietly Lance rescued the kitten, pushed the child gently back into the other room and closed the door. There was a whimper from within. Of course Kitty heard it, and sat up at once.

‘What was that?’ she asked on a sharp note of fear.

‘Only the Bacha. I put him back in there.’

Her distraught face softened. ‘ Oh, poor darling! But it would frighten him to see me—like this.’

The horror seized her afresh.

‘Are they—when——?’ she asked incoherently.

He told her; and he promised not to leave her. He would send a note flying to Eve. He would see Mrs Pollard about some arrangement for the night, which Kitty jumped at eagerly. In her shattered state she could not conceal her dread of being left alone with her husband—she who had never feared him living, in spite of all that she had suffered at his hands.

And Lance—longing to be back with Eve—could deny her nothing. So together they awaited the coming of Claude.

Chapter 16

What’s lost is lost, for ill or good; And what’s to gain is never understood; And time is strong, and only time has strength. — Gerald Gould

Lance had not been mistaken in fearing for the effect on Eve of a shock that only touched her personally in so far as it had snatched from Kitty the husband whom she ardently desired, and left her saddled instead with his debts and his children.

Mentally Eve suffered more than Kitty was capable of suffering. Yet the hapless young widow, in her simpler fashion, was bewildered with grief; at once tortured and comforted by the memory of those last few evenings that had blotted out years of misery and strain. How and why it happened, she did not seek to know. It was enough that her heart believed Claude had never been at Hangu. All unaware, out of those few days and her own self-reproach, she was creating for him a halo that could never now be tarnished by any act of his. That there were many debts, and little money available, she only grasped by degrees. For Mrs Sterne had taken them all into her bungalow; and Claude’s brother officers had presented her with a lump sum that made her feel almost rich. Colonel Myles also had privately pressed upon her a ‘donation’ from himself that took her breath away. She did not know—as Eve knew—of those unexamined rifles. She accepted his gift and the kind things he said as a personal tribute to Claude, that added lustre to his halo.

Eve, seeing the process at work, smiled to herself very tenderly and encouraged Kitty’s reluctance to leave India at present. Here were all her happiest memories; and the winter at Home would be one long dreariness. In her misery, she clung to Eve, pouring out all her desolation, her anxieties, her pride in a glorified Claude of her own creating. And Eve would go home exhausted with the emotional stress of another’s grief, with the added strain of trying not to let Lance notice it. For Lance, just now, was a little inclined to put her under a glass case; and she had set her face against allowing the baby to be treated as a kind of illness. For, in between the trying moments, she felt like a new creature, sufficient unto herself, because she was now so much more than herself; awed by the mystery of creation, the power of things primeval. Yet she was neither solemn nor sentimental over it, only interested and excited in a very young way. She was at work now on her Largo and Scherzo. In the pauses, she read poetry and played Beethoven, saturated her mind with lovely things. Touched to the heart by Lance, and his new concern for her, there were yet moods when the artist in her resented his implicit homage to the mother. Her beloved sonata, which he took for granted, was a more unusual achievement. But the other, after all, was his achievement. For she quaintly saw the coming child as a bit of ‘Desmond property,’ given into her very unsafe keeping. She was happiest—on the whole—when the intruder-to-be was forgotten, when the familiar tide of excitement rose between them; and beyond their passionate moment nothing existed at all.

She wanted him to know that. And he did know it. Yet for him she was mysteriously changed. Though her slim young body showed no sign, as yet, of its hidden promise, her face had a fragile look that contracted his heart, and made him almost wish they had delayed the advent of this far from shadowy third. She would willingly have waited; and she did not know that his readiness to take chances had sprung, in part, from his vague, instinctive fear of the creative element in her music; a lurking jealousy of the only third that might conceivably come between them. And here she was—doubly involved; a sonata at work in her brain, their child making demands on her body. If anything should go wrong?

At least she could not be in better hands. He had implicit faith in Grace Yolande; and at moments he privately wondered about her and Lynch. For the unresting D.I.G. had turned up again sooner than they had expected; and seemed very much concerned over his old Bhagwān, who was steadily, if slowly, coming back to health. But in spite of his concern, he did not fail to notice the change in Eve. Soon after his arrival, he spoke of it to Lance, as they sat smoking in the study.

‘Nothing wrong with Eve, I hope?’ he asked after a brief silence. ‘She looked a different creature in camp.’

‘No—nothing wrong,’ Lance briefly assured him; and felt suddenly that he would like to tell Lynch, whose attitude of late had been subtly, unmistakably different.

‘She doesn’t look to me a bit well,’ Lynch volunteered.

And Lance said in a guarded voice, ‘It’s natural enough—there’s a child coming to us.’

‘Good God!’ Lynch exclaimed, in a low startled tone; and added more normally, ‘Quick work. She seems to me not much more than a child—for all her brains and character.’

Lance smiled to himself. Old Lynch coming round full circle! Aloud he said, in his disarming fashion: ‘It is a bit soon. I suppose you think it’s madness?’

Lynch regarded him with an odd smile. ‘You’re the best judge of that. You’ve known my sentiments all along.’ He paused to strike a light. ‘When?’

‘August.’

‘Lucky shot for you. You’re a damned lucky devil all round. I suppose you’ll be sending her early to Kashmir?’

‘Grace thinks May will be soon enough. She’s looking after Eve, so far as it’s necessary.’

‘That so? She’s in good hands.’

He took a long pull at his cigar, and reverted abruptly to shop, after that brief excursion into personal affairs. For his chief preoccupation, as always, was with India—her stormy present, her precarious future; an India, by no means united, eager to indulge in a political experiment of the first magnitude, that might make her almost as vulnerable to a watchful enemy as a crab in process of changing its shell. But his official concern was with the stormy present; with the monotonous record, from all parts, of communal strife, of riots, sabotage and trains derailed, of strike on strike, encouraged by local communists—acting under orders from Moscow—and extremist editors, waving the red flag full in the face of unheeding authority. If Lynch sometimes laughed at them, it was only because he was determined to keep sane over a struggle so full of insane elements. One thing was certain. While the fiction of unity flourished, while Government reasoned politely with that ‘vegetarian tiger,’ non-violent revolution, the whole situation was rapidly sliding down hill; and in Afghanistan events seemed to be shaping towards dangerous and dramatic issues.

To this friend alone Lynch could impart, in confidence, much knowledge gleaned from unauthorised sources of a secret revolutionary party doing underground work in the Punjab, aiming at open revolt before the New Year.

‘Government will unearth it all—-at leisure,’ he added, with a vicious jab at the wad of tobacco he was pressing into his pipe, ‘and the mountain will bring forth a scutter of mice. Meantime, there’ll be a fresh epidemic of murders and bomb-throwing; and the Border will come in for special attention. Probably the party got at poor Mansell’s Havildar. Of course Lahore’s the centre of the scorpion’s nest, that we’re watching as a terrier watches a rat-hole. I’ve lent ’em Magill for the present, and given him a few hints about that precious Republican Army, though he’s not a model of discretion. I’ll be running down myself before Christmas. They keep a fellow on the go. . . .’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And while they sat together thus, the two women they had spoken of were also enjoying a talk and cigarettes over the fire in Grace Yolande’s bungalow. And their talk was of John Lynch.

Eve, as often happened, had touched a spring that opened some inner door; and Grace found herself speaking of events that had been shut away in her heart for more than seven years. Those events she had since put aside as she had put aside the man, in her decisive fashion, that gave a surface impression of hardness; and she had never spoken of either till this December afternoon.

Sitting there on her wide fender-stool, in a simple flowered house dress, half shielding her face with an old palm-leaf fan, she told Eve of a lone trek she had enjoyed one summer up the Kishengunga Valley, the finest in Kashmir; of another lone trekker, who had invaded her camping ground; of a note sent one evening by the stranger, who introduced himself as John Lynch, Superintendent of Police, and asked if he might intrude on her next morning to question some of her servants. He was after an escaped thief, who was masquerading as a Khansama under the name of Nur Bux, in the service of an Englishwoman, said to be marching in the Kishengunga region. With all due apologies, he had reason to suspect that her own respectable red-bearded Nur Bux, might be his man.

‘And so it turned out,’ Grace added, in the low impersonal voice she had assumed for the telling of her all-too-personal tale. ‘There had I been wandering round alone, with a convicted thief—if he was a decent cook—in charge of all my belongings. Goodness knows what he would have made off with when the trek was over. Instead, he was whisked off, leaving me in the air. By then I was on quite friendly terms with John—Mr Lynch,’ she hastily corrected herself.

‘Why not John?’ Eve cautiously suggested. She felt as if some shy wild thing had come close to her, as if a careless move might frighten it away.

‘He isn’t “John” any more. It’s a strong, complete sort of name. It fits him. Well, as we were neighbours, he insisted that his man should cater for both of us. And I gratefully agreed, expecting bachelor’s fare.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘I’ve never been done so well in all my days.’

‘He would have an A.1 cook!’ Eve murmured.

‘He had. He would always be well served.’ She paused. ‘We stayed in that heavenly place for three weeks. We somehow forgot to move on! And we met nearly every day. He was fishing up the river and reading a good bit. He does read. I was sketching a little, walking far and reading hard. I had just been ordered to take over Kohat Hospital; and I was immensely keen. But he knew very little about me beyond my name, for the first ten days. I mean——’ she hesitated—‘I didn’t say I was a missionary. I’ve always felt ashamed of that reservation. But I was quite on my own up there, taking a breather from Miss Burton—a narrow mish of the old school. She didn’t love me. The younger ones did, for opening windows and letting in a breeze. They said I’d come out to “mish” the Missionaries—and some of them need it! But that’s only to explain how we became so—mutually attracted before he realised the nature of my work. And I soon saw that he was quite against the whole Mission idea. It’s strange——’ she paused again, fanning her hot cheeks.

‘He doesn’t seem to have any clear faith, yet he resents our meddling with Indian religion—even the degraded form of it that we mainly encounter. Such a human bit of inconsistency, that I can forgive it—though it stood between us.’

‘But Grace—were you ever . . .? Did he . . .?’

‘Yes—he did.’ She steadied her shaking lips. ‘Before he had known me two weeks he asked me to marry him, though he hadn’t enough to marry on, and he didn’t believe in marriage. It was the quaintest, frankest proposal a woman ever had. All the same, having made up his mind—or his heart—nothing so trivial as my work or my faith could be allowed to stand in his way. But they both meant a tremendous lot to me. I wasn’t quite prepared for a complete burnt-offering of my own personality; and I was half afraid that his personality would swamp mine—that through him I might lose hold of my faith altogether. More than that, I was afraid he might regret it—afterwards. I knew he didn’t really want marriage; but at that time he did tremendously want me.’

She said it very low, and her cheeks flamed.

‘Didn’t you?’ Eve whispered.

‘Oh yes,’ she flung out with unexpected vehemence. ‘But something in me seemed to fight against it—against him; to know that we could never be truly in accord. Being in love is a bewildering state. And he’s a terribly forceful person when he’s roused. He was dismayed at first; then angry because I refused—and stuck to it. He went off up into the hills. But he didn’t forget to find a cook for me, through his own man—a good one! That was like him.’

Her voice broke for the first time; but Eve dared not put out a hand and touch her.

‘I thought—if it had really gone deep with him,’ she went on steadily, ‘that he might write, or try to see me again. He did neither. He’s hard and proud. He wouldn’t risk another refusal. Perhaps he wouldn’t risk—acceptance. Anyhow, I never saw him again, till you brought him here that day.

‘Are you sorry I brought him?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you think—something might come of it now?’

‘No.’

That was more like the usual Grace, who indeed, barely recognised the love-smitten ghost of herself, sitting on the fender-stool, patients forgotten, unlocking her heart to the very young wife of John’s best friend. But even her demoralised self would never admit a lurking suspicion that, if John Lynch could have compassed the obvious impossibility of a brief passionate episode with her in the wilds, it might conceivably have cooled his desire to marry against his better judgment. On the other hand, it might have routed judgment; or she might be altogether misreading the man. In any ease, he was clearly absorbed in work that made no emotional demands on him; and she had surrendered to hers, that made constant emotional demands on her—demands that are bread and meat to every real woman. Incidentally, she was neglecting them. And it was all Eve’s doing.

On her second brief negative, she rose and pointed dramatically at the clock.

‘Time I scurried back. Only you could lure me into Bye-Path Meadow. And you won’t tell your Lance any of this,’ she commanded in sudden alarm. ‘I can trust you, Eve.’

‘Yes—if you insist. But we’ve already wondered if there was ever anything between you two. Mayn’t I tell him there once was—and no more?’

Grace looked smilingly into the girl’s honest eyes.

‘You’d never manage to keep that much from him. And what harm, after all? But no more.’

Eve promised and drove home at a great pace, her mind full of the strange sad idyll that gave a new depth and background to that work-engrossed pair. It was as if she had lived through those few weeks, so vividly could she enter into the lives and emotions of others, if they captured her imagination. And she hugged in prospect, her triumph over Lance, who had treated with good-humoured masculine contempt her shrewder feminine perception of the truth.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

An empty drawing-room greeted her; and she hurried through to the study, where she found the two men standing on the hearth-rug, and was instantly conscious of a strained atmosphere. Neither gave her a word of welcome. Lynch held in one hand a crumpled telegram; and his eyes were steel hard, as she had only seen them once before, in camp.

‘Oh, what is it?’ she breathed, as Lance came forward quickly and took her by the arm.

‘Bad news from Lahore,’ he said, leading her back into the drawing-room.

‘Lahore—Lahore?’ She had travelled, in spirit, so many leagues away. But as he gently pushed her down on to the sofa, a hideous fear sprang at her.

‘Pat?’ she cried; and he nodded.

‘Shot through the head this afternoon in broad daylight outside the Police Office. The three men seem to have got clean off. It’s damnable.’

While he spoke, Eve sat erect, trying to take it in, feeling giddy and rather sick. Her first coherent thought, being woman, was of Nora Gwynne, the ‘peach of a girl’ in Ireland. Sudden tears started; and she covered her face. Lance sitting beside her, pulled off her hat and pressed her head against his.

‘My lovely one, it’s too bad your having another shock so soon after poor Mansell’s affair. I’d have kept it from you, but all the beastly details will be in the papers to-morrow.’

Soothed by his touch, she lay limply against him, thinking of Pat and his dear foolish ways; but crying chiefly on account of the bereft girl, whom she had never seen or known. . . .

Next morning, the papers were voluble over the latest outrage. There were headlines and details and a blurred picture of Pat grinning broadly; Pat, who had never harmed anyone but himself, shot down at five yards range, pinned where he fell, under his motor cycle, while his cowardly assailants fired four more shots into his body. It was all over before his head constable ran out; and one of the escaping murderers turned and shot him in the lung.

All Lahore was in a ferment of police activity and wrath over a murder of exceptional cruelty and cynicism; but so far, no sign of the murderers. Lynch hurried off by the night mail; and Eve forgot all about her private triumph for several days. As Lynch was taking over Pat’s papers, she had told him of Nora; and when he sent her the address, she wrote a long letter to the bereaved girl. That tragedy also she lived through; and it took heavier toll of her than she realised.

Then there were clothes to see about for the Peshawar visit, and she feeling little inclined for another week of festivity. But Grace was stern; and Lance would not allow her to fret. It would cheer her up to be in Government House again, to see Vanessa and tell her their news. Finally, thinking of Lynch, she coaxed Grace to take a few days’ holiday with a friend in the new Lady Reading Hospital; and just before Christmas, he returned to his own Headquarters. To Eve’s knowledge they met more than once; and Grace, in so many words, thanked Eve for persuading her to play the truant; which was satisfactory—up to a point. Beyond that point, she could only wonder and wonder——

But for every thoughtful man and woman, in those December days, public events loomed larger than any affair of their own. In Peshawar, the Afghan turmoil dwarfed all other concerns; and the atmosphere of Government House was tense with apprehension. For, by now, Kabul was in a state of siege, the Legations cut off from the world; and the question arose how they could be rescued from potential danger without grave risk of adding a third Kabul tragedy to the history of England’s chequered relations with that fiercely independent country.

City and cantonments were alive with speculation and rumour; but in Government House Sir Vincent discouraged both; and only those who worked with him knew how the atmosphere of his quiet book-filled study, his own serenity and dry humour affected all the khans who came in from the district, eager to snatch at any excuse for a fight—and departed in a saner frame of mind.

Not long before Christmas, Peshawar heard, with a legitimate thrill, of the bold decision to rescue by air six hundred souls—men, women and children of all nations; and Dick Molony was one of those engaged in the opening move, an exciting affair, carried out by light service machines, stripped of every war weapon; not so much as a pistol permitted for the pilots, who verily carried their lives in their hands.

‘England’s little way of doing business,’ was Lynch’s dry comment on that order. ‘It’s lucky most of her sons have steady nerves.’

Her sons, in this case, would be flying to and fro for weeks at a height of ten thousand feet over wild mountain country, where treacherous air pockets might cause unpleasant diversions; and the winter already promised to be one of the severest on record.

Government House, meantime, found leisure to welcome a coming event of purely personal interest, that concerned none more nearly than Vanessa Thorne. And here was Ian’s remarkable child with another form of creation to her credit. In the half written sonata there was more than promise; and Vanessa had things to say about it that elated Eve as only her praise could do. If her criticisms were drastic, they were given as to an equal; the tribute that one artist pays to another.

About the coming child she spoke in a different vein.

‘You yourself are still such a child in my eyes,’ she said, when they talked of it one evening over her bedroom fire. ‘Though that sonata tells me you have grown up at last! Children are serious items out here; and even one will tie you down more than you realise. But when you want to be running round with your Lance, you can fling the troublesome creature at me. And the sooner you come up to Gulmarg the better. When?’

‘Last possible moment, I’m afraid.’

‘As to that, opinions might differ. Not later than the middle of May.’

‘End of May,’ Eve decided, ‘if anything takes him up to the Samāna, which I’m praying for—whenever I do pray. Anyhow, he and Grace can be trusted to rush me off before June.’

And to that extent, matters were settled.

Chapter 17

A star trembled . . .
A dawn broke.
— Humbert Wolfe

In April, Desmond’s work did take him up to the Samāna in place of Farquhar, who was seriously ill. But before that came about, much else had happened in India and her own little world. The rescue of those six hundred souls from Kabul had been brilliantly carried through. For two months on end, in bitter weather, transport machines had flown to and fro between Kabul and Peshawar as punctually as any express train. Everyone concerned had been belauded by the Viceroy; while the Afghan Amir fought a losing battle with his own turbulent people. In Lahore, the secret ‘Republican Army’ had shifted its ground; and Pat Magill’s murderers were still at large. But Lynch—whom they had hardly seen since Christmas—vowed he would have them yet.

In their own lesser world of Kohat, Eve had been a good deal concerned with Kitty Mansell, whose plans for the spring had been frustrated by the discovery that Claude—in addition to all his debts—had left her the embarrassing legacy of a coming child. Distraught and incredulous, she had fled to Grace Yolande, wildly demanding that by some means this superfluous baby should be brought to nought. But though Grace disapproved of multiplying unwanted children, though her heart ached for the young unwilling mother, there was no persuading her to thwart Nature, once the process had begun. If Kitty wanted that form of help, she must go to a man. And Kitty, in that connection, would not go near a man. To Dora Sterne she denounced Grace as ‘hard and cruel’: and her lamentations were like arrows planted in the childless woman’s heart. It was Eve, seeing the irony of it, who enlightened Kitty and upheld Grace so vehemently that the bereaved one felt as if her whole world had turned against her. Even Claude’s halo was tarnished for the time being.

Then one night she dreamed of him. He had given her some present that did not please her; and she was making a childish fuss over it. First he laughed at her; then he reproached her bitterly, and left her in anger.

She woke crying ‘Claude—Claude!’ and fell into a passion of weeping. For her awakened brain saw the reason of his anger, the nature of his gift, the last he would ever give to his ungrateful wife; the price exacted for their brief fervour of reunion. Those few days and nights were her crown of glory. Never again would she curse the child that came of them.

Since England was impossible, she must manage the journey to Murree, not to mention costly arrangements for the expected one. And Grace could help her now. A retired Missionary friend had started a small Nursing Home up at Murree. Mrs Sterne hoped for two months there; and they could all travel up with Eve, when the time came for her to join the Thornes at Gulmarg.

But the time was not yet; and with each passing week the heat intensified, stealing vigour from brain and body. The noonday hours became a burden; doors and windows fast closed; leisure for all one would do, but no energy to do it. Only the very young hours of the morning were still comparatively cool. Earlier and earlier the bugles rang out for parade. Earlier and earlier Lance went to office; and Eve, driving with him, enjoyed the brief sense of renewal, budding leaves against the fierce blue sky, the brisk awakening of their military world. Then home, to work at the final vigorous movement of her sonata. Vanessa wrote once or twice warning her not to overdo the music, on account of the child, who was needing all her creative energy. But a power not herself had hold of her; a power that would be served at any cost—to her or her child. And the exhilaration of achievement precluded all sense of strain.

There was an atmosphere of peace about these first hot-weather months, if they were not so uncomfortable; and when Lance suggested an earlier migration, she would not hear of it. She dreaded breaking the spell of their happy time together in this first home of their own. Better might be in store for them; but this early engrossing ‘egoïsme à deux’ never again.

Kohat was still far from empty. Tireless English men and women played their accustomed games in the sweat of their brows. There was even a race week early in April. And there was passing respite in the swift sudden storms of the lesser monsoon—tumbling clouds crashing together in thunder, emptying themselves in sheets of rain or showers of jagged hail, that brought relief just when Eve must exert herself to pack for the short journey to the Samāna Ridge.

No longer allowed to ride, she must be carried up the rough winding road in an amateur version of the old-time dandy—a long chair slung on to poles; three hours of jolting and swaying under a pitiless sun, with two short breaks for refreshment. But as Lance had taken immense pains over the unwelcome substitute for Shahzada, Eve made light of physical miseries, and feasted her eyes on that imposing stretch of Border country, bleak and strong and savage; so that her own first impression of it might be implanted somewhere in the embryo being of her son.

On the ridge itself, even in this blossoming season, there was hardly any green thing; and the view over the Oraksai country to the fierce Afridi highlands was as grand, and desolate as anything of its kind, even in the vaster regions of Ladāk. Friendly young officers made them welcome: and the wildness, the cooler air, lifted her spirit and banished weariness.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The exciting undersense of being in a new place woke her nearly an hour before dawn; and, as she lay there in the semi-darkness, a sudden desire seized her to slip out alone and watch the sun rise over this strange desert country.

In less than half an hour she was dressed and in the open air, Bliss at her heels, rejoicing in the emptiness of a world only half awake. The square walls of Fort Lockhart, loopholed and bastioned, and the harsh lines of rugged hills beyond, stamped a clean-cut pattern on the brightening sky. Clouds of copper and dull gold outsoared and overflowed one another, dissolving into flakes of fire as the sun blazed through them, a spouting up of incredible gold, announcing, to all whom it might concern, that a new day had begun.

So dramatically swift were these Indian dawns, sudden as the note of trumpet: God said, ‘Let there be light—and there was light’: sheer violent incandescence that set the air quivering; savagely beautiful because it held the threat of fierceness to be. In a few hours time, if she stood in it thus, entranced, sunstroke would do its deadly worst. And that violent light cast knife-edged shadows, more black than blue. No gradations, no delicate nuances in this land of stark light and shade. Here, on the Border, one had an overpowering sense of the harshness, the cruelty, the splendour—

And below, towards Kohat, lay the desert—untameable, terrific in its indifference to changing seasons, passing years; as if it knew that man, dressed in his brief authority, his impatience and pride, was a thing of nought; that only the desert and the hills endured.

Tempted by a flat rock, she sat down alone in the emptiness and the splendour, consciously imbibing it all.

And as she sat there, at peace, a curious troubling weakness pervaded her. For a few seconds she lost all sense of her surroundings. Yet she was fully conscious, startlingly aware of a faint tremulous flutter that, for those few seconds, seemed to involve the whole of her being. It ceased and left her wondering, in half frightened excitement, why—what?

Then she knew. Grace had told her it would happen soon. After the slow secret process of months, the child within her was definitely alive at last.

When she felt steadier, no longer alarmed, she rose and walked quickly back to the bungalow. Not till that disturbing moment—for all her imaginative awareness—had she fully realised that she was a mother.

Book Three — Wind Driven

Chapter 1

You canna escape the words you’ve set ringing, or the deeds you’ve set blazing.
— Mary Webb

‘And you really will play polo this afternoon, darling? You mustn’t spend all your holiday tied to the apron-strings of this cumbersome Eve.’

‘I find this cumbersome Eve the best company on earth,’ Lance retorted, in all honesty. ‘But Raul was after me again about playing to-day. I said I’d ring him up——’

‘And you will ring him up?’

‘Well—if your pre-nuptial adorer, Peter, would like a free field?’

‘He’d love it.’

Lance had been nearly a week in Gulmarg. A break in the Rains had just given them three days of tempered brilliance, rain-washed mountains and wraiths of mists. Seven weeks apart, and the near approach of Eve’s ordeal, added a new enrichment to their joy in being together again for this brief time; and if Eve quailed at moments, in the unheroic small hours, she kept the fact hidden from Lance. Now that he was with her again, his nearness gave her the old comforting sense of safety. And there was another kind of comfort—not purely fanciful—in the fact that her father had once more come to her in the unmistakable dream fashion; had left a sense of spiritual contact so clear that it lingered with her for days; so haunting that she had felt moved to tell Vanessa, and had seen the slow tears gather in her eyes. To her no sense of him had ever come, except in dreams that were obviously dreams.

This peaceful time together, the coming child and Eve’s musical achievement, had drawn them into a more equal bond of love and understanding. For both knew art as no mere indulgence, but a necessity of life, a means of expressing its spiritual values in terms of beauty. Eve’s ambitious sonata had been roughly finished off during those weeks of quiet absorbed happiness on the Samāna; and now, between them, they had wrought it into a harmonious whole. It had actually gone Home to Vanessa’s music publishers: and since it vanished Eve had lost a bit of herself. For through it she had unconsciously expressed the spiritual values of her first year with Lance. Would she ever achieve its like again?

Though she was well in health and resolutely active, making light, even now, of hampering disabilities, they were not seeing much of social Gulmarg this season. Kaye and his Chris had gone off, babies and all, to their summer Residency at Leh. There were a few friends from Peshawar; and Mrs de Cray was in Nedou’s Hotel, her husband being once more in the Plains. She was very much engaged, as usual, with her chronic masculine retinue. It was Peter, with his ineffectual governess, who came more often to the Residency. He had not been since Lance arrived; but to-day Eve had offered to take him over for Miss Millin’s free afternoon.

Walking beside Lance, in her loose cape-coat, she seemed a living embodiment of health and happiness. No longer washed out by the indoor, hot-weather life, her skin had recovered its dusky peach bloom. No shadows now under her smiling eyes. To Lance she had never looked so radiantly alive since their time in Ladāk and Leh. She had started in her rickshaw, he on Grey Dawn; but now they were afoot and alone, Bijli trotting to heel, Bliss darting round after intriguing smells; the ambulance—as Eve called it—left miles behind to await their return.

And here, at last, was the dip in the road, where they had halted after their wedding, below them a gay little torrent dashing down the narrow gorge, above them a towering rock smothered in a welter of wild roses. She had set her heart on reaching it: and, as they halted, Lance turned to her, holding out his arms.

‘Well done!’ he said: and with a sigh of content she leaned to him—no unreal abstraction now, but the dearer part of herself.

When he released her, she smiled at him through a gleam of tears.

‘Let’s rest here a little. I want my son to remember this bit of road when he sees it one day—though he won’t know why! There, in the shade of our rock. Can I?’

‘Of course you can.’

With a trifle of help she reached it, flung off her hat and lay down on the tussocky grass, curled sideways, her head on her arm. Only then she knew how tired she was: knew that she had over-walked in her zeal to reach this particular spot.

Lance stripped off his coat, folded it neatly, and insinuated it under her head. Then he lit his pipe and sat down beside her, interlocking his fingers with hers, that clung to him as a child might cling, going into a dark room. And he wondered—was she feeling suddenly afraid, but too plucky to admit her fear? He lifted the clinging hand and pressed it to his lips.

‘It’ll be all right, darling,’ he said answering her thought.

‘Yes—when it’s over.’

Heartened by his touch, his words, she lay watching the slow drift of mackerel clouds high overhead, curl on curl, flake on flake, in diminishing sequence, to the far snow-line, her mind filled with beauty, her heart with content. For to-day, it was her world. Lying at peace on its breast, she seemed to feel its life stirring in the blades of grass under her hand, as it stirred in the child waiting to be born. And she—longing yet trembling to possess it: fearful lest her happiness had exceeded the right of mortals. Heaven seemed here and now——

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Half an hour after lunch, Lance went downstairs, leaving her sound asleep, safe from the clutches of Peter, who had arrived full early, and had been dumped on the sofa by a heartless Vanessa, with Meccano to keep him out of mischief. But his fingers being unskilled, he was woefully bored with ‘a lot of dead pieces’; no Eve to make them come alive. Lance, in a sympathetic mood, sat down by him for a few minutes, and brought a skeleton windmill to life, seasoning his kindness with injunctions as to taking care of Eve, hoping he had left the young monkey duly impressed.

When Eve at last appeared, she was pounced upon by a defrauded Peter; though ‘Mrs Vinessa’—as he called her—kept a restraining hand on him till tea was over. And when a tiresome dance committee dragged her away to Nedou’s Hotel, she laid parting injunctions on Eve.

‘Take care of yourself, my sweet. Don’t let a certain person victimise you. I’ll be back in an hour or two.’

And Peter, relieved at her departure, wondered who ‘a certain person’ might be. He knew vaguely that Eve was not well; that he must be a good boy, and take care of her. The fact that Captain Desmond had told him to, was more impressive than any feminine command. It stirred a dawning gleam of manly self-importance; though his idea of being a good boy included nothing so dismal as refraining from what he wanted to do, if he could persuade Eve to let him do it. If she decidedly said ‘No,’ he must submit. That was his mountain top of virtue.

For a time he was content to let her read Hans Andersen, while he drew rows and rows of marching soldiers——round black heads with sharp strokes this way and that, for legs and arms and rifles, like notes of music gone mad. Then he grew restless and dragged her into the wild part of the garden, where Lance had told her ‘properly’ how he loved her, after scolding her for snatching a bone from two fighting dogs. It was quite in order that even her proposal should be half a scolding. . . .

Now Peter was dragging her back on to the lawn, clamouring for a game of ball. Tired but resourceful, she promptly invented one called ‘See-if-you-can’; she sitting on the low grass bank, trying to catch his ball without getting up. Certain restrictions as to throwing were imposed; but naturally Peter did his best to defeat her object, till she was more tired than ever, and breathless with laughing.

Happily, at last, his attention was distracted by Shastri the sais with Grey Dawn, in snaffle and horse blanket. He had taken her for an airing, and brought her round as usual for apples and sugar. After that, Peter must ride her, barebacked on a horse-blanket ‘like a circus man’; and Eve, glad of a rest, did not try to dissuade him. Though Grey Dawn was sometimes tricky still under strange handling, there was no vice in her.

Peter, put up by Shastri, grabbed the snaffle in one small hand, a tuft of mane in the other, and dug in his heels with a workmanlike air.

‘Now I’m goin’ to ride it prop’ly,’ he announced, bidding the sais, who held the cheek strap, ‘Hut jāo.’⁴⁰

The man obeyed, obviously impressed.

‘Aré bāp!’ he murmured, ‘this is a pukka Sahib.’

And relieved of his charge, he asked permission to run round to the stables. He had a message for one of the other saises; if the little Sahib could manage for a few minutes . . .?

Of course the little Sahib could manage. Glorying in his independence, he drummed on the mare’s sides and tugged at her short mane; till Grey Dawn grew restive under that curious form of encouragement, and broke into an ambling trot that shook him all over the place.

At first he was delighted. Then he became alarmed.

‘Eve—oh Eve! Stop it!’ he cried. But as he was in no danger, she laughingly encouraged him to be a brave boy.

‘You’ll frighten Grey Dawn if you hang on like a monkey,’ she called to him. ‘Sit up and hold your reins like a man.’

But, as the path sloped towards the main entrance, Peter slipped perilously forward.

‘I can’t sit up. Do—do stop it,’ he pleaded again; and seeing that he was really frightened, she made what haste she could; catching at the bridle near the cheek strap, saying ‘Quiet now—quiet-!’ as Lance would do.

But Grey Dawn, more alarmed than Peter, jerked her head free so roughly that Eve lost her balance and fell heavily on to her hands and knees.

‘Eve—oh Eve!’ Peter cried in dismay, as she scrambled to her feet, breathless and shaken.

And at that inappropriate moment, Lance must needs come riding up the path.

Instantly he sprang out of the saddle, with a word to the Banshee, who stood meekly by; and, being man, his shock of fear blazed into wrath—with Eve for the folly of it, with Shastri for not being there, with Peter for being in existence at all.

‘Good God! What possessed you to catch at her?’ he cried, as she faced him, still shaken, yet outwardly controlled.

‘Don’t be angry about it, Lance,’ she pleaded; and devoid of any reasonable excuse she put out an appealing hand.

At once his arm was round her, supporting her.

‘I am angry. I’ve the right to be. Of all the crazy things——”

‘But she wouldn’t stop, and Peter was frightened——’

‘Peter be damned!’ he flung out so furiously, that Peter, who had rolled harmlessly off on to the bank, burst into tears.

His loud and unashamed weeping stirred no pity in Lance, dominated as he was by one thought, one fear.

‘Stop that blubbering,’ he commanded sternly. ‘You aren’t hurt, you little skunk. And I told you to take care of her.’

‘But I couldn’t—I didn’t——’ Fresh sobs convulsed him; for he was genuinely frightened and unhappy.

‘No, you damn well didn’t. Get along, and do your howling somewhere else. Eve’s had enough of you.’

‘But I want Eve.’ He howled louder than ever, trotting behind Lance, who was half-supporting, half-carrying her up the path and round to the glazed verandah.

‘Don’t be so hard on him, Lance,’ she pleaded. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

But Lance, shaken out of his normal control, was only half-appeased. ‘He’s a wretched little spoilt brat. And you’re making him worse.’ And as Shastri came running up, he shouted, ‘Son of a dog! Why did you leave the pony? Catch hold of both.’ Not heeding the man’s voluble excuses, he waved aside the hopeful Peter. ‘You run along with him to the stables, and stay there till you’re called for. Eve’s ill.’

Peter, manfully gulping down his sobs, could not choose but obey. Eve must be ill, or she surely would not let him be ordered off like that; and Captain Desmond was never unkind.

Captain Desmond was suffering torments sharper than any he had inflicted as he lowered his feckless Eve into a long chair, and passed a hand over her forehead pushing back her tumbled hair.

‘Better now, beloved?’ he asked, his flash of temper extinct.

She caught his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

‘Quite all right,’ she told him, though it was not an accurate description of her sensations. ‘I was only a little shaken, and my knees bruised a bit.’

‘You mustn’t be shaken. You shouldn’t have touched the mare.’

‘But Peter really was frightened. And I didn’t stop to think.’

‘You never do——’

‘Lance! I’ve been a model——’

‘You have. And you must keep on being a model for another month; You’d never forgive yourself if anything went wrong because you didn’t stop to think.’

‘Oh, don’t!’ she pleaded, shaken afresh.

And he knelt down and flung an arm across her, resting his head against hers.

‘Sorry, darling. But you did give me the devil’s own fright. And unless I speak pretty straight, you’ll be doing it again.’ His arm contracted sharply. ‘I’m feeling all this, Eve, more than a man can say.’

The anxiety he was holding in check sounded too clearly in his voice; and without a word she collapsed against him, sobbing helplessly.

Realising what he had done, he drew her closer and kissed her tears away.

‘My treasure, forgive me. You mustn’t get scared. If you keep very quiet for the next few days, the little chap will stay where he’s well off—no fear.’

Comforted, if not wholly reassured, she lay limply, peacefully, against his shoulder.

And it was so that Vanessa found them. Hearing what had happened, she could not altogether hide her concern. But, sooner than alarm them, she said cheerful, reassuring things.

When at last Miss Millin appeared, full of apologies for not coming sooner, she was directed to the stables, where Peter was having the time of his life, hectoring the saises and. feeding the ponies—and himself—with sugar, his sense of injury and disaster clean forgotten.

Eve, in spite of protestations, was kept on the sofa all the evening; Lance waiting on her, talking nonsense, and making her laugh. But, for all her laughter, her heart was contracted with fear.

Ordered early to bed, she murmured, but did not rebel. She was occupying her own little single room, where she had slept in those blissful days when her father was Resident nine years ago, where she had cried herself into a state of stupefaction after his death. In that room, so closely linked with him, she wished her son to be born. In another one, opening out of it, there lived a bed for the Nurse, and a cradle with simple hangings in palest green. To-night—clinging to a hope that was tinged with fear—she said nothing to Lance, when he left her, of sensations that dimmed the hope and quickened the fear.

He was sleeping in a little lone room, farther down the passage. Vanessa had said it would simplify matters; had hoped he would not very much mind. He did mind—to-night more than usual. But, for convenience sake, he had made no demur. Heartened by a pipe and a long talk with Havelock, he went late to bed, and undressed to the sound of rain, falling softly, steadily.

The monsoon was upon them again——

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

‘Lance—Lance——’

A low urgent voice roused him; and he opened sleepy eyes to find the grey of early morning peering in between half-drawn curtains and Vanessa, in a pale silk wrapper, standing by his bed.

An arrow of fear darted through his mind. ‘What is it?’ he asked, rising on his elbow; but her hand on his shoulder reassured him.

‘Dear boy, it’s all safely over. You have a son. I thought you wouldn’t mind being roused for such good news.’

‘A son!’ Lance echoed in a dazed voice. The word set a strange vibration astir in him; but his instant thought was—Eve.

‘How is she?’

‘Not quite herself yet. But she came through wonderfully well. It was very quick, for a first child. We only just got Dr Norman and Nurse in time.’

‘Did Eve come to you?’

‘Yes. I told her to, if she felt uncomfortable. I rather expected this. I warned Dr Norman and Nurse last night.’

‘Splendid of you. But why didn’t you wake me sooner?’

‘I knew how anxious you were yesterday. I didn’t see why you should suffer needless torment.’

He took her hand from his shoulder and kissed it.

‘I wonder all the stir didn’t wake me. And she?’

His heart contracted at thought of Eve in her agony.

‘She was determined not to wake you. She didn’t once cry out,’ Vanessa answered his thought; and he sat upright.

‘Can’t I go to her?’

‘Not yet. You’ve been spared the suspense. You must be patient. I told you it was short—and sharp.’

‘She would do everything in a hurry!’ Lance murmured, feeling more like himself again.

‘She did. And there’s the inevitable reaction. She’s not fully out of the chloroform yet. But she knows—about the boy.’

‘And you’re sure she’s all right—sure?’

‘I have Norman’s word for it.’

‘Thank God. It was a horrid risk.’ And suddenly he asked, ‘Can’t I see the little chap?’

‘You can peep at him.’ She hesitated. ‘Have you ever seen a very new baby?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, you may get a shock. They’re odd, unbeautiful things. But the features are often quite clear just after birth.’

‘Like Eve—is he?’

Again Vanessa hesitated. ‘Like a tiny, tiny image, of her father,’ she answered in a low voice.

And Lance said quickly, ‘That’ll make her happy. I must go and have a look at him.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In the room that, last night, had been empty and waiting, he found one shaded lamp and a big middle-aged woman, who greeted him briefly.

‘A little beauty, sir, and well formed,’ she said. ‘But he needed his full time. Hardly turned the scale at six.’

Lance, in his ignorance, dared not offer any comment on that. These important nurses took their new-borns very seriously in the matter of pounds and ounces. Also he was standing by the cot now, discovering that he himself took this particular new-born very seriously indeed.

On the frilled pillow, between pale curtains, a spot of a dark head lay sideways, very bulgy at the back, very flat above, the minute features—as Vanessa had said—astonishingly like that profile photo of the Colonel that lived on Eve’s table. The sight of it—the knowledge that this odd unrelated morsel of life was literally a part of himself and her—moved him to a quite unexpected intensity of feeling. He wished the diminutive creature would wake and look at him with Eve’s eyes. Then he might realise it was a human being. But having been prematurely thrust into life, it was taking things easy, not caring a damn for the hell of a time it had given to its precious mother.

Since they would not let him see her, and waiting was the devil, he crept reluctantly back to bed; lay awake a long while; and, finally, fell into a heavy sleep.

When he awoke, the rain had ceased, birds were calling fitfully; and at last he was allowed into Eve’s room. A watery gleam of sunshine strayed across her green coverlet, across the lace-edged sheet and her long thin hands. So still and straight she lay under her light covering; robbed of her vitality and colour. But all the life and radiance that had been drained from her seemed to shine in her eyes—the most expressive eyes he had ever seen.

When she smiled and held out her hand, he could not trust his voice. He could only kneel by the bed and lay his forehead on her hand, fighting back the uprush of emotion that must be stilled before he dared to kiss her lips.

As he knelt thus, her fingers caressing his bowed head, there came through the closed door a sound unfamiliar to his ears—the querulous cry of the newly-born. Struck sharp on their exquisite moment, it pierced his heart with a strange pang. It seemed to be reproaching them for having hustled into their world the ‘little beauty’ who had needed all his time.

Chapter 2

Oh littlest one! . . .
Little and small upon my breast,
Taking thy ease, taking thy rest—
Thou littlest one!» See, see what thou hast done.
— Mary Webb

Day by day Eve renewed her strength, lying peacefully under the light coverlet in her small room with its spring-like tones of primrose and young green. Lance was seldom long away from her. Vanessa waited on her, laughed at her and loved her. Havelock came and hovered round, looking large and out of place, gazing at her as if she, like the baby, were an arrival from another world.

She lived, that week, in the charmed circle of the young mother after her first achievement: food and sleep, and the needs of her little Ian; and the look she caught in her husband’s eyes when he stood apart and watched them together; perhaps privately hoping that a baby or two might discourage further musical aberrations. Would she ever have the heart to tell him that, when the spirit of music possessed her, even adorable babies must stand aside? It wasn’t a case of what you adored. It was a case of ‘I will not let thee go——’ Vanessa knew.

But at present that diminutive baby had things all his own way. To Eve—who had never known a week-old human being—everything about the creature seemed heart-rendingly small. She kept wondering afresh at his astonishing human attributes; at the endearing likeness to her father in the tiny face, when his unseeing eyes looked up at her over the rim of her breast. Sleeping or waking, she could hardly bear to have him out of her arms. But Nurse Denham was impervious to pleadings. A good-natured, coarse-grained woman, she took her babies very seriously, treated the mother mainly as an appendage to royalty. For the spoiling, that Eve considered her due, she must look to Vanessa and Lance, who gave her full measure, so far as the Tyrant would allow.

During those becalmed days it mattered not if the heavens opened their sluice gates, or the rain fell straight and fine like silver spears, or the sun shone in splendour through dazzling masses of cloud. For her the outer world hardly existed. The busy idlers of Gulmarg existed not at all. Aunt Thea and Uncle Vinx were coming over presently from Nathia Gully. Aunt Thea wrote that she could not possibly believe in Lance as a father till her actual eyes had seen him with his son.

But she would never see him as Eve had once seen him, through half-closed lids, when he believed her to be asleep.

He was standing by the fire with Nurse, when a summons came that she was wanted on the telephone. After a second’s hesitation, she handed the woolly bundle to Lance.

‘Could you hold him a minute, sir, without dropping him?’ she asked under her breath, on account of a spuriously sleeping Eve.

‘I could make a shot at it!’ said Lance in the same low tone.

So the placid bundle was transferred; and Nurse looked on, with a critical eye, as he settled it carefully in the crook of his left arm.

‘I will say, sir, as you do handle a baby better than most,’ she commended him in her stage whisper. ‘I’ve seen young fathers half-ashamed of ’em, scared to touch ’em. They’d hold the little blesseds wrong side up, and scarcely see the difference.’

Lance, left alone with his bundle, remained standing near the fire; for these monsoons days were chilly. The pale light fell on his profile. Intent, absorbed, he was watching the small face Eve could not see; gently persuading the waxen fingers to uncurl and close round his own; smiling at his achievement, talking to the creature under his breath in the special caressing voice that he kept for her. And just as she was wondering how he could resist, he raised his bundle and carefully kissed the small dark head. She had never seen him do it. He never would, if he thought anyone was looking. Deliberately she photographed the picture on her brain, as her habit was with anything that pleased her eye: and not till their evening time together did she tell him of all she had seen.

As for Vanessa, to watch her with her godson, when they had him to themselves, was a new revealing. She was always delicious with small children, in a detached impersonal way, as if she understood them rather than loved them; but with Eve’s baby and Ian Challoner’s grandson she could be neither impersonal nor detached.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

But before her little Ian was two weeks old, Eve began to be aware that all was not well; aware of a perceptible change in Nurse Denham’s manner, a perceptible constraint in the air. Lance—who alternately made fun of her and worshipped her—alone seemed unchanged. Nurse and Vanessa clearly knew something that he did not; and although the sun shone out in an interval of golden weather, there were moments when a creeping chill invaded Eve—the familiar, hateful chill of a secret fear.

There was something wrong—something they were trying to hide from her. But they might as well save themselves the trouble. She knew—fatally she knew. It was as if the veil between her soul and the souls of those she cared for, was woven of some fine porous texture that made her too pervious to their atmosphere. Only with Lance had she now any sense of comfort; though it was comfort with a stab in it.

No ignorance of babies could blind her eyes to the fact that her little son seemed to dwindle rather than to blossom, as a healthy baby should; and his thin querulous wailing sent a pang through her heart, as though it were an inarticulate cry of reproach. There were no dimples now, but a heartbreaking hint of knuckles below the tiny fingers, whose touch on her breast sent a faint vibration all through her body. And now, with his thin little fingers, he pushed her breast away; cried for food, yet would not let her feed him, and refused to be comforted.

Vanessa—looking worn and tired herself—was more than ever tender with her, not laughing at her now. Nurse was kind in her rough fashion; said she would try him with humanised milk. And Eve felt as if she had been repudiated by her son. Her blissful dream was slowly dissolving into a nightmare. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

One afternoon she fancied she heard the doctor’s voice in Nurse’s room, and she went cold all through; her limbs shaking under the bed-clothes. But when Vanessa crept in very quietly, she pretended to be asleep. It was her dozing time; and from sheer habit she did mercifully drop into brief oblivion.

When she awoke she was aware of low voices near the fire. Half-opening her sleepy eyes she saw Nurse, large and comfortable in her low chair, cosseting Ian against her capacious bosom; while Peter’s round-faced Miss Millin knelt on the hearth rug, adoring the baby—as a baby, in her sugary sentimental fashion that faintly repelled Eve.

And as she closed her eyes again, Nurse Denham’s stage whisper came distinctly to her ears.

‘She’s bound to know soon. The poor little blessed is doing all he can, but he can’t last much longer. He never had a fair chance. He needed his full time—and he didn’t get it by a month. These young women to-day don’t trouble. Racketing and running risks when God’s at work inside them. No better than murder I call it.’

‘Oh, Nurse, don’t say such dreadful things,’ Miss Millin breathed in an awed undertone.

‘Dreadful it is. But the truth isn’t all sugar plums. There, there, my lamb, we’ll do all we can to keep you yet——’

For the ‘little blessed’—as if he knew how she had libelled his mother—woke up and began his feeble wailing.

And as Eve lay there rigidly still, the sword of certainty pierced her heart; tears clutched at her throat, started to her eyes. Too vividly she remembered Lance and his flash of temper, the things he had said on that fatal afternoon: ‘You’d never forgive yourself if anything went wrong because you didn’t stop to think.’ It was true: bitterly true. She never, never would—— So, in her anguish, she firmly believed; while she lay there fighting down her tears. For the woman who had said those cruel and unjust words must never know that she had heard them. None of them must know.

Very gently the door opened; and a sharp dread of Lance—the beloved and desired—so shook her that a strangled sob escaped.

It was not Lance. It was Vanessa, looking white and strained. She hurried to the bed and sat down on it.

‘Eve . . . my child——’

Eve turned a distorted face to her; and next moment lay in her arms broken with weeping.

‘Darling—darling, what’s come to you?’

As Eve continued to sob convulsively, Miss Millin followed Nurse into the next room.

When they had gone, she said in a muffled voice: ‘It was a dream, a horrid dream—about little Ian.’ But it would not serve. She must know. Feverishly she gripped the arms that held her. ‘Vanessa, tell me true. Is there anything seriously wrong with him? Tell me true.’

For a few anguished seconds Vanessa held her closely trying to command her voice. Then she told her true.

And Eve listened to those few and fatal words in a state of awed stupefaction. Then the truth, that even Vanessa could not speak, stabbed her afresh.

‘I did it. It’s my fault,’ she moaned through her tears.

‘My sweet, you mustn’t see it like that, or it will drive you mad.’

‘I believe it will.’

The conviction in her tone startled Vanessa. ‘It won’t,’ she urged, ‘if you think of Lance; and if you look at it in the right way. It was simply an accident—the cruellest that can happen to a woman. I’ve been through it, darling. I know. You’re not strong enough yet for the shock. But you have your father’s courage. You must try to bear up—for all our sakes.’

The words flowed like water over Eve’s stunned misery. And suddenly a convulsive shiver ran all through her.

‘Does he know?’

‘I think not. A man doesn’t easily see that kind of thing.’

Eve clutched her again. ‘Don’t let him know—till he has to. He’s so pleased, so proud——’

‘I won’t let him know. But can you keep it from him?’

‘I must—if it half kills me.’

At the sound of his step she went rigid, her eyes wide with fear.

‘Don’t let him come yet. Say I’m asleep. At tea time I’ll seem to be all right. Somehow—somehow I’ll keep it up. Go, Vanessa darling—go . . .’

And Vanessa kissed her and went out, leaving her alone with her anguish.

At tea time she did seem almost herself—herself without the sparkle. Smiling bravely she nursed her fated little son. Revealed, to Vanessa’s admiration, the signal capacity of the nervous temperament for rising high strung to an emergency; at what price to her overwrought nerves there was no telling, yet——

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The strain—though sharp while it lasted—was mercifully shorter than even Nurse had foreseen. The ‘little beauty,’ hustled untimely into the world, had already lost his frail hold on life. Heedless of their futile efforts, he drifted back into the Unknown; and the house, lacking that one small presence, seemed empty beyond belief.

During the last few days, even Lance and Havelock needed no telling; but neither said a word. In the face of finality, a man could only endure. And Eve—who had gallantly faced her ordeal for the sake of a new life—must suffer now not only the pang of loss, but the withering sense of futility: all that hoping and planning and suffering—to no purpose. Worse than all, at the back of all, the grinding intolerable ache of self-reproach, the knowledge that by one thoughtless impulse she had quenched a human life—a thing of incalculable possibilities; had brought this cruel sorrow on herself and Lance.

When all was over, he came to tell her. But he could not do it—and there was no need. His eyes, wide with a dumb pain, revealed more than he know. As on that earlier, happier day, he simply knelt down by her low bed; and they clung together without a word, without a kiss.

Suddenly something taut seemed to snap inside his brain. Broken with grief, he laid his head on her breast, his shoulders heaving with hard, dry sobs.

His complete collapse—the last thing she had expected—so pained and startled her, that it cased the hardness of her own grief, the fierce rebellion at her heart. Tenderness came upon her like a transfiguration. Shedding tears and kisses on his hair, she drew his head close into her breast, as if he were indeed her lost child. And in those few moments of simple shared grief she had respite from her torturing sense of responsibility.

Chapter 3

When there was quiet in my heart, she came;
And there was an end of quiet.
— Humbert Wolfe

John Lynch, as usual during the leave season, had vanished from his world. Even official Headquarters had nothing more definite in the way of an address than the Agency bungalows of Gilgit or Chitral. With the young Politicals of those regions, he left instructions for the forwarding of letters by means of that insignificant indispensable—the dāk-runner, who carries his mail bags, at all seasons and in all weathers, through the god-forsaken, though not devil-forsaken, wilds of the Hindu Kush.

For Lynch—apart from the lure of his secret purpose—there was no region comparable to that sublime yet terrible range. In its most majestic aspects, it crushed all comparison; and its rocky uncompromising elements gave him a curious sense of affinity. Among those desolate hills he was seldom aware of his own solitude. It was in the thick of his fellow men that he felt, at times, incurably alone.

This year, with the Chamarkand in view, he had requisitioned his two independent Afridis in addition to Bhagwān Das, who could not sufficiently praise the Lady Sahib and her doctor. To the Lady Sahib, Lynch had sent a handsome cheque, apart from Savarkar’s fee—‘a thank offering for services rendered.’ But she was as proud as Lucifer. She would have no thank-offering; though she had intimated that Dr Savarkar might accept a donation towards his heavy medical and research expenses. Of course, Lynch had sent the donation, which had not given him at all the same satisfaction—as she must know well enough. Obstinate and independent as ever, she would not have him or his rupees at any price. Clearly she was married to her work. She was putting her whole personality into it. For himself, though his recent promotion carried enough ‘lucre’ to make marriage feasible, neither his work nor his secret investigations would brook a divided allegiance.

Deliberately he had turned his back on his passionate entanglement, had slipped on the familiar disguise of a Moslem from the Kashmir highlands, and set out with his three trusted subordinates to take a look round the flourishing outpost of Bolshevism, where Bhagwān had discovered that revealing paper. There they had each done some satisfactory independent work; none being allowed to suspect collusion between them. Lynch, posing as an anti-Congress Moslem, had spent most of his day in purposeful wandering; joining any stray group of young men or elders, talking cautiously, listening assiduously; and the unorthodox knowledge so gained was all grist to the mill.

As for his Afridis, they were henchmen of the best; and, having gained their allegiance, he was treated by these wild independent tribesmen with a respect, even a deference, rarely now accorded to a Sahib by the King-Emperor’s subjects in British India. Instinctively they recognised and saluted the masculine virtues in any man, white or brown.

By rough and strenuous marches, those good companions had pushed on through Chitral State to the Dorah Pass, one of the main gateways into Central Asia. For through that gateway, under cover of trade caravans, men and printed matter were filtering down to the Border, sowing among the tribes the spirit of unrest that is the ally of Soviet Russia all the world over.

At fifteen thousand feet the sun smote strongly through rarefied air. No haze obscured the tremendous view towards the mountains of Badakshan and the fateful, fascinating cities of Central Asia: but they had encamped lower down, at Shohgōt, a converging point for all the roads that led over the regular passes into Chitral.

It was there that Lynch, hobnobbing with all and sundry, fell into talk with a sometime Hindu student from the college at Lahore: one whose zeal for the theory of communism had moved him to visit Russia, in non-co-operation days, seeking enlightenment at the source. But in the land of freedom, he had found no trace of freedom. He had been sent straight to the propaganda college at Tashkent, where he learnt many unexpected things; and had experienced, at first hand, the organised tyranny of Bolshevik rule. For more than a year, he had seen and endured cruelties undreamed of in the peaceful Punjab, where he had been zealous in the secret making of bombs to destroy Englishmen. Escape had been difficult; and the chance of possible re-capture enough to terrify the boldest. But suddenly, for no reason, he had known himself distrusted: and fear of death by torture had eclipsed all the risks of flight.

Lost in the crowd of a summer caravan, he had at last found his way back to India—-a man of one fixed aim. He would travel through the Punjab and tell his own people the things he had seen and heard and suffered among those who promised freedom with their lips and cherished cruelty in their hearts.

From that complete stranger Lynch had elicited, bit by bit, a good deal more than the tale of his drastic conversion; and had discovered, in the process, that young Kamāla Singh, when fully enlightened, was to have become one of the links in the secret chain that he himself was out to disorganise. Now the sometime maker of bombs could use his dangerously acquired knowledge to other ends.

Lynch, in fact, perceived that he had ‘landed a salmon’ of a different species than he had looked for; and before they parted he had revealed to the Hindu, in strict confidence, that he was a Sahib, that he also was trying, here and there, to frustrate the Russian wolf in sheep’s clothing.

That night they had sat alone and talked late. They had talked of awakening India and her dream of unity, of the means whereby at some distant date, that dream might be partially fulfilled; of India snatching at the worldly shadow of politics, in danger of losing the substance of her spiritual heritage, the source of her true salvation. . . .

It was not Kamāla Singh, it was the Englishman, the professed agnostic, who recalled the deathbed dictum of a famous modern guru⁴¹: ‘India is immortal while she continues her search for God. If she gives it up for politics, she will die.’ For if Lynch believed, with Job, that no man by searching can find out God, some unquenchable instinct in him recognised—for certain races and temperaments—the intrinsic value of the quest.

‘My people rule themselves, and others successfully,’ he said, ‘because they have a talent for compromise and sound reasoning that seldom goes with a genius for spiritual things. Your people—devoid of that practical talent—are forcing the pace, shutting their eyes to uncomfortable facts. We, whose eyes are open, must do what we can to save them from the danger in which most of them refuse to believe. Come to my Peshawar office in September, and I’ll put you in the way of work for which you will be well paid.’

On that understanding they had parted and gone upon their separate ways; Lynch and his companions marching back by way of Gilgit to Kashmir. If he had not foiled an enemy he had secured a serviceable friend; and apart from any fraction of achievement, he keenly enjoyed, as always, the chances of sport, the complete breakaway from the social and official world of his own people.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

It was a golden evening of July, some ten days later, that found him encamped near the fort of Gakueh, within easy distance of Gilgit, squatting with his fellows round the fire that had cooked their evening meal: an odd unrelated quartet linked by a mutual purpose and the surface friendliness engendered by the free and easy life of the road. Umra Khan, heavily built and wolfish-looking, was a born tracker, fanatical and unscrupulous; yet altogether dependable in his dealings with the Sahib who trusted few and feared none.

Young Mahomed Akbar, handsome and wiry, was a Khyber Afridi of a finer type, full of rough humour and intelligence; a keen sportsman, a shameless boaster. His tall tales, that delighted Lynch, often moved Bhagwān Das to twist his dry lips in a manner implying that he also ‘could an’ if he would.’ But he was essentially a secret man, cleverer and more subtle than any Moslem swashbuckler. For him it sufficed that the Sahib—who had condemned him to months in a mission hospital—valued one of his fingers more highly than the entire bodies of the other two. Though health had returned, he was lean as ever; his ascetic features and sunken eyes contrasting curiously with the thick flat lips of his clean-shaven mouth; for the ‘man of many faces’ must be able to affix beard or moustache at will; genuine hair attached to the skin by an infallible cement, whose properties are a trade secret. Tired with the day’s march, lulled by the crooning of his hookah, he listened to that talkative pair keeping an interested eye on the Sahib, who sat a little apart, in poshteen and turban and wrinkled long cloth trousers, his skin darkened with walnut juice and exposure, a month-old beard disfiguring his strongly modelled chin and jaw.

The Afridi’s talk was of a Zakka Khel freebooter whose persistent raids on the Peshawar Valley had spurred a long-suffering Chief Commissioner to put a price on his head—a little matter of two thousand rupees. Among the local tribesmen the competition was keen; for many of his own people had suffered loss and injury at his hands. Umra Khan, whose right hip was shortened by reason of a Zakka Khel bullet in his thigh, took a fierce personal interest in the matter. He wanted over and above that two thousand rupees to catch his enemy alive and kill him slowly in cruel Afridi fashion. But the British Government, devoid of sense, would give no reward for a freebooter’s corpse. That was the quarrel of both Afridis with a tempting offer.

Akbar, who could have produced the corpse a month ago, was grumbling now at the insane squeamishness of the white man.

So invitingly simple it seemed to track the fellow, kill him unawares, and claim that goodly reward.

‘Tell me, Sahib,’ he returned to the silent Englishman, absorbed in his cheroot, ‘where is the sense of that order? Nurulla Khan must be caught alive—a desperate deed. Rupees must be paid for a battle of words in the law court. Then he must be hanged. Why will they not reward me for working to the same end in mine own fashion?’

‘Ask the British Government, Akbar, don’t ask me!’ Lynch retorted, looking steadfastly at the handsome, ruthless face. ‘To all such questions there is but one answer—dastúr. Among my people the law has power of life and death. Outside the law we call it murder. Among your people, killing is no murder.’

‘Allah be praised!’ Um Khan grunted into his beard. ‘If not dead—then alive. By God’s will it shall be done.’

Lynch left them discussing lurid means to that end, and retired to enjoy a spell of solitude near his own small tent. He needed leisure to digest the contents of a bloated mailbag brought out by a runner from Gilgit.

Though the sun must be setting now behind the hills, there was light enough still to read his post outside among the apricot trees. For their few tents were pitched in an orchard; and beyond it the solid block of Gakuch Fort was perched some seven hundred feet above a roaring torrent. The near hills descended in one magnificent sweep from the snows to a level belt of water-worn rocks and hillocks full of chikor. On the far side sprang naked peaks, shattered by frost and snow into fantastic outlines, ink-black against the last glow of daylight.

Settled in a canvas chair, Lynch explored the bag that brought him news of his own world; opened first the square envelope from Gulmarg; and learnt that Lance had a son, born out of time, that Eve had come safely through, and all was well. As regards the son, he supposed they were pleased. As regards Eve, his acute sense of relief told him that, in some unexplored corner of his being, he had felt more than a little anxious about that incalculable young woman, who had upset his sapient convictions, had disarmed his antagonism, shamed his distrust, and at moments commanded his unwilling admiration. Implicitly she had snapped her fingers at him and his disapproval. With her lack of feminine guile, her humour, her brains and vitality she had slipped under his guard; and had fascinated him against his will—he could admit it now the danger was past—as he had not been fascinated since a certain episode in the Kishengunga Valley eight years ago. In camp he had recognised it frankly; but his hard-won self-mastery was more than skin deep; and at no time had there been any risk of disloyalty to the friend he had rated for marrying her. An uncomfortable reminder that no man, in the prime of life and vigour, could reckon himself immune—that was all it had amounted to in his eyes.

For a couple of weeks he had kept away from Kohat. He had worked hard and ridden hard; had returned solely on account of Bhagwān—in a normal frame of mind. And Eve herself had virtually thrown him into Grace Yolande’s arms. At sight of Grace, standing there in the sunlight, greeting him with her inimitable coolness and refusing to count the years, something only half-dead in him had sprung to life again. There and then he had known why Eve had slipped under his guard; had recognised a certain affinity of spirit between those two, some element of charm, of verve that appealed to more than the flesh.

It was that very element in Grace which had ensnared him eight years ago when he—the devout unbeliever—had actually proposed marriage to a missionary doctor; and her steadfast refusal had hurt his pride, his male egoism, almost as much as his strangely awakened heart. He positively could not believe that devotion to her religion, to her chosen work, could so count with a woman, even in these days. If she could not put him before a church or hospital, he must have failed to kindle an answering flame—he who had needed her in every way that a man can need a woman; as he had never needed one till then, and had firmly believed he never would. Those few weeks had been, for him, a unique experience; and in the end he had gone from her—rejected, angry, bitterly hurt; yet admiring her none the less for what she was—no mere woman but a personality in her own right.

Now—Eve be thanked—he had once more been thrust into her life, had seen that her medical work was a bigger thing than mere missionising. She was putting into it the whole of her vivid self. She was getting at Indian women in their own homes; and the women, she insisted, were the crux of the whole problem. If the narrow, ignorant and custom-ridden were a drag on the wheel, the finer types were the main source of India’s spiritual strength. She firmly believed that the long, difficult comradeship between England and India had existed, these hundred years and more, mainly to one great end—the lifting and enlightenment of India’s women; that England could not lay down her responsibilities or India dream of self-government till that great purpose was many degrees nearer fulfilment than now.

He liked hearing her talk in that vein, though it strengthened his conviction that he had lost her altogether. Right or wrong her opinions were forcible and clear-cut as herself, free from the taint of sentimentality, even when women and children were her theme. He might not agree with them, but he respected them. That was the essence of friendship. Yet he could not, now or ever, be friends with Grace. In both, the hidden flame smouldered; and in himself he knew it might flare up again at any moment of close personal contact. And if he hesitated to ask her again, it was not altogether on his own account.

Eight years ago, he had seen her work, her ambitions and convictions, as little more than awkward barriers that existed to be levelled; because she was woman and he was man. Now he saw them in truer focus, as necessities of her life; and the fact that she was doing practical work for India counted for much with this man, who was so curiously compounded of selfishness and impersonal devotion—to one end only. He could even ask himself whether he had the right to urge on her his own passionate claims, that could only be met by a virtual renouncing of the hospital business in favour of running one man’s house, helping him here and there, ministering to his masculine needs. How far, in such a case, would he be prepared to modify his own way of life? It was a searching question; for he knew there was no pliability in him. With all his sincerity and penetration, he had small skill in the unregistered art of human relations.

For although consistent selfishness guarantees a large measure of personal freedom, it is bought at a price the freedom of a soul that is wilfully alone because it will not launch out into the deep.

At present, however, the increased responsibilities of his new appointment claimed his whole attention. With the poison of communism more openly at work in the Punjab and on the Border, anything might happen; and an inflamed Punjab would need more vigorous handling than Bengal. The whole situation throughout India was more critical, relations more strained than at any time during the last five years; and the strain was bound to fall most heavily on his own ill-paid service, in which the British element had been whittled down to danger point. Personal affairs must stand by——

Yet another affair, partly personal, had been thrust into the foreground of his mind by hearing from Mason, while in Chitral, that the appointment he so keenly coveted for Lance would be vacant earlier than he had expected. And here was the providential baby, on whose advent he had counted, in his ribald vein, on the very day of their wedding. Eve, taken up with a new toy, might not be unwilling to face a short separation that would be very much to her husband’s advantage. She would be happy enough with Mrs Thorne and the son, with Lance dodging down on his summer leave. And Lance himself, when he heard of Kamāla Singh—who might work with him on the spot—would surely need small persuasion to reconsider the matter. Chitral, as usual, was humming with intrigue; and Mason, a brilliant but opinionated young man, had not the flair for administration that Lynch detected in his friend. In any case, he meant to pull it off this time; and he would probably succeed, by sheer fixity of purpose, by the power he had of getting what he wanted.

But he must reach Gulmarg before Lance left Kashmir; and he would need to force the pace if he were to arrive in time.

Chapter 4

I will not let thee go.
I hold thee by too many hands.
Thou, sayest farewell—and lo,
I have thee by the hands,
I will not let thee go.
— Robert Bridges

It was the last day of July when Lynch—a shaven Englishman, decently clad—rode into Gulmarg on his unshod Badakshani, the companion of many wanderings, game to cross a débris slope or climb a rock staircase, with never a slip of his nimble feet. Man and horse were good friends; though Lynch, unlike most of his race, had no special feeling for animals. He was that rarity, in India, an Englishman without a dog. From Gilgit he had wired for a hotel bedroom; and there he made himself presentable before walking up to the Residency.

In the porch sat scarlet-coated Sher Ali, a friend of many seasons. Both Mem Sahibs and their Sahibs, he said, were out.

‘I can wait for them,’ said Lynch, and as he strolled through the house into the glazed verandah, he wondered amusedly—had he missed the christening by a narrower shave than he had missed the wedding last year?

Out on the lawn under the big walnut tree, there were rugs and small tables and chairs, one of them occupied by a woman.

Eve?

Half across the lawn he halted. It was not Eve. It was Grace Yolande.

She rose and stood there smiling at him with her confounded coolness, not attempting to shake hands.

‘You?’ he lamely greeted her. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

Her smile deepened. ‘Must I always be “doing”? Most of us, in Gulmarg, are doing nothing with immense energy and persistence.’

‘Satan finding mischief still——? But that’s not your line.’

‘No. I was called to Srinagar on hospital business, and Eve begged me to come up here for a week. I suppose——’ she hesitated—‘You must have heard . . . from Lance?’

‘Of the latest arrival, who turned up too soon? Yes. He sent me the news.’

She clasped her hands tightly—a gesture he remembered. ‘You haven’t heard. It’s all over. The boy only lived two weeks.’

‘Good God!’ he stared at her—realising. ‘Eve all right?’ he asked with a pang of fear.

‘In health—yes. In other ways—no. It’s broken her up; broken them both. And they were such a radiant pair.’ She set her lips and looked away from him, shy of the pain she could not hide. ‘Lance is wonderful. But she—seems shut away from us all. It’s partly bottled-up suffering, partly nerves. I’m worried about her. So is poor Mrs Thorne.’

‘And Lance?’ Lynch asked in a toneless voice.

She moved one hand with a pathetic gesture. ‘He just goes on as if there was nothing wrong. I don’t quite know if it’s the best line to take. But I do admire the way he is trying to put it all behind him; trying to make her do the same. Perhaps you’ll be able to rouse his interest with talk of all your doings up there.’

Lynch nodded. ‘I shall do my level best.’

Suddenly she realised they were awkwardly standing there, themselves forgotten; and she indicated a chair.

‘Won’t you sit down? Eve can’t walk far yet. They’ll be back soon.’

Pulling a chair close to hers, he sat down heavily, as if his body were weighted by her news.

‘Good God!’ he said again in a low tone. ‘And there was I half-afraid I might be let in—for the christening.’

‘And I,’ she said, ‘hoping I might be in time for it.’

There seemed nothing more to say: so he said nothing, though silence had its element of danger between these two. On a purely formal level their intercourse was easy enough; since both had the gift of impersonal interest in men and things. But a pause, an inadvertent look, and the deeps in both were stirred.

He opened his cigarette case and held it out to her.

‘Won’t you smoke?’

‘Thank you.’

She helped herself. He struck a match and held it for her, noticing how two small reflected flames danced in her eyes.

‘Is your week nearly up?’

‘Two more days.’

‘Then you drop back into the furnace seven times heated? You don’t get away enough.’

‘Don’t I?’ Her half-smile seemed to hint that she was the best judge of that. ‘I’m too busy most of the time to notice it—much. I only wish I could go down with an easier mind about my poor darling Eve.’

He was silent a moment, lighting his own cigarette. Then he said bluntly, ‘I may as well tell you I came here to tackle Lance in earnest about Chitral.’

‘You mean he may go there?’

‘I hope so. In my opinion he ought to, for his own sake. And he could help considerably with the underground work I’m doing there. I know he wants to go—at least, he did. . . .’

‘You think he would leave her now?’

‘He’s got to, in any case. And if he’s badly cut up it might give him a lift, the prospect of fresh work along the lines that he prefers. It might just decide the whole trend of his career. I shall talk it over with him. See how he rises to it.’

‘You don’t give a thought to her,’ she protested with a touch of heat.

‘I do—I think very highly of Eve. She’s the sort that responds to the right stimulus. It may rouse her coming up against a big decision—having to consider him.’

As she appeared to ponder the wisdom of that, he added more persuasively: ‘If her nerves are out of gear she’d be better with Mrs Thorne till she’s more herself; and he’d be far better away from her, tackling new work.’

‘Take care,’ she warned him in a low voice, ‘how you scheme to separate those two—for your own ends.’

‘My ends?’ He was almost angry. ‘I’m thinking of Lance—and the work he can do for India. We need his sort out here more than ever we did. And in the course of Border Political service, a certain amount of separation is bound to come.’

‘Yes—later on.’ Then as if moved by some inner compulsion, she faced him squarely. ‘Lance and Eve seem to me more nearly an organic whole than any married pair I’ve known. My experience isn’t extensive, but I imagine it’s a rare achievement. There may be rubs and difficulties; but, in more ways than loving, they are necessary to each other. So—take care what you do?’

Her seriousness annoyed him because he knew she spoke the truth; and because the truth hindered his set purpose, he would not altogether admit it.

‘They’re well matched, of course. But—I think you exaggerate,’ he said: and she turned her face from him.

‘I’m not given that way.’

‘Every woman—worth calling a woman—is given that way, where the emotions are concerned.’

She smiled without looking round. ‘You’ve put me in a cleft stick! I hope I’m worth calling a woman.’

‘I’ve always considered so—if my opinion counts for anything?’

And she said in a schooled voice, ‘It counts for a very great deal.’

Suddenly he leaned forward. ‘Grace——’

Startled, she turned; and he looked hard into her eyes.

‘Do I still count for anything?’

A slow colour crept into her cheeks.

‘You count,’ she said, ‘enormously. You always will.’

Her honest confession so moved him that it was all he could do not to lean nearer and touch her into warmth. He could feel it lurking within her; but she too was putting a constraint on her emotion; and he admired her for it. Self-control, honesty and courage were his gods.

‘But I don’t count for enough’—he pressed her—‘to win your whole allegiance?’

He could not have put the question in a form more appealing to her temperament; and he guessed as much.

‘I don’t know—I don’t know,’ she said in a shaken voice. ‘You’re terribly forcible. If one let you in, you would dominate—everything. We’ve both become merged in our work. Mine is far more to me now than it was eight years ago. Yours demands much isolation. A woman would often be in the way.’

‘Depends altogether on the woman.’ He said it roughly because of the emotion he was holding in check: and he could only hope she understood.

‘This one isn’t very adaptable. Besides—I couldn’t carry on the doctoring.’

She clung to the practical issue, as if in self-defence; and he followed her lead.

‘You could still do a lot for Indian women. That’s your special gift.’

It hardly sounded like a lover pressing his suit; but they were an odd pair.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘the other is my gift. But the women draw me. And they’re going to count increasingly. They’ve always counted far more—haven’t they?—than people outside India realise.’ She paused and turned to him with an appealing smile. ‘We can’t settle a thing like this in a hurry—John.’

His own forty years endorsed the statement—as a statement; but his name on her lips fired him to ask outright, ‘I wonder what that amounts to in the way of an admission?’

She looked quickly away from him. ‘I’m not able to tell you—yet. I’m no longer a girl. I’m a woman who passionately wants to be honest with herself—and with you.’

He could have answered, with equal truth, that he was a man, passionately needing her, though some remote, incorrigible fragment of his being still shirked the limitations of marriage. Probably—between his own earlier honesty and some feminine sixth sense—she guessed as much. They were back in the old strained position of eight years ago; but those years counted, and accounted for more than he quite realised.

‘I rushed my fences once. And I’m not allowed to rush them again—is that it?’

He rose and stood before her, half-appealing, half-defiant. At that moment his one commanding desire was to take her forcibly in his arms, to wake the answering flame in her, to thrust aside—as he alone could do—her wisdom, her scruples. . . .

Yet he himself felt troubled with scruples where this one woman was concerned. Not by those methods could he bear down the intangible opposition of her spirit to a swift emotional surrender. By some emanation of her personality she was as secure from mere masculine coercion as the sleeping Brünnhilde within her ring of fire. To a man unpractised in the finer relations with women, the clear perception of that fact was at once singular and impressive. Yet, opposition or no, he felt convinced that she loved him.

The strained silence between them was broken by footsteps and the barking of dogs. In the glazed verandah Lynch caught sight of Lance and Eve.

Grace looked up at him quickly. ‘We might go on being friends,’ she said, ‘and see how it works.’

‘We might,’ he agreed in muffled voice. ‘I’m sure it will work damnably.’

He was watching Eve and Lance as they strolled across the lawn, not talking, not laughing.

‘My God,’ he said, ‘the change in her.’

Lance waved his stick for greeting.

‘Hullo, you old Jack in the Box. Popping up without a word of warning.’

‘Well, I wasn’t certain when I’d get here. Hope it’s not a serious shock?’

He too forced the light note; and Eve glanced from one to the other, a smile flickering in her eyes. Then she held out her hand.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, in a voice that sounded as if she could never be glad about anything again.

She was all in white, a dead tone of white with a row of pearls round her throat; no colour except her grey-green eyes, deep-set under the kinked eyebrows; no secret joke lurking in them now. The pitiful droop of her mouth in repose hurt him as he was not often hurt at the sight of another’s grief. That, within one brief hour or two, he should have his heart so wrung with pity, his smouldering passion so roused, amounted to an experience—wholesome perhaps, if disturbing.

They must know that Grace had told him of their loss; and they would surely prefer him to say nothing till he was alone with Lance. So he talked at some length, while they ate their tea, of Chitral and the Dorah Pass and incidents of the march. When he looked at Eve, hoping to wake her interest, she would start and smile as if he had recalled her from a distance, then the fine corners of her mouth, where humour lurked, would droop again unconsciously.

He did not believe that she heard half of what he said, which almost angered him; for he was talking, as always, with one clear end in view. Without a tacit backing from her, Lance would never accept that appointment. Her present need would carry more weight with him than his own ambition. That was what marriage did to a man. But neither that knowledge, nor the warning uttered by Grace, could divert him from his determination to sound his friend on the subject of Chitral, now that it was actually available.

When Eve had finished her tea, she rose and sauntered off towards the house; and Lance looked after her with a pained contraction of his eyebrows.

‘Did you go too far?’ Grace asked. ‘Is she tired?’

‘I think she is—a bit. Perhaps you could persuade her to lie down.’

‘I’ll try.’ She smiled at Lynch, her composed self again. ‘You two will have a lot to talk about.’

But when she was gone they sat silent for an appreciable time, before Lynch turned and laid a heavy hand on his friend’s knee.

‘She told me, of course,’ he said. ‘Cruel luck for you both.’

‘Yes—cruel.’ Lance emphasised the word, staring straight before him.

‘Was there—any reason!’

‘He didn’t get his full time. He wasn’t strong enough to hold his own against the handicap. And look—what it’s done to her.’

Lynch nodded, he could not trust himself to say much about that. ‘She takes things hard. But she has as much pluck as anyone I know. She’ll pull through.’

Lance said nothing; and again they fell silent, smoking and thinking their diverse thoughts.

Suddenly Lance threw away his cigarette, took out his pipe—the unfailing consoler—and turned to Lynch with a resolute air, as if he deliberately put aside his own trouble.

‘You look as fit as a fiddle,’ he said. ‘Had good sport up there?’

‘Excellent, all round. It’s the finest country on earth to wander in just now, when the rest of India’s either a furnace or a washpot. Wish you could have been with me. I had a rare bit of luck too, at Shohgōt. You’d have been interested.’

By way of prelude he told the story of Kamāla Singh; and had the satisfaction of seeing the keen young Lance, who was his friend, emerge slowly from the repressed, tormented Lance—husband of Eve and the father of that poor little beggar who couldn’t hold his own. He talked at some length of Chitral affairs; but no word of the appointment. Lance must not too soon suspect that he was talking with his old unshakeable aim in view.

When at length he rose to leave, Lance said hurriedly, ‘You needn’t run away. Do stay on for dinner, old man.’

It was frankly a plea. And Lynch, for every reason, was glad to stay on. He could stroll round to his hotel, fish out his store trunk, and change into civilised evening dress.

‘Mind if I come along with you?’ Lance asked; and again it was no casual request.

Lynch thought with a pang, ‘He’s like a small boy afraid of being left in the dark.’ And he raged inwardly at the powers of life and death that could so hurt and dispirit his friend.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At dinner Eve seemed a few degrees more alive, though the effort at cheerfulness was obvious. Grace, in a bronze-coloured evening frock and a rope of clear amber—was for him a revelation. He had never seen her so; and he could scarcely keep his eyes or his mind from her. Yet it was chiefly he and Thorne who kept the talk from languishing. The shadow of that poor little ghost seemed to hover in the air like a thin grey veil, and he found himself puzzled and half-annoyed at the woeful change wrought in a pair who meant so much to each other by the passing of one small human fragment, only two weeks old.

There was much talk of local politics and personalities. And there was Grace drawing him out, challenging his opinion as coolly as if no momentous decision hung in the balance between them. But mainly it was the men who kept things going.

Soon after they joined the ladies, Lance suggested a stroll outside in the waning light. Lynch, distracted by that vision of Grace, was relieved, on the whole, to escape from the unfamiliar drawing-room atmosphere. In the matter of Chitral he was still inclined to go warily, not to speak at once.

Before they reached the end of the lawn, however, Lance unwittingly gave him a lead.

‘Is it true that Mason’s going Home on urgent private affairs?’

‘Yes: early October.’

‘Rather sudden. I’ve been wondering—who’ll go there?’

Lynch glanced at him, but he was looking straight ahead at the dim vista of the garden.

‘I know who can go there if he chooses. I know Sir Vinx wants to have you there while he’s head of the Province. And you know my sentiments in the matter.’

‘Yes—I know.’ His tone had become guarded. ‘But Uncle Vinx would understand my reluctance—just now.’

‘I understand it also,’ Lynch reminded him. ‘But it seems to me that Eve might be the better, in health, for two years in this fine climate with the Thornes. And surely she’s keen for you to forge ahead—make your mark?’

‘Yes—when she’s herself.’

‘She’ll be herself again presently. And you’ve got to leave her anyway in less than a week’s time.’

‘For two months—not two years.’

He spoke as if his interest had evaporated. But Lynch knew he was holding out on principle; affecting indifference because he feared his friend’s persuasive powers: and as their mutual desire clearly pointed one way, Lynch decided to use his powers for what they were worth. He talked Chitral affairs intensively; he enlarged on the Mehtar’s friendliness to his handful of British officers, on the sport and the climate—till Lance woke up sufficiently to give him a vigorous push.

‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ he said, more than half in joke.

Lynch laughed and caught him by the arm.

‘Not Satan’s way, my son! He collars the front seat and sticks to it. Must be a close relation of mine. Anyway my satanic advice in this matter is thoroughly sound.’

‘Thoroughly biassed,’ Lance corrected him.

‘Biassed in your favour, you ungrateful villain. Consider your own luck, getting it now with Sir Vinx as your chief, that clever cousin to work under, and the Thornes in Kashmir to give Eve a home. Not forgetting the immediate work you can do for me up there. I’d tell off Kamāla Singh to be your right-hand man, and give you all the help in his power. You don’t want to go back to old Wharton,’ he boldly urged.

‘God knows I don’t. I’m dreading it.’

‘Thought so. Mind, I don’t want to be shoving you, if you aren’t so keen as you were. But you’d like it, Lance—wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh, I would.’

He said it very low, as if the truth were forced out of him.

‘Then perhaps you’d do me the personal favour to think it well over.’

‘Damn you! I’m thinking of it all the time,’ Lance flashed out; and by that spurt of temper Lynch knew that he had won.

But he only said, ‘Good business. Give me a definite answer before I leave for Peshawar.’

‘I will if I can. It depends on Eve. I’ll talk to her.’

‘Yes, talk to her. It may wake her up surprisingly.’

‘Yes—it may.’ The likelihood seemed to encourage him. ‘Come along in now and try to liven her a bit. You’ve a knack with her.’

And Lynch, thinking of Grace, came along readily enough.

It was nearly midnight when he took leave of Lance and Thorne, having accepted an invitation to stroll round for tiffin. They would expect him for dinner as a matter of course.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

His first thought, when the voice of Nizām Din waked him next morning, was of Grace Yolande in her bronze-coloured evening dress; the creamy whiteness of her neck and arms; the flame-like quality of her that drew a man, yet would scorch him if he ventured too near. The way a woman could demoralise even a sane man like himself——

While drinking his tea and slitting his envelopes, an inspiration visited him. If he could trump up some plausible excuse, he might have the boldness to offer her a lift in his big car from Srinagar to Pindi. It would involve the possibility of something more fervent, more persuasive than yesterday’s lame attempt at a proposal of marriage. But at present, Lynch, the wary bachelor, was in abeyance. Whether she would accept or resent his bold suggestion the devil alone could tell.

An hour before tiffin he strolled round to the Residency, on the chance of catching her alone again, if only for ten minutes; but ‘the luck’—that capricious goblin—would never so favour a man two days running.

On arrival he wandered round into the garden unannounced, keeping his eyes alert; but never a sign of Grace. There were chairs on the lawn again; and a woman in one of them. This time it was Eve, her serious profile bowed over a book; and the disastrous change in her smote him afresh. Had Lance spoken yet, he wondered; his mind never far from the subject. Clearly her attitude would turn the scale. And this was not the gallant Eve of Kohat days. How far that Eve was in eclipse he would very much like to know. And here was the given chance to put in a cautious word for his friend. It would need to be subtly done: and the better part of him shrank from intruding where he had no right of way. But the habit of pursuing his own fixed purpose was stronger than any vague scruple. They would often have to face separation for reasons less important; and although he could understand the boy’s reluctance to leave her—although the droop of her lips made him suddenly wish he had the right, or the boldness, to kiss them—neither sensation could deflect the purpose that inhabited a different compartment of his being. He owed much of his success and his power over others to those water-tight compartments in his mind and character.

While he stood reasoning with himself, she looked up, saw him and smiled. With a gesture he checked her impulse to rise, and went quickly forward.

‘Am I in the way?’ he asked.

‘No—no.’

‘May I sit and talk to you for a bit?’

‘Yes, do.’

She seemed a shade more natural this morning. But having welcomed his suggestion, she relapsed into silence.

He put out a hand and touched her knee. ‘You mustn’t think I’m not feeling for you, Eve, because I can’t talk about it.’

She shook her head, her lips quivered; and he had a moment’s terror that she would dissolve in tears. But she righted herself and said in a toneless voice, ‘It’s better—not to feel. I can’t talk about it either. Tell me things—other things. All those far wild mountains. Do you properly see them, when you’re after killing creatures. Are you aware of them?’

‘Not as you would be. But I’m fully aware that they dwarf everything else in that line.’

She nodded. ‘Tell me about them. Talk about all that.’

Here was an indirect lead. So he talked Chitral. And the more he talked, the more he felt certain that Lance had said nothing yet. His own hesitation was brief, though some obscure part of him still tugged against his settled intention.

‘The Chitral appointment,’ he said cautiously, ‘will be vacant in the autumn. How would you feel about it—if Sir Vincent offered it to Lance?’

That roused her. ‘Lance—Chitral——? Is it likely?’

There was fear, but there was interest in her look and tone.

‘I think it is.’

‘Does Lance know?’

‘I told him last night.’

‘And he never told me.’ Clearly the omission hurt and puzzled her. ‘He ought to—oughtn’t he?’

That quaint pitiful appeal troubled his heart.

‘Well—he may want to think it over first. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken.’

‘Why not? I’ve the right to know.’

‘Of course you have,’ he agreed. ‘So much depends on you——’

‘And my good intentions?’

‘You remember that?’

‘I remember all of it.’

Her smile and the unexpected reminder encouraged him, just as he was feeling that, for once, his inflexibility might have pushed him a shade too far. It amounted to trespassing; and the policeman in him had a strict sense of other people’s rights. Her very encouragement made it harder to say any more: and there was a difficult pause.

‘You think,’ she looked round at him, ‘Lance ought to go?’

But even Lynch shrank from making so definite a pronouncement to Lance Desmond’s wife.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘it would be a fine chance for him. But it’s entirely for him to decide—and you.’

‘Did he seem keen?’ She would spare him nothing.

‘My dear Eve,’ he reasoned with her, evading the direct reply. ‘You know Lance. You know he’s keen about that form of political work. And I know he’s not keen about the long separation from you. As he can’t have it both ways, he may find decision difficult. Whatever you do, don’t worry over it in your down-hearted state. If Lance says nothing, take it as a high compliment to yourself and let him be. As far as I’m concerned—consider it unsaid.’

‘I’ll consider it——’ she said with significant emphasis: and suddenly her tired eyes lit up. ‘Oh, there’s Grace.’ He turned and saw her coming out of the verandah. ‘I shall miss her. She’s going to-day.’

‘To-day?’ There was no mistaking the blank note in his voice. ‘I thought—to-morrow?’

‘Yes. But she got a chance to share a car with a friend from Srinagar. So she fixed it all up suddenly. It is disappointing.’

‘It is,’ he gravely agreed: and there flashed on him the maddening question, ‘Is it genuine? Or is she bolting from me, for fear I should press her again?’

As she came up, he rose and shook hands with her, deliberately prolonging the pressure: but though her smile was friendly, she would not let him hold her eyes.

‘Eve tells me you’re going down to-day,’ he said. ‘Not fair on us, rushing off like that.’

‘Not pleasant for me, losing twenty-four hours of this.’ (It sounded genuine.) ‘But I had to take the chance of sharing a car.’

That spurred, him to a bold move.

‘If you could wait an extra day, you’d be welcome to a seat in mine.’

He said it with complete sangfroid, aware that Eve was listening, watching. If that flicker of interest in an unpromising pair helped to rouse her—let her think anything she pleased.

Grace coloured perceptibly, but dismissed his offer with a little laugh.

‘Very kind! But I couldn’t have encumbered you to that extent.’

‘Wardrobe dress boxes and mountains of bedding?’ he twitted her, to cover his keen disappointment.

‘One imperceptible suitcase,’ murmured Eve, ‘and a doll’s roll of bedding.—You might stay where you’re wanted.’

Grace went to her quickly, sat down and put an arm round her.

‘You know I can’t, dear one. How dare you give me away!’ Her kiss softened the refusal; and Lynch had his answer.

‘Hullo! There you are.’ Thorne’s deep rumble greeted him from the verandah. Lance appeared with Mrs Vane; and they all trooped in to lunch—a more cheerful meal, on the whole, than last night’s dinner.

But to-day he himself was weighted with an unfamiliar sense of depression, because, in a few hours’ time, the one woman who had ever put a spell upon him would be gone from Gulmarg; and it might be months before he could manage to see her again. As Deputy Inspector General, he was largely his own master; but his work took him all over the Border region; and its claims were paramount. He had reckoned on another twenty-four hours; thirty-six, in fact—if she accepted his escort; and he felt considerably annoyed with her for upsetting his calculations, whatever the reason.

His annoyance took the ignominious form of hanging round after lunch, till the time of her departure, on the chance of snatching a few minutes alone with her. But to his greater vexation, the chance was not given him till the very last minute. Thorne was at the telephone; and Lance, as if he guessed, said good-bye in the hall, letting Lynch see her off outside.

‘I don’t forgive you for this,’ he said, holding her hand as he had held it on arrival. ‘May I write now and then?’

Unmistakably her face lit up. ‘Do you write?’

‘No. But I write to you—if permitted. And I shall be turning up at Kohat as usual. We must meet occasionally if we are to see—how it works.’

She smiled at the reminder; but Thorne came blundering out of his study—the perfect host; and no more could be said.

She was gone, leaving him in mid-air. But he had spoken: and in due time he would speak again. Meanwhile he went back to the hotel, where he found—among many men on leave—the Senior Superintendent of Police from Lahore. He was to return for dinner; and he hoped that Lance would then give him a definite answer about Chitral. He himself would say no more about it. He had possibly said too much to Eve; and a belated qualm troubled him. Suppose she gave him away, what the devil would Lance have to say about it? An awkward question; but worrying over things said and done was a fool’s game. If zeal for Lance and his own private obsession had convicted him of trespassing, he must stand up to the consequences.

Chapter 5

It is not so much the force of the blow that counts, as the nature of the material that receives the blow.
— Thomas Hardy

Even a John Lynch might have been moved to refrain from that ill-timed word in season, had he dimly realised the nature of Eve’s inner torment, the exaggerated sense of having failed Lance all round that sharpened the ache of her own personal grief. Always at the core of it lurked that nagging sense of responsibility for his loss and her own; the pain of it sharpened by Nurse Denham’s pitiless indictment, ‘I call it no better than murder.’ That the words were harsh and untrue, even her clouded brain could perceive; but the pin-point of truth in them pricked like a thorn pressed into a wound. At times it seemed to her that she had killed her baby as actually as if she had thrown him out of the window; that she had no right to ache for the touch of his fingers and the feel of his warm sleeping body against her own, for the sound of his quavering cry when he had need of her. His cot and all the quaint little garments had been spirited away by Vanessa. It was meant to be merciful, but it seemed almost cruel so to sweep aside every trace of him, as if he had never been. Yet in those two weeks he had awakened in her new needs, new desires; and his going had changed the course of her life.

So vividly had the child-to-be, with all its engaging ways, lived and moved in her imagination that something had gone from her besides that frail wisp of life; something none the less real because it had not actually lived. Lance had said she would never forgive herself if any harm came of not having stopped to think. And it was true: she never would. Worse; the conviction grew in her that Lance himself—in his carefully hidden heart—would never quite forgive that heedless Eve. It was a fatal conviction to have taken root, while her inner vision was so fatally distorted that even his spoken assurance would hardly avail to shake it.

But he said nothing. He probably never would say anything. That was his way when things went deep with him; and he could not know how disastrously it reacted on her exaggerated sense of wrong done to him, to his child. That was the real incommunicable pain; the black shadow shutting her off from those she loved. Abstractedly she moved among them all, with tense nerves, on the edge of peril—the peril of losing self-control and begging them to tell her they did not believe she had murdered her child. But she could not, she must not so demean herself. Of the peril to her nerves, her brain, she was unaware; or the concrete fear might have spurred her to combat the deadly thing.

And, in her mental extremity, she lacked even the wholesome distraction of house and servants to claim her surface attention. They were to have been free, these weeks, to enjoy each other and their child. Now there was no child; nothing to fill that unexpected blank; and their joy in each other had suffered a partial eclipse. They had lost—precisely when they most needed it—their intimate sense of unity.

There seemed suddenly so little to talk about that, at times, Eve half-dreaded being alone with Lance, tormented as she was by the craving to know what he really thought and felt behind his bewildering silence. Wrapped in the fog of her misery, she failed to realise that her own more unusual silence might seem no less bewildering to him.

Once, in the small and evil hours, when she lay staring into darkness, ‘all the wheels of being low,’ there stole into her mind a memory of their first sharp clash on the march to Lama Yorn, and her prophetic dream of the chasm into which she had fallen—Lance not realising. Here indeed was the chasm; and she falling, falling; no more able to cry out to him now than in her dream, or to ask the foolish question he had forbidden her ever to ask again. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And Lance himself—no less aware of that impalpable, impenetrable veil—knew fear, as he could never know it for himself; fear of the unstable equilibrium that lurks in any form of genius—in musical genius more than all. Proud and sensitive as he was, under his resolute air, the hurt of his loss was less acute than the hurt of being implicitly debarred from his natural privilege of sharing and easing her grief.

Only sometimes, at night, when they clung together in the darkness, they seemed to find one another without the clumsy machinery of speech. And Lance, incurably hopeful, would think, ‘I’ve got her back. I won’t let her slip away again.’

But next morning the veil would fall between them—the veil he could not, and she apparently would not, brush aside; and his heart would sicken afresh with doubt and dread. Reluctantly, bitterly, he was being forced to the conclusion that the child—possessed for two weeks—meant more to her than all his wealth of love and willingness to serve.

And the monotony of their secluded days was peculiarly oppressive to a man of his mental and bodily vigour. She never touched her violin; and when she was not making a palpable effort to rouse herself, she would sit motionless with an open book in her hands—reading or not reading, he could never tell. Half the time he suspected that she was using the infernal book to ward him off. If they could only go riding together, the swift movement, the happy associations, might blow away that miasma of vain misery and brooding. But she was not yet fit for it; and she had no desire to ride. She could not bear the sight of poor harmless Grey Dawn. That, he could understand. He himself had been obliged to fight against a feeling of the kind that could not be allowed to prevail. He played polo whenever Eve pressed him to go; since it was clearly a relief for her and—in quite a different sense—for him. But as yet even that great game could give him no more than a brief sense of escape from her pain and his own.

Puzzled and disheartened, he spoke frankly one evening to Vanessa, who was looking ill enough herself without this added strain. To her, alone, he could confess that there was something amiss between them—something vague and intangible with which he felt powerless to cope. Being a woman and a musician, she might help him to understand. And, being Vanessa, she had done it in her own fashion—so far as a man could hope to understand a woman in Eve’s tragic case.

‘Above all things, dear boy,’ she urged, ‘you must not take it personally—whatever she may say or do. She’s more than unhappy. And I don’t know what it is. I only know that her nerves are out of gear. It’s a critical time for a woman; and she was composing hard in the Spring when it would have been wiser to refrain. Life and art take more out of some people than others. It will always be so with Eve. But we can pull her through this between us, Lance—if you let me help.’

‘Let you? God knows I’ll be grateful,’ he said from his heart: and on that she kissed him, with sudden fervour.

‘God knows I’m grateful that the Darling is married to you,’ she said. ‘ Only time will give her back to us. And standing aside is dismal work. Grace—being out of it all—may help to cheer her.’

The coming of Grace did visibly cheer her: and the coming of Lynch cheered him as nothing had done since the blow fell. It had hit him harder than he would let any of them realise—Eve least of all. He could not trust himself to speak of it yet; and the only time she tried to do so, he had gently checked her; as much for her sake as his own. He did not want her to dwell upon it: words could not mend matters; and for himself, at present, it was like touching an exposed nerve. The only way of sanity was to dwell on other things.

And Lynch—or was it Fate?—had chosen this troubled moment to thrust upon him the temptation of Chitral. For in the circumstances, it amounted to a temptation; and he had half-admitted as much to Lynch, who knew, too well, the line to take with him. Yet the prospect of prolonged separation blunted the edge of his zest for that coveted appointment. Never had he so strongly felt the pull of his two halves since the very first time he had left her at Leh. He could hardly bear to think of that now, for, on this occasion, trying to discover her real wishes would be the very devil. Yet by some means, it must be done. Lynch had, at least, seemed to rouse her a trifle, with his talk of the wild mountains that she loved beyond anything else in Nature. . . .

As to that, he was not mistaken. The coming of Lynch had roused Eve in more ways than one. The fact that he could get at Lance—as she could not—through interest in his work and Frontier affairs, had pierced her surface apathy with a faint prick of jealousy; a sharper prick of fear lest Lance might tell his closest friend what really happened on that fatal day.

She did not believe he would; but the nagging thought goaded her into one more attempt at speaking of it herself, in the hope that so she might draw from him the only assurance that could comfort her heart.

It was in the morning, before Lynch came round to lunch, that a stroll in the garden gave her the opportunity she at once dreaded and desired. Any attempt at skilfully leading up to the subject was beyond her; and finally, after one of their uncomfortable pauses, she dragged it in by the heels.

‘Lance,’ she said suddenly, ‘I suppose you haven’t mentioned . . . my accident to Lynch?’

He turned to her, completely taken aback; and she saw that he was hurt to the point of anger—a fatal combination.

‘Would I be likely to mention it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You do know.’ Now he was more angry than hurt. ‘What’s come to you, Eve? I know you’re unhappy. So am I. And I know—the loss is worse for you. But it’s not only that.’

‘No—it’s not only that,’ she replied, a desperate note in her voice, a desperate hope in her heart that at last she might be able to tell him all. ‘It’s because . . . oh, Lance! I keep thinking and thinking——’

Courage failed. If she spoke the dread word, he would believe her crazy. And, as if he knew what was coming, his fingers closed sharply on hers.

‘My darling, you must not keep thinking and thinking. It can do no earthly good now. It’s only harming yourself and hurting me.’

‘I know—I know. And I’ve hurt you enough already.’

‘Oh, be quiet about that——’

The sharp pain in his tone startled and checked her; for she heard in it the note of a reproach that his lips would never utter. His strong, contained nature simply could not understand that, for her haunted type of mind, even a futile attempt at speech was better, healthier, than bottling it all up inside—turning it to poison. All unaware, he was shutting the door she had tried to open, throwing her back upon her tortured self.

In that mood of intensified depression, Lynch had found her on the lawn; had dropped his seed of an idea into her mind, and left her with a settled conviction that Lance wanted Chitral. Though Lynch had tactfully toned things down, he had said ‘it would be a fine chance,’ that it was for her to settle the matter. Here, at least, was an opportunity not to fail Lance again. Here was the call to stand aside that she had guessed at and dreaded long before. And if she—who had slain his son—could not do that much for his career, she was more than ever unworthy to be his wife.

She hoped he would speak soon, before the dread of losing him could weaken resolve. It was hard that Grace should be leaving just now. Though, even to that dear friend, she could not unlock her heart, there was about Grace a comforting stability—partly due to her religious faith—a sense of spiritual support; and Eve—sitting alone in the drawing-room, while Lynch took leave of her—felt as if a strong sustaining hand had loosened its hold, at the very moment when she needed it most of all.

Vanessa had gone with Havelock to the study. Though verily an artist, she was clever and practical. In all manner of ways she could help him with his work. If Lance did not go off with Lynch, he would come to her. Then, perhaps, he would speak about Chitral. She dreaded the strain of it, yet longed to get it over. Her own settled conviction that he wanted to go was stronger than anything he could say to refute it. When he had actually gone, she would drop into a fathomless gulf of depression. But what matter, so long as he was content, not knowing——

With a start, she realised that he was there beside her; and she had not even been aware, till he came close and laid an arm round her shoulders—almost as if he were trying to persuade her in advance.

Irked by the pain of foreknowledge, by a nervous dread of any appeal to her emotions, she almost shrank from his touch: and he, feeling her inner lack of response, reluctantly dropped his hand.

In a swift pang of self-reproach, she would fain have caught it and kissed it; but a dead weight hung upon her limbs, her brain: and the chance was gone.

He was saying, in his schooled voice, ‘Looks as if the break would last. D’you feel like a prowl on the Circular Road?’

The tentative note was a painful comment on their changed relation. Probably he wanted to get her away, to talk about Chitral; but the physical effort was beyond her.

‘I feel too slack for a walk,’ she said. ‘I’d only be a drag on you—and poor company.’

‘Then we’ll stay here. I suppose I know whose company I want.’

At the hint of reproach, she looked up quickly.

‘Darling, of course you do. I—I only think it’s a wonder how you can endure me—just now.’

And he—aware of something tormented inside her—could only say: ‘It does feel a bit like being with the ghost of you. But I’d sooner have the ghost than nothing.’

At that she put out a hand and caught his fingers so convulsively that he stooped and kissed the cool, smooth hollow of her temple. The instant of shared pain had its healing quality; but because of the pain, neither could speak.

It was Eve who forced herself to snatch at the safeguard of words.

‘I didn’t mean . . .’ she hesitated painfully; ‘I didn’t mean I wanted you to go away. But Lynch will be gone so soon. I thought—you’d better make the most of each other.’

‘You can trust Lynch for that! We had a good buck last night. And he’ll be round again for dinner. Just now—there’s something I want to discuss with you.’

She leaned back against her cushion, outwardly limp, inwardly stiffening herself to insist, unless. . . .! If he truly did not want to go, she would know the signs. Grief had not quite numbed her perceptions.

‘What is it?’ she asked innocently: and now it was he who hesitated.

‘It’s about Chitral. Mason’s leaving in October. Lynch says Uncle Vinx would be glad to have me there. But he knows I’d be likely to refuse—for obvious reasons. I told Lynch I’d talk it over with you.’

A long pause. Her voice must be quite natural.

‘Is there any need for talking over? You must be terribly pleased about it. If Uncle Vinx wants you there—of course you’ll go.’

He stared at her, dumbfounded by her coolness.

‘Well, I’m shot! There’s no “of course” about it. You couldn’t come with me. I suppose you realise that?’

‘Yes—I realise that. But I realise other things.’ She sat up and tried to smile at him, steeled to composure. ‘It would be a grand chance for you. That’s the point. Did you expect me to be selfish and grabby and make a fuss about it?’

‘No. You’re not the sort,’ he said, still completely puzzled by her attitude. It was fine of her to take that view, but her way of doing it was not normal. She did nothing quite normally these dismal days. Would she ever again? That was the fear knocking at his heart.

She had looked away, unable to meet his gaze; and the silence that fell was heavy with the certainty that he was going, whatever either of them said or did. By a kind of fatalistic intuition some part of her had known, long ago, that this particular thing would inevitably come to pass. Somewhere, they had said and done it all before. And that leaden certainty made her feel prickly and irritable over his natural hesitation to leave her, in the cruel circumstances. She had an awful sense of walking on a tight rope over a chasm, doing it with one tiny cell of her brain, one little taut nerve that might snap any minute. She must make things horribly clear; or she would be swept into a turmoil of feeling in which the mere sound of his voice would overcome her unnatural insistence on the undesired.

So she faced him again; quite unaware how hard she looked, how she was frowning from her effort at control.

‘Well, if I tell you to go, and if you really want to go—why need we argue about it?’

‘We’re not arguing,’ he retorted with a touch of heat; for he was hurt as well as puzzled by the dissonance between her words and tone. ‘But I couldn’t accept a thing like that without talking it over.’

Coming close again, he put an arm round her shoulder, and would have kissed her; but again the warm impulse was chilled by her lack of response. Sometimes, these days, it made him almost feel as if he were taking liberties with a stranger.

‘Darling,’ he said, ‘of course I knew you wouldn’t make a fuss. But I didn’t expect you’d be telling me to go—in that tone of voice. And how can I be wanting to leave you?’

The last was more than she could bear. If he said that kind of thing, she could never keep it up. So she took refuge in irritation.

‘I didn’t say you wanted to leave me, but you do want to go. Why pretend about it? We never do to each other.’

And all the while she herself was acting to the limit of her power.

‘How dare you say I’m pretending,’ he protested hotly; but because of the pain in her tone he did not remove his arm; and, for a second, she closed her eyes, feeling it there, dizzied with the perilous path she trod.

‘I . . . I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean——’ she began, and checked herself. ‘It’s not really a question of me. If Uncle Vinx wishes it, you ought to go.’

‘It doesn’t amount to that,’ he distractingly persisted. ‘Of course it would be the real political work that I was after; but I can do just as good work around Kohat.’

That word—and all its happy associations—so struck at her that she shrank from it with an unconscious physical movement, as if she were shrinking from him.

‘Oh—not Kohat——’ she said in a muffled voice; and he—hurt to the quick by her unwitting recoil—let his hand fall as if it were weighted with lead.

‘You’d hate going back there? Of course if you’d rather stay on here—if that’s what you want?’

She detected, or fancied, an undernote of relief that stiffened her wavering resolve; but she could not bring herself to lie about it.

‘I’d be all right here,’ she tacitly acquiesced, ‘with Vanessa and——’

‘And the music,’ he flung out, goaded by her wrong way of doing the right thing into feeling that perhaps his own reluctance and his consideration for her amounted to a fuss about nothing. In her present half-estranged state, she seemed simply not to care. ‘And no beastly housekeeping to bore you stiff. No tiresome husband to scold you when things go wrong.’

She knew now that she had deeply wounded him, given him a fatally wrong impression, which she dared not altogether dispel, since it clinched matters for him. But she could not let a palpably false statement go unchallenged.

‘I didn’t say that—I didn’t think that,’ she demurred in a small voice. ‘It’s your own invention.’

‘It’s my inference,’ he corrected her, ‘from the things you’ve said. Anyhow, you’ll be better—your health and all—in this lovely climate, with Vanessa, who understands you.’

‘Don’t you understand me?’ It was a cry from her heart.

‘I fancied I did, more or less. But just now . . . I’m all in a fog.’

‘I am too,’ she murmured in so hopeless a tone that, in spite of rebuffs, he came close again. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘do you hate me to touch you?’

‘No—no. . .’

The taut nerve snapped; and as his arm went round her, she collapsed against him, shaken with half-hysterical sobs.

‘Eve—Eve, my angel,’ he cried, kissing her, stroking her, trying by virtue of the physical touch to calm her. ‘It’s nearly turned your brain.’

‘It nearly has,’ she brokenly admitted, knowing that they did not mean the same thing.

‘I won’t go. I can’t leave you.’

At that she stiffened herself with a desperate effort.

‘Darling—you truly must go.’ She kissed him to soften the command. ‘I did promise I’d never be a millstone. And I meant everything I said, except—except the horrid things. I can’t stand it all over again. Don’t say any more about it—please.’

‘You order me to accept?’

‘Yes. I’m sure it’s what you ought to do. You’ll be glad when you’re there.’ She tried to push him from her. ‘ Go and tell Lynch. He’ll be fearfully pleased.’

‘I’m not going in order to please Lynch.’

‘Well then—because of India and Uncle Vinx. And because I say it.’

‘Yes—because you say it.’

The solemn note in his voice moved her as she had not been moved since he told her the child was gone. But she had carried her point, had proved to Lynch that her good intentions were no pie-crust affairs. And now it was done, exhaustion overwhelmed her.

‘My sweet, you must lie down,’ he said, feeling the dead weight of her, fearing she might faint.

But she pulled herself together. ‘ I’m going straight to bed. You go to Lynch. I probably won’t come down again. I feel as if—I could sleep for ever.’

‘I’ll put you to bed,’ he volunteered, dreading to leave her; but she gently pushed him away.

‘No—I can manage. I’d rather.’

He sighed. ‘ Oh, of course, if you’d rather——’

The veil seemed to be falling between them again. But she kissed him: a lingering kiss.

Then she went out, in her languid unnatural way and left him alone—doubly alone; because—for that shaken moment—they had come nearer in spirit than at any time since the boy’s death. Yet she could still thrust him from her, could simply order him to accept Chitral. Here was the coveted appointment thrust on him virtually against his will; all pleasure in the prospect of more congenial work and conditions blotted out by her strange manner of insisting that he should go. The irony of it cut deep.

As he stood by the long window staring blankly at luminous drifts of cloud lying low among the hills, a curious chill crept into his veins; as it were a whispered warning that there was danger—to her in leaving her thus. But, for some queer reason of her own, she would not have it otherwise. So what else was a man to do?

Chapter 6

. . . The bewilderment and smart
Of the flawed mirror and cracked heart
Set the twin flanges of the mind apart . . .
— Gerald Gould

August was drawing to an end: Lance had been gone nearly a fortnight. To Eve, in her mental isolation, the words conveyed no clear sense of time. If someone said he had been gone two years, she would have accepted the statement with no more than a passing wonder that it should be so. You could not measure life by weeks or years.

Those last few days—the dread of losing him, the fear of breaking down and undoing her dismal good deed—had put a severer strain on her whole nervous system than she, or anyone, had realised. Looking back to them—to their last clinging kiss, when she had seen the tears in his eyes—was like looking back across a blank endless stretch of alternate nights and days. Her mind seemed befogged, her senses numb, as if she felt and heard everything through a layer of cotton wool. In a dim way she felt grateful to the cotton wool. Realities were sharp-edged things. Till the dull ache within her subsided, she did not want to realise, or to feel: and that secret inhibition was harming her, cutting her off from contact with her closest and dearest. Was it all her fault? Did they try to reach her through that layer of cotton wool? Human beings, even the nearest, were terribly apart, when it came to the real things. Surely the curse of Adam was not work, but this fated isolation of the inner self; each living fragment separate and solitary never more so than in those darkest moments when grief forced the spirit in on itself. Only joy, the releasing, scattering element, could be shared—up to a point.

And, in this first year of marriage, she and Lance had seemed to achieve a vital comradeship, a sense of unity that defied physical separation. Was it all an illusion? Had they lost it for ever? She could not say precisely what was lacking, now, in his letters; but they no longer had the magic quality of almost bringing him into the room. They were simply letters from Lance. Dear and precious, because he had written them; but they were brief. They seldom dipped below the surface of his daily round, the monotone of hot-weather days and breathless nights.

As for her own, fatally she knew that there was no breath of life in them. Her hidden tormented self was the last thing she wanted to write about; and she had lost, for a time, her old eager interest in her fellows. She still saw very few people; and she could not endure music. It was hard on Vanessa, who was endlessly patient with this aloof, unsatisfactory Eve. If she could only conquer her shadowed self, break through her wall of reserve, the evil thing would have less power to torment her. More than one chance had been given her: but when it came to the point, she could not say aloud those cruel, haunting words.

Spasmodically, she tried to take more interest in outside things. But it seemed not to matter much, just now, what happened to anyone—herself included. Yet she dearly loved Vanessa; and quite suddenly she had remembered the Kitten. News of her had come while the shadow was at its blackest; news of Kitty with a baby girl, born in the seventh month, without harm to either. Nothing ever harmed girl babies, Eve unkindly reflected. They were assertive creatures, bent on adding their sum of more to a world already over full of them.

She had simply not been able to answer that letter. Several letters, that came then, she had not even read. Lately she had found a batch of them tidily tucked into an elastic band by Lance, with a pencil note in his handwriting: ‘Not answered. Several not opened.’ That characteristic little service had brought tears to her eyes. Among the unopened ones she had found a second letter from Kitty full of incoherent sympathy for her loss. She had roused herself to answer both, lamely enough; and now she was actually hoping that Kitty would write again.

She had also found a book that held her attention; another volume of essays by her favourite Middleton Murry. She was sitting with it now, under a tree on the lawn, in a burst of sunshine that had followed on days and days of rain. No breath of wind; the air muggy, the earth steaming, all the far hills blue-purple; their grandeur and beauty making discord in her soul.

She was reading over and over a passage that curiously reflected her present state, though it was concerned with larger issues: ‘Our souls are alive, but we cannot get at them: they are us, but we cannot make them ours. We are like the inhabitants of a house of many rooms, of which all are in darkness save one. . . . We can see the light gleaming there, but we cannot find the way to the door. . . . If only we could find the way!’

If only. . .! Her heart echoed the cry of all seekers through all the ages. But her glance wandered down to the more heartening definition of heroes, as men who had the courage of themselves. ‘Whatever they did had the whole of themselves behind it.’ Yes—that was Lance. He had the stuff of greatness in him; and whatever Lance willed, with the whole of himself, must come to pass, however lost and doubting the other half of the bargain might be. There was encouragement in the idea, after the dismal sense of her mind moving to and fro in vacuity. . . .

Lifting her eyes from the book, she saw Vanessa coming across the lawn with Larry, the beloved, persistent retriever. She and Havelock had been to a big gymkhana; and she waved her gloves for greeting.

‘A shame to leave her sitting on the All-Alone-Stone! Havelock went to the Club for bridge.’

Instinctively Eve closed her book, as if the open page could reveal her very private thoughts.

Vanessa sat down by her, glanced at it without comment, and lit a cigarette.

‘Have one, darling.’ She held out her case. ‘Good for your nerves.’

Eve frowned. ‘Bother my nerves.’

‘Yes—bother them. But don’t let them have it all their own way. There’s nothing deadlier. Do you never feel inclined to come out with me sometimes?’

‘No—I don’t.’

‘Well, it’s time you made an effort. Shall we have a little dinner next week—carefully picked people?’

Eve drew herself together with a shrinking movement so unlike her that it made Vanessa feel queer all down her spine.

‘It’s your house. Have it if you like,’ said that alien Eve. ‘I needn’t come down to dinner.’

Vanessa’s sigh hinted at impatience.

‘Look here, my sweet, this won’t do. For all our sakes, you mustn’t let this misery make you ill. Try to remember that others are unhappy too. You’re not the only pebble on the beach!’ She forced a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘Would it help, if you could get right away from here?’

‘Away—from you?’ The note of dismay comforted Vanessa at a very disheartened moment. ‘But how—where?’

‘That’s the difficulty,’ Vanessa admitted. ‘Lance spoke of it before he left.’

‘What did he say?’ Instantly she was on the defensive.

‘He wondered if I could manage a trip Home—and take you with me.’

‘Home!’ Eve echoed again, hurt and bewildered. ‘He wants me to go Home without him—thousands of miles away?’

Vanessa, startled in her turn, said quickly: ‘Darling, don’t twist things so. I never said that.’

‘Oh no. You don’t say things. He doesn’t say things. But I can feel them. I’m not quite dense.’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Vanessa flashed, between impatience and pain. ‘Lance was simply thinking of you. Most young men think first of themselves; but he’s been splendid over the whole thing.’

‘Oh I know he’s splendid. I’m the trouble—and the sinner all round.’

The desperate note in her voice banished impatience; and Vanessa put an arm round her. ‘My precious child, you must not let yourself think of it like that.’

Eve shivered. It was the moment. If she could but speak those awful words.

‘I’m feeling it like that,’ she said—and knew she could get no farther. ‘But England?’

‘Dear, it was only a suggestion. Impossible for me. A little later, we might manage a trip to Udaipur; and perhaps a week in Bombay.’

‘Why Bombay? Hateful place.’

‘Well the truth is——’ she palpably hesitated. ‘We rather want you to see a specialist about your inside.’

Her easy manner discounted the idea of anything serious; but Eve—strung up by that unlucky allusion to Lance—was at her worst again.

‘I won’t see a specialist,’ she said low and obstinately. ‘What’s wrong! Why didn’t Grace see to me? She must know all about women’s insides.’

‘Yes. But it was too soon then; and we didn’t want to alarm you.’

‘I wouldn’t be alarmed, with her. Unless—’ A snake of terror darted through her brain. ‘Are you trying to tell me I mightn’t be able to—ever again!’

She could not force herself to put it more clearly; but Vanessa’s arms were round her, Vanessa’s cheek against hers.

‘My sweet child, I’m only trying to save you from the tragic possibility.’

Eve said nothing. She was fighting against a sudden uprush of emotion—to no purpose. With a strangled sound, she fell limply against Vanessa, striving piteously for control; while Vanessa was thanking God for the relief of that natural human collapse—the first she had witnessed since the day of the funeral. Tears were on her own cheeks also; and there was no sense of strain between them any more. But Vanessa, unwittingly, had sown in Eve’s mind the seed of two ideas that her little dark imp would use to his own ends.

For the moment, however, she felt soothed and comforted; and the evening post bag contained a letter from Murree that shifted her thoughts from vain brooding to Kitty’s very real struggle to keep a family of four on an inelastic pension whose two ends could not be persuaded to meet. She was still far from strong; and her ayah—on account of the new baby—had been demanding more pay. As there were no rupees available, she had decamped with several precious oddments. So there was Kitty, left completely ‘on the ground,’ terrified of an unknown ayah, yet physically unable to carry on alone; and Mrs Sterne had gone back to Kohat because her husband was ill.

‘Oh Eve—will you think me dreadful’—the unformed sprawling hand ran on—‘I’m going to let her adopt my Bacha-boy. He’s been her ‘special’ since Claudia came. She wants him fearfully; and he’s gooder with her than ever he was with me. It seems sinful giving away your own child. But how on earth could I feed and manage them all in England? I’m going—did I tell you?—early in October, if I can only wangle a troopship passage for me and my horde in the slack season. How on earth I’ll tackle them single-handed, goodness only knows.

‘You dear, sweet, sad Eve, why aren’t you in Murree? It would be “der-licious”—as Val says—to have you running in like you used to do. We could cheer each other up; and I’m dying to show you my Claudia. . . . Oh I mustn’t say that——’

It was so like Kitty, saying it and unsaying it, that the hurt was mixed with a faint glow of affection—and more than affection. For that rambling tale of woe had fired Eve with an idea. If they wanted her to get right away from this haunted loveliness—why not Murree? Why should poor penniless Kitty pay for a strange ayah, when this idle, useless Eve had hours and days on her empty hands? She knew now that the sane fragment of herself longed for something that urgently must be done; no matter if much of it were mere drudgery; something to prevent her brain from going ceaselessly round and round. Here she was simply a third—envying the happy companionship of Vanessa and her man. For of course Vanessa had made a success of her second best marriage; though to Eve’s knowledge That Other still livingly dwelt in her heart. It was the kind of thing that only Vanessa could do. Kitty needed her: that was the main point. And she refused to dwell on the one spot of fear—the fear of seeing and touching that very new baby. Apart from that, the idea lit up her mind like a gleam of sunshine after rain. For the first time, in weeks, her natural spirit of eagerness revived: a trembling flame, a tentative renewal of life. It must all be settled quickly before the little wavering flame died down.

It was all settled as quickly as even she could wish. Vanessa—though sad at her going—applauded the inspiration; and Eve insisted on telegrams; one to Kitty, pre-paid, that evoked an ecstatic welcome; one to Lance announcing her intention, saying she would write.

Then there was a fevered packing and planning for the journey. Bliss, she decided, must be left behind. She proposed to travel alone with old Miriam; but they would not allow it; nor would Havelock let Vanessa run down with her, even to Srinagar. He could be firm when he chose, in his quiet way. He suggested his head peon, Sher Ali, as a reliable escort; that very Sher Ali who had met her and her mother at Bombay more than eight years ago, who still worshipped the memory of her father. In spite of her marriage, she remained his ‘Missy Sahib.’ With him she would be as safe as with any white man.

The monsoon was doing its evil worst; and the risk of landslips worried Vanessa more than it worried Eve, who seemed almost her venturesome self again—living resolutely in the moment. Good-bye to Vanessa—though both put a brave face on it—was a bad moment. But once she was well away from Gulmarg, the old fascination of movement captured her. And beyond Srinagar things became exciting. In the hired car, recklessly driven, she was hurtled up hill and down; rushed round perilous corners in spite of threats from Sher Ali; and as they descended to the dāk bungalow—where she must spend a fly-pestered night—a mountain of cloud came surging over the mountains of earth. Daylight went out like a snuffed candle: and right overhead the storm broke in fury—wind and rain and hail. Lightning quivered and darted into every cranny. Thunder ravaged the peaks. The tale windows of the car let in most of the wind and rain. Eve, huddled in a corner, was damp and chilled and battered; but the fact did not seem to concern her in the least. The greater grief had robbed mere discomforts of their power to annoy.

Next day, unrested, unrefreshed, it was all to do over again. But this time it was up and up to the heights of Murree; till at last they rattled into a narrow compound; and the Kitten welcomed her as if she were an angel dropped from heaven.

It was a sensation at once strange and familiar to be having tea with Kitty and her babies—the new one tactfully asleep, out of sight; almost as if she had stepped back across a dark chasm into her old radiant life. But at night—unable to sleep for weariness and the devil’s tattoo of rain on the roof—anguish came flooding in again like a black tide. . . .

It was a poor little bungalow that Kitty shared with a school teacher on leave from Pindi, who lived in her own rooms and paid half the rent. Its roof leaked generously when the heavens opened, as they did very completely, during the last days of August and first days of September, in that year of the great Indus flood. Tin tubs or basins, set to catch the leakage, were a constant source of delight and mischief to the twins; while the drip-drip of falling water made a soft accompaniment to their harassed lives.

Very soon Eve realised that she had fled only just in time. From all over the Northern Punjab came news of floods and landslips, of railways disorganised, whole villages wiped out. Devastation on the grand scale; that was the way of the elements in India—the gods of lightning, thunder and rain, unchallenged rulers of that faction-ridden land. And the Asiatic accepted the inevitable, from habit or piety. Only the Englishman—devoid of pious resignation—attempted, and often achieved, the impossible. Soldiers and civilians, in the whole flood area, were making desperate efforts to repair damage and save life.

In Kashmir, the Jhelum had done its worst. Srinagar was said to be in peril; houses isolated, houseboats besieged; the Bank and Post Office carrying on afloat; the Residency under six feet of water. The Kohala bridge, that linked Kashmir to India, had been telescoped by a huge land-slide, and other parts of the road swept away. Kashmir was cut off from India. And still the rain fell, and the floods increased. Nowshera was drowned out. Before long Murree itself was isolated. No letter from Lance or Vanessa for more than a week. And Eve—a shade more alive to the outer world—felt the complete severance more than she allowed Kitty to perceive.

For Kitty was now increasingly worried over her failure to find an ayah who would cross ‘the black water’ on the chance of a return passage; her futile struggle with bills that seemed to grow of their own accord. Do what she would, the money melted—she never quite knew how. Compared with Kitty, Eve began to feel herself a paragon of efficiency, to realise that the domestic scene must have been trying, at times, for Claude. Yet one could not feel annoyed with anything so loveable; and the ‘Heavenly Twins,’ though quite out of hand, were delicious in their four-year-old precocity. The Bacha clung to her; and the newcomer was not tactlessly thrust on her attention. Nor did Kitty say much about little Ian. She seemed, in a measure, to understand Eve’s need to suffer in silence and alone.

And in silence and alone she continued to suffer. The pain, if less acute, was there all the while, like a wound under surface dressing that soothes but cannot heal. She was not yet fit for the incessant physical demands of the task she had set herself; and the outer damp and dreariness seemed to saturate her soul. All day long she felt tired; and often at night, for very tiredness, she could not sleep. The whole of her ached for Lance, for the magic of his touch; so that she could hardly bear to let her mind go near him. She could only lie there, with closed eyes, at the mercy of that self outside herself, from whom she had fled . . . in vain.

And her first letter from him was marred by his frank disapproval of her erratic bid for salvation. While applauding her generous impulse, he felt convinced she would overtax her strength. It was not the sort of change he would have prescribed for her. Saddened afresh, she made excuses for him. If she could not open her heart to him, how could he understand her peculiar need? He was well and strong. He seemed happy enough down there, absorbed again in his work and his polo; and she ought to be thankful for that. But that she should be aching thus, and he more or less content, emphasised the terrible sense of apartness, which could only be dispelled by months of closest contact with him. And the chance of that—in his interests—she had deliberately thrust away. A week in October, if she yielded to the charm of it, would only sharpen the pang of parting till his summer leave was due: one brief month—an age away.

So, in order to dull the ache, she tried to fill the blank with Kitty and a pair of quicksilver babies, who gave her no peace from morning till night. Steeped to the lips in prose, she was haunted all the while by a lurking fear that the spirit of music had basely deserted her for ever. Only in the knowledge of being necessary to someone—the woman’s fundamental need—could she find comfort of a sort.

Then the rain abated and the sun shone out; and the September air, with its champagne quality, tingled in her cheeks; but it left her heart unvisited. And Vanessa wrote, ‘Darling, I hope the early autumn glory has revived you at last. When are you coming back to us?’

When——? To that hope—that question, what answer?

for the autumn glory had not revived her; and she knew now, with a swift startled pang, that the unreal, yet inescapable Eve, who had driven her from Gulmarg, was secretly afraid of returning to Kashmir and elegant idleness; afraid of the associations that would crowd upon her. And the old anguish that had partly subsided, came flooding in again. . . .

It was one of her bad nights. Since she came to bed at eleven, she had drowsed a little now and then; not ten minutes of true sleep. And the luminous face of her travelling clock told her it was half-past one. Yet another undesired To-morrow had crept upon her unawares. And beyond it lurked endless shrouded to-morrows empty of Lance, empty of music, empty of zest. For the moment she had lost her hold on life. All that she deemed most secure had fallen away from her. And she lay there with closed eyes, while busy little wheels went round and round in her brain to the time of, ‘Where can I go? What shall I do?’ It was the curse of her double-sexed artist nature that, even now, she lacked the natural woman’s capacity to sit down under the bludgeonings of fate.

Suddenly—from within or without, she could not tell—came the clear command: ‘Go Home with Kitty. Do that much for a woman in real difficulties. Break right away from your own life—for a time. Only by losing yourself, you may find yourself again.’ It was no mere thought, but her father’s voice sounding in her brain. Illusion or no, it brought welcome relief—that clear command in the very tones that she, the disobedient one, had never disobeyed.

It was a drastic prescription; but it took instant effect. It set her questioning and planning with her surface brain, while her heart achingly realised all that a clean breakaway would involve for her and for Lance. Never, of her own accord, would the thought have entered her mind. It was he who had first planted it there; had left her feeling sore and puzzled; had set her wondering—was he afraid, as she was secretly afraid. . .? If there was any fear of that—the more drastic her prescription, the better for them both.

While her brain felt so curiously blurred, she could not see ahead in her usual vivid fashion; nor perceive the danger that lurked in taking stock of things when the shadows were darkest; in forcing an issue, when her whole distracted being simply asked to be let alone to regain its normal balance. She could not even sharply feel the threatened pang of a separation that made Chitral seem no distance at all. For she was still afraid of feeling; and she still could not bear music. Would it never possess her again—that resistless urge of her whole being to play, to create? One was hopelessly at the mercy of an art—its vehicle merely. It would come—when it would come. And perhaps that far bold flight would awaken the mysterious thing- that was not dead, but sleeping. If she soaked in the clever unemotional music of the moderns, it might rise up in protest. On the chance of that she would take any risk. Lacking it, she was but half herself.

Everything seemed to point one way—the way of obedience to that clear command. For her fatalistic temperament was troubled with too keen a sense of life’s underlying drama, of powers behind the players weaving an invisible pattern from seeming haphazards, or watching helpless humans, themselves, weave very carefully the webs that ensnared them.

And Lance——? His name touched a chord that vibrated too painfully. For he would be hurt, he might even be angry that she should take so fateful a step without consulting him. But her haunting fear, her urgent need, she could not make even Lance understand. This strife between her dissociated selves could only be resolved by so much of her true self as remained in command. And she could not sufficiently stand away from it all to perceive that she would be dealing a cruel blow to Lance, whose very virtues did him an ill-service. For the fact that he seemed content with his round of work and play, that he rode his emotions on the curb, and hid his fitful jealousy under a bushel, conspired to create an impression that neither his love nor his pain could possibly equal her own. If self-pity, born of jangled nerves, warped her judgment, blinded her to his point of view, it was through no failure of love but through failure of vision. In that hour of stress she was mentally short-sighted; only the near things clearly seen: Kitty’s urgent need, her own need to escape from haunting associations, to recapture the lost spirit of music. And here was the chance given her in the form of practical service, the only thing she seemed fit for at present—she, the unpractical one.

Hovering on the verge of sleep, there drifted into her mind a sentence she had read in an essay years ago—was it Emerson? ‘It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. . . . Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.’ Another ghostly finger pointing the same way as her father’s command. Well, she would face that ultimate test. She, who had once believed herself a born solitary, would put away all support and stand alone—utterly alone, in spirit and in heart. If it was a false leading and the worst happened, Lance would be well rid of her. If she emerged from that desperate venture, she would be new-made, worthier of him and of his faith in her.

To-morrow she would offer her services to Kitty. And once she had spoken, there could be no more wavering, no going back on her tracks. The Kitten would see to that.

How she was ever going to achieve her fatal, final letters to Lance, to Vanessa, to Grace, she had not the remotest idea. But if a thing had to be done, it could be done—as she had proved during those awful days when she had had to conceal from him her tragic knowledge about their child. Tired beyond thought, or desire of further battling with her shadowy selves, she sank into acquiescence as into a feather bed; and so fell calmly profoundly asleep.

Chapter 7

I went away from you, who are
My peace, my courage and my star;
My spirit moving in me as I move . . .
I went . . . but to go from you
Was more than loss of what is lost and found.
— Gerald Gould

Morning, inevitably brought reaction—a chill of doubt and dread that must simply be ignored. She bathed and dressed in a dream, unable to see or think beyond immediate issues, yet so precariously balanced on the knife-edge of decision, that a letter from Lance might have tilted the scale.

But no letter came. And, at breakfast, she startled Kitty out of her few wits by offering her services as nursery maid for the voyage. And to see Kitty’s face light up all over, when she grasped her good fortune, warmed Eve’s heart as it had not been warmed for uncountable days.

It was easy work weaving a plausible tale—founded on fact. For it was true that Lance had suggested England, that Eve had not favoured the idea; that Kitty in straits and the chance of going Home together, accounted for her sudden change of front. And Kitty accepted it all without asking tactless questions. She had been too well trained by Claude. She merely blessed Eve for putting up with the tiresome rôle of nursery maid to those bits of human quicksilver, the Heavenly Twins; and wondered, in parenthesis, if Lance would approve.

‘Well, it’s an expensive change of air,’ Eve stated demurely, evading the awkward issue. ‘One must economise. And I’m afraid it’s you that will find me tiresome as an anything but nursery maid! I’m not at my brightest on a ship. But I have done it once before.’

And she told the tale of Peter and his mother with a dash of her old verve; though at heart she saw the irony rather than the humour of returning to the England she had fled from in the same rôle—a sameness with a tragic difference. Was she—more artist than woman—doomed, for her sins, to devote herself to other people’s children? Would she never again be allowed to serve one of her own—for Lance? While unsuspecting Kitty saw her as an angel of light, she knew too well, that she was clutching at Kitty’s need to save herself from slipping completely into the Slough of Despond.

During the brief time that elapsed between her eleventh hour decision and the dread day of departure, she only wrote once to Lance and once to Vanessa, giving her the date when Kitty would go down the hill, leaving her to infer that it would also be the date of Eve’s return. She could not write even surface lies to either of them; and she could not write the truth till she had actually started for Bombay.

She never quite knew afterwards how she lived through those remaining days in Kitty’s ramshackle bungalow—days mercifully crowded with things to be done: a plague of boxes and clothes, of many unpaid bills, that must be paid, somehow, though Kitty’s ‘cash in hand’ melted like a wax candle in a breeze. Then there were her own plans to settle, her passage to be secured: and the fact that all went smoothly increased her fatal fated feeling that ‘it was to be.’ While her surface brain worked mechanically, thinking of everything for Kitty and the children, her whole inner being seemed in a curious state of suspension; so that she moved through that timeless procession of days like an automaton propelled by mysterious forces too strong for her to reason with or resist.

The end came all too soon: and now she must write that impossible letter, which she had decided to post at Delhi, as they sped southward to the edge of India. Once that was achieved, the brief letters to Vanessa and to Grace would be simple—by comparison. Sure of partial understanding, she could state the reason for her haunted frame of mind and refer Vanessa to Lance for fuller explanation. But she had yet to supply him with that explanation; and it seemed a task beyond her powers.

She spent the better part of two nights writing and destroying several incoherent attempts to put it all on paper, in the teeth of a hampering conviction that his sane masculine mind never would understand the tangle of nerves and distorted imaginings, which she herself barely understood.

On the second night, from a litter of pencil scribbles, there emerged an effusion—sincere enough, if none too lucid—that must serve, because she could write no more.

‘Lance, My Dearest Darling,’—she wrote rapidly to conceal the unsteadiness of her hand.

‘Before you read this, please believe I’m loving you terribly, or I wouldn’t be feeling so bad about everything, especially about having lost our little Ian, all because I’m such an incorrigible idiot. It’s that that’s been driving me nearly demented. I didn’t lose him—I killed him. And it hurt so terribly that I couldn’t talk of it even to darling Vanessa. I tried with you—but you wouldn’t let me. So I gave it up. For after all, you could only say kind comforting things; and I would have seen the truth in your eyes. You said it that afternoon, when you were frightened and angry. You said if any harm came, I would never forgive myself. I can’t. And the awful thing is. I feel as if you can’t either, deep down in your heart, though you wouldn’t admit it for the world. You were quite right to speak so, darling. You couldn’t tell how it would be.

‘And there’s a worse thing sticking like an arrow in my heart. I couldn’t speak of it—I don’t know how to write it, even now. It was something that Nurse said, when she thought I was asleep, that my baby hadn’t had a chance, that young women today didn’t trouble—and it was “no better than murder.”

‘I know that was unjust and exaggerated, but still I did it. And it keeps repeating in my brain. It’s like being haunted. He haunts me—the little face that seemed like Daddy come to life again, and his thin sad cry. He was our first best treasure, and I failed him. And I seemed to be failing you all round. So when it came to Chitral I said to myself, “Here’s something you can do for him. Let him go.”

‘Then Lynch talked to me about it that morning. And things he said made me see terribly clearly that you ought to have your chance up there. So for your sake, I ordered you to go; though I didn’t know how I was going to live without you.

‘I can’t bear to remember that talk and the horrid things I said. When you were gone, I felt like a lost soul. Vanessa was an angel to me; and if I’d had my little Ian, I could have managed to be happy with her, making music and sharing beautiful things. But when you’re quite out of tune inside, beautiful things hurt more than all. What I wanted was something I had to do whether I liked it or not, scrubbing floors or digging potatoes. The sort of things you can’t do in India. And there wasn’t anything—no Lance, no Ian, no home. There was only elegant idleness, and feeling half-crazed inside. It was all a hideous bottled-up nightmare.

‘Then Kitty’s despairing letter came; and it looked as if Fate had given me something to catch hold of, something I could do. So I dashed off to her—and you didn’t approve. But I knew you didn’t understand. And I have been able to help in lots of ways. She says she’d be lost without me, and she must get Home to her own people. So—after thinking and thinking—I came to a grim decision.

‘Darling Lance, please understand. It isn’t callousness. It’s desperation. I’ve decided to go with her, to break right away from everything—even from you, for I don’t know how long. I believe it’s my best chance to escape from this haunted misery. I can’t see you anyhow for months, and letters aren’t the comfort they used to be. We’ll never get properly straight with each other while I’m like this. And I can’t see more than a few yards ahead—I daren’t look. I can’t properly think it all out. Things run away when I try to catch hold of them.

‘I suppose this is my punishment. But it’s cruel that I can’t be punished without hurting you. Vanessa did tell me that you said it would be a good thing if I could go Home for a while. I couldn’t understand why you wanted to send me so far away; but I’m going now. So perhaps you’ll think for once I’m doing a sensible thing. The chance came, and I simply felt I had to take it.

‘Perhaps I’m writing a lot of muddled nonsense. I only know I can’t bear leaving you and India; but I feel as if something stronger than myself is driving me. So I’ve done it—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m going on a troopship with Kitty to help look after the children; and when you get this, I’ll probably be out on the horrid sea, trying to put you and India and everything out of my mind—for a time.

‘Now do you understand? Or must I say it plainer? I’m not asking you to pay for me, in any way, while I’m behaving like this. I’m not even going to write or give any one my address. I haven’t got one to give. It’s a clean break away till I’m better. I suppose I will be—someday. When Kitty goes to her own people, I must find work. I’m sure I can with my fiddle, when I can bear to touch it again. And I want you to feel free for your work. You seem happy in it now. And you will love Chitral. As for me, with my £150 a year, I won’t be starving anyhow. And if I pull myself together and face things out alone, I may escape out of this fog in my brain, and come back to you—one day. Try to think that Lance, and don’t grieve too much.

‘I know this letter will hurt you badly, but not more than it’s hurting me to write. And if I seem horrid, not giving you a chance to answer, it’s only because I know you would say dear kind things, and tell me I’m fancying everything. And your truthful eyes wouldn’t be there to save me from trying to believe, simply because I want to. I would keep feeling that poor little ghost between us—reminding me at every turn.

‘Darling, I’ve tried to make things clear. If I can’t, it’s because my brain keeps going round in circles. I’m all right, truly, when I’m doing practical things; but I can’t bear any one near me who makes me feel. I’m frightened of feeling——

‘I must stop now. And I can’t bear to, because it’s like talking to you—a horrible conversation. After this, no more, till the real Eve can get hold of things properly. If only—if only my music would come back to me, it would sweep away this tangle of misery and haunting thoughts. Then—I might come to you again and try to be a better sort of wife.

‘Pray for me, Lance; and remember I love you always. Be successful up there. Do splendid work. But don’t quite stop loving,

‘Your Eve.’

There! the impossible thing was written at last. Mechanically she sealed the envelope and pushed it from her as if it burnt her fingers. Without surprise or concern, she discovered that her lip was bleeding from the sharp, unconscious pressure of her teeth. Stupefied with weariness, she stumbled to her bed and lay there in a stunned misery that could find no relief in tears.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The day of their departure dawned clear and cloudless, a smiling day, indifferent to tragic issues. The car, that would carry them to Rawal Pindi, was packed to the limit with boxes and bundles and babies. In the front seat by the driver, Eve’s old Miriam sat with her Bacha, who fiercely hugged the unwilling black kitten, half-strangling the creature, lest it wriggle out of his arms. They would be left at Pindi with a friend of Mrs Sterne’s, till she herself could come over from Kohat to annex the unsuspecting babe. So long as he had his kitten and his Miriam—who had taken him to her heart—he would not cry his eyes out for a vanished mother. It was Kitty who felt Like a traitor; though the deserted one would be, in every way, better off than the other three, as the only adopted son of Major and Mrs Sterne.

The last two days had been a scurry of fevered packing and sorting out essentials for the voyage; not to mention the hateful necessity of wiring to Vanessa, ‘So sorry. Return delayed. Writing. Eve.’ The need for that sort of petty deception hurt a part of her that was less numb than her other sensibilities: but no hurt could be more than a surface pin-prick—after writing that letter to Lance.

This morning, for a brief ten minutes, she had fled from the final scrummage of baskets and bundles to the little back verandah, that looked across the purple valleys to the far snows—peaceful and unconcerned in the unclouded light of an October morning. To leave these high encompassing hills was, for her, as hard a matter as parting with any human friend; and they neither knew nor cared that one trivial worshipper must to-day take leave of them. In that clear stillness the earth seemed spellbound; the sky softened to the blue of wild hyacinths; a powdery grape-bloom on the purple distance; and near at hand not a leaf stirring. The trees seemed fixed for ever in their golden glory; the whole scene wrapped in a tranced loveliness, that soothed her like a kindly hand laid on her heart.

The post had brought a brief, troubled letter from Lance telling her that a change in official plans had upset his dates, possibly wrecked his chance of that week with her at Srinagar. He might have to go by the shorter route from Peshawar; or even by air. When he knew for certain he would wire.

Now she pulled the letter out of her bag, ran her eye over it, and thrust it back with shaking lips, as Kitty’s voice came to her from another world: ‘Eve—Eve, where are you?’

Her answer was drowned by a wild shriek from one of the twins. Life and its pitiless demands was upon her again; and her own fatal letter was safe in her travelling bag. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

For two nights and three days India went rushing ceaselessly past their carriage windows. All day her eyes were aware of it; though the twins unconsciously vied with each other in distracting her attention; and nearly all night her mind was aware of it, which was almost worse. There were terrifying moments when she felt as if something in her brain would snap, and she would scream aloud or pull the alarm chain—anything to stop that eternally rushing train. Yet through it all she lay with clenched hands, her face pressed into the pillow, trying to regain calm and poise from the reminder that her tragic self was only one small human fragment among millions scattered over the earth—less than the dust. But the pain went too deep, the cloud on her spirit was too dense, to admit a ray of light. Mercifully, suffering reached a point when one could not think coherently at all, when everything was blotted out except that perpetual sense of India rushing past them—rushing the wrong way. . . .

Now the Frontier was gone—the virile, soldierly India of her father and Lance; now the Punjab—unbeautiful, yet fascinating, like a strong ugly face; dusty avenues, domes of ruined tombs, blue woodsmoke and the pungent cold weather smell recalling golden days in camp; now Rajputana—the princely India of fierce desert and wonderful cities, where she might have wandered with Vanessa, had she been the normal sorrowing Eve they all supposed her to be. They would soon know otherwise now.

For Delhi had rushed past long ago. That final letter was on its way to Lance; and she did not dare to think how pleased he would be at sight of it—how cruelly the horrid thing would let him down. Would he be angry? Or would he, even dimly, understand? Vain questions. She had sped her arrow; no word from him could reach her, until——

Her thought stopped dead, as her feet might stop, at the edge of a chasm. Beyond this interminable journey, she could see nothing, realise nothing——

Bombay at last—an utterly strange India, with its palms and its tramways, its crude mingling of East and West. To dwellers in the Punjab it was little more than the Gate of India, a place of hotels and ships; more recently, a place of constant riots. To Eve, dazed with their long journey, it was chiefly a babel of noises; hooting of motors, clanging of trams, a jangle of strident voices. The hated ship, by contrast, was almost a haven—so long as it did not move: for at that slack season, passengers were few.

Sooner than look her last at India on deck, and risk dissolving in tears, she went straight down to the impossible little cabin she was sharing with Kitty and the children. Nearly a month of it! Her heart turned slowly over; and the cold stuffiness, the familiar smells, almost sent her aloft again. But the twins were busy exploring, with small chirruping sounds like a pair of birds; and they would be more trouble on deck. So, as nothing really mattered, one way or the other, she remained sitting listlessly on the sofa berth staring into vacancy, not attempting to unpack, till a steward put his head in and said something about tea.

A deceptively gentle sound, like the purring of a tiger, told her that the monster had begun to move. . . .

That night she lay in her narrow berth and felt the deadly engines throbbing under her. Now it was the sea and the sky that were slipping past her—the wrong way. And a cold wave of realisation broke over her, sending a stealthy chill down her spine. What had she done—and why had she done it? In spite of Kitty and three babies, she was alone, desperately alone, like a wounded animal. By her own act she was cut adrift from India, from Vanessa, from Lance.

No, never from Lance. There was no getting away from him. However many thousands of miles she might put between them, he would still dwell continually under the surface of her dazed and distracted brain. He was her lover, her husband, part of the substance of her being. Yet she could not call up, in the darkness, a clear vision of his face. She could only he there aching for his voice, for the touch of his hand, till utter physical loneliness overwhelmed her; and she broke into a helpless storm of tears. To-morrow she would be ashamed of her weakness; unaware of the saving grace in that natural surrender to pent-up emotion that was damaging her nerves.

Slowly, slowly, as the ship ploughed a silver furrow through the moonlit calm of the Indian Ocean, there dawned on her the comforting sense that even a time like this must pass. There was no measure in these things: but if one waited long enough, there would come a point of ease in the pain. She might or might not have chosen the way of salvation; but having put off all support, she must learn to stand alone. She must grope her way through the dark tunnel till she emerged at last into common daylight

Book Four — Land Locked

Chapter 1

. . . There is no halting place
Upon love’s road. Absent, I see thy face . . .
Unto mine eyes a stranger; thou that art
A comrade, ever present to my heart.
— Hafiz

On the same afternoon that Eve sat listless and desolate, in her stuffy cabin, Lance sat alone by the fire in his study, impatiently awaiting the afternoon mail bag that should contain a letter from Sir Vincent, with definite news—one way or the other—about his coveted week with Eve. After nearly two months of a wifeless home, he felt restive at the thought of losing the one brief reunion he had counted on before Chitral claimed him. He would be thankful for new interests; glad to get away from this bungalow so saturated with memories, so charged with her personality. And lately she had begun to haunt him in other ways; to hover in his dreams, always just out of reach. He would wake with a start, aware of her, as of an escaping ghost. Sometimes, even in the daytime, he would be troubled by the same shadowy torment; as if she slipped out of the room when he entered it. He avoided the drawing-room, and seldom entered their bedroom, where all was packed up, ready for his flitting. Except for meals, he lived in his dressing-room and study, and dined most nights at Mess. Even that was no longer the pleasure it had been a year ago.

And Eve’s letters, that brought no sense contact to cheer him, made him feel, at times, as if he had lost her as well as the child. On that loss he would not allow himself to dwell. Even in secret, he would not reproach her. For he loved her more than the child more than his life; and he had left her, perhaps, with a wrong impression fixed on her sensitive mind. Through such letters as they now wrote there could be no true communion: and he sat there counting the days till he could take her in his arms.

The mail bag at last—brought in by Purān Singh. The dāk was not his business; but he was apt to seize his chance of doing any small personal service. It amounted to a silent, jealous feud between the old retainer and the new.

Eagerly Lance opened the bag and flung out its contents, in search of his Uncle’s familiar envelope. Instead, he snatched up a thick one in Eve’s handwriting; and was aware of Purān Singh holding out a tight little bunch of early autumn roses, and spikes of variegated leaves. Bored with the foolish persistent little bunch, at that inappropriate moment, he put out a hand to wave it aside, encountered Purān Singh’s puzzled gaze, and quickly altered his gesture, hoping the lad was unaware.

‘What—another bunch? Never was such a rose tree! They’re beautiful,’ he said in the vernacular; and Purān Singh grinned all over his ugly face, as the Sahib dumped the flowers, with a twin bunch, into a blue bowl on his writing table.

Every third day the same little bouquet was offered, with undiminished pride in the roses of his own creating; for a fresh word of encouragement. For his humble yet dignified service was sensitive, because it was meant to please. A disconcerting word would woefully abash him: yet persistently he would renew his efforts, like a faithful dog.

Lance, left alone, sat down again by the fire to commune with Eve. But swiftly, as he read, his mood changed, from pleasure to anxiety, to dismay—to a sudden blaze of fury, when he reached her remark about Lynch and Chitral. Lynch had spoken of that—to her, before he himself had felt able to do so, with the poor darling in her queer sad state of mind. He had no right, no shadow of right to thrust in his oar. But that was Lynch. Not a thought on earth except to get his own way. No doubt he had left Gulmarg feeling very pleased with his clever manoeuvre. He would not feel quite so pleased when he heard what Lance Desmond had to say about it. They would meet soon, in Peshawar: and sparks would fly.

At that point he realised that he had not yet read all her long pitiful letter. It was undated, in her usual careless way: not even the address.

Swiftly he read on, her distraught phrases hammering the truth into him, till his heart contracted as if iron fingers were compressing it into a hard, tight ball.

She was gone—gone from him, like a drop of water that slips into the ocean.

For several minutes he sat there, raging under his stillness, while the truth slowly penetrated; the madness of it for her, the cruelty to him. What right had she to leave him like this? What, in God’s name, had come to her? Was she verily going mad?

In his wrath and misery, he blamed Lynch for everything; though there was also that damned Nurse, and his own impetuous words, when fear had shaken his self-control. Words were terrible things: spoken on impulse and forgotten. But others remembered.

A chill wave of utter loneliness overwhelmed him; a helpless sensation, galling to his active temperament. And Eve expected him to sit down under a blow like that; under the belated knowledge of all that she had been secretly suffering, while he vainly longed to help and comfort her. She had been with him daily, hourly—and he had not known. It seemed past belief that one could care so intensely, and yet be so blind and blundering. Had Vanessa realised? Could he bring himself to show her the letter, to ask what she made of this incredible Eve? And Uncle Vinx, and the others what the devil could he say to them all?

The practical issue thrust upon him afresh the staggering fact that she was gone—actually out of India by now.

Something in him broke, like the breaking of a darn: he realised that tears were running down his face. Impatiently he brushed them aside, and glanced up at the clock. He was dining at Mess. Out of the question, in his present tormented state. But the evening alone—the interminable hours——

Suddenly he remembered Grace. Eve must have written to that unfailing friend.

He sprang up and scribbled a few lines to her, telling her what had happened, begging her to come and have dinner with him. Movement awakened his practical brain. By some manner of means that letter must be answered, must be countered flat. Her bankers, in England, must have some sort of instructions. But how could he—her husband—reveal his ignorance of her whereabouts? Grace might extract something from them, writing as a friend. She would come to a certainty.

She needed no invitation. She was coming in any case. For she too had received a letter; brief, and not very coherent. She was more than upset: plainly alarmed. Only the fact that Eve had gone with Kitty, to help Kitty, eased the fear that neither could admit.

After dinner, he read aloud fragments of his letter; and at the allusion to Lynch, his wrath flared afresh.

‘He had no right to speak of it. God knows what he said to her. I don’t forgive him——’

‘Lynch——?’ she echoed blankly; and he realised his slip.

‘I say, I’m awfully sorry,’ he stumblingly apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. . . .’

‘Why not?’ She was cold and composed; but he knew that, unwittingly, he had dealt Lynch a harder blow than any straight speaking from him could inflict on that very tough subject. And because he was a lover, generosity conquered anger.

‘I lost my temper, or I wouldn’t have said it—to you.’

Confronted by her composure, he felt shy of the bold assumption; but she accepted it without comment.

‘If he could do a thing like that—I would rather know it. I don’t forgive him either.’

It was calmly said; but it gave Lance a feeling that her calm was more formidable than his own fury. It moved him to urge a halting excuse for his friend.

‘I daresay he thought he was doing me a good turn——’

‘He was thinking more of himself than of you,’ she answered in a guarded voice. ‘He meant to have his own way. And he knew it depended on her. Perhaps—he didn’t quite realise. . . . But I think he’d have done it all the same.’

‘Well—he’s got his own way.’ Lance spoke in the same guarded tone. ‘When he’s heard what I have to say about it, he may wish he hadn’t.’

‘You’ll see him?’ was all she said.

‘Yes—in Peshawar.’

‘When d’you start?’

‘I’m waiting to hear. The sooner the better.’

She understood; and laid a hand on his knee.

‘Eve’s not herself yet, Lance, or she would never have hurt you like this.’

‘No—she wouldn’t,’ he mechanically agreed: and something forced him to speak his darker thought. ‘Will she ever be?’

‘Of course she will. And she may, instinctively, have chosen the best restorative. Try to believe that.’

‘I’ll try—since you say it.’

There was no further mention of Lynch. But Grace agreed to write to Eve’s bankers; and, at parting Lance ventured a request. ‘I’m a poor correspondent. But up there, in the wilds, letters will be very welcome.’

‘Of course I’ll write,’ she said: and he felt vaguely comforted.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Next day there was relief in the prompt summons to Peshawar; renewal of pain in his Uncle’s concern at being unable to grant that coveted week in Srinagar. They were relieving Mason by aeroplane. And, as Sir Vincent would rather have no interregnum at Chitral, he proposed that Lance should travel in the machine that was to fetch Mason. If possible Dick Molony would be detailed for the trip: a thoughtful touch typical of the writer, who also added, by way of consolation, that Havelock was coming to Peshawar on business. Possibly he might bring Vanessa and Eve.

Lance, slowly reading that letter—steeling himself to the prospect of Peshawar—decided, straightway, that only Sir Vincent could be allowed to know the truth. Aunt Thea would never understand; and she would understand too well what Eve was making him suffer. It was lucky he had actually suggested England to Vanessa; for he was a truth-loving man.

Sitting down to his table, he wrote two short letters: one to Sir Vincent, thanking him for his concern, stating his own day and hour of arrival; one to Vanessa—quite as brief, but more personal.

‘Dearest Vanessa,—I’ve had a heart-breaking letter from Eve. She must have written to you too. Do come to Peshawar. I terribly want to see you. I can’t write about it. Aunt Thea must not know the facts. You and I have thought it better that Eve should go Home. Don’t fail me over this.

‘Yours ever,

‘Lance,’

Then he fell to on what remained of his packing; thankful that he would soon escape from the hell of perpetual reminders of the nearest thing to heaven that he had ever known. Seldom consciously aware of himself, he could not but be aware to-day of his strange, tormented mood—a discord of bitterness, anger and the ache of longing. More than half the night that futile ache had kept him from sleep: and when at last he did sleep, Eve had come to him with an actuality never yet experienced in his dreams. He had her in his arms—his true Eve; not a shadow between them. And suddenly—without warning, she had wrenched herself free. The struggle and the anguish had waked him with moisture on his forehead. She was a ghost again; his loss intensified by the brief illusion of recapture

After that dream, he could not spend the evening alone. He would dine at Mess—and stay late.

He was in the verandah—putting last touches to a packing case for Chitral—when the sound of a car on the drive made him turn, half-annoyed, half-relieved at the intrusion.

At sight of the intruder, relief evaporated: Ina Slade—of all people—in her bottle-green car and her long green coat, driving herself, which she seldom troubled to do. As he came forward, she pulled off her driving glove and held out her hand. The faintly clinging pressure affected him as it had never done since those distant incredible days of her dominion over him.

‘I’m lately back,’ she explained. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your loss, up in Kashmir. I came round to see your wife. Is she in?’

‘She’s not here,’ he said, ignoring her facile sympathy. ‘She hasn’t been at all well—since. And I’ve been transferred to Chitral.’

‘Chitral?’ She glanced at the packing case. ‘Are you off soon?’

‘On Saturday.’

‘Poor fellow.’ Her concern was genuine now. ‘A deadly place.’

‘A grand country,’ he countered. ‘Fine sport and interesting work.’

Her eyes lingered on his closed up face, his well-knit figure.

‘Tastes differ! Are you too busy packing to let me come in for half an hour, as I’m here?’

The request roused his natural courtesy.

‘Rather not. Do come in. We can give you an early cup of tea, if you don’t mind everything oolta-poolta.⁴² I’m living in the study.’

‘I’d prefer the study. You needn’t worry about formalities with me,’ she said in a softened voice.

He ignored the delicate reminder; opened the door and handed her out. She was the kind of woman who liked being handed out; and he, at the moment, did not like it at all. He felt annoyed that she should have thrust herself on him, unwittingly, in his shaken mood.

Pulling on his coat, he held the door for her to pass into the study; and the familiar whiff of scent in his nostrils gave him an odd, pleasurable sensation. If she would let personalities alone, it would be a relief to have his inner misery soothed, even for an hour. She had the fatal natural gift of making a man forget everything, for the moment, except her beauty, that disturbed his senses and lulled his brain.

She had opened her coat over a flower-patterned dress, and stood near the mantelpiece, with a foot on the fender, though there was little warmth yet in the freshly-lit fire. Her beauty and that familiar fragrance seemed to pervade and transform his bachelor room, with Purān Singh’s two little cartwheels lolling opposite ways in the bowl on his table. She created always an atmosphere of mingled ease and artifice; and never—since they met again—had he been even remotely aware of her, as he was aware of her now. It irked him the more, because there seemed so little to talk about. There had never been much mental contact; and he was glad to have Ramazān fussing round with the tea things.

When, at last, they were alone, she asked, ‘Shall I pour out? Or are you married enough, to like dispensing tea?’

‘Hate it,’ he said briefly; and pushing the table nearer to her, he sat down instinctively on the far side.

As if she were conscious of his vulnerable mood, she seemed bent on conjuring away his fear of her. Friendly and concerned for his loss, she talked of her Simla doings, asked discreet questions about his work, his plans; not a suggestion in look or tone of the familiar ‘syren touch’; simply laying herself out to cheer him up. And she so far succeeded that the guard his masculine instinct had put up against her was unconsciously lowered. Yet he still avoided mentioning the fact that Eve had gone Home.

‘It’s been a very quick transfer,’ she objected, alluding to Chitral.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘quite unexpected. My Uncle wants me up there.’

‘The way you civilians are flung about! But you’re lucky to have friends at Court.—I shall miss you two. She’s charming. The long separation will be hard on her.’

‘Hard on us both,’ he quietly amended; and she smiled, fingering her beads. She even asked a few interested questions about Chitral; and he found himself quite naturally telling her about it, showing her photographs taken by Lynch.

And still she stayed on and on—till involuntarily he glanced at the clock. Of course she noticed the glance; and her eyes lingered on him with a kind of amused speculation that he remembered very well in early days, before she felt quite sure of him.

‘Oh I know I’m interrupting your important packing,’ she said serenely. ‘And I’m overdue at the General’s for bridge. All your fault!’ She paused, and her smiled deepened. ‘What are you doing this evening?’

‘Mess ‘ he answered curtly; for he knew what was coming.

‘Better fun, I suppose, than dining with me?’

And now it was he who paused. They had slipped back into an easy familiarity that made flat refusal seem ungracious.

‘I think I must go, thanks very much. I’m Evan’s guest. And he’s coming round here afterwards to take over some of my spare stuff.’

‘I don’t admit Evans as a just impediment,’ she gently persisted, no urgency in her tone. ‘Tell him you’ll dine to-morrow. I’m not free to-morrow.’

She had manoeuvred him into an awkward corner; and his powers of resistance were at a low ebb—as she probably guessed.

‘Of course——’ he began.

‘Yes, of course.’ She leaned forward and lightly touched his sleeve. ‘You’d like to come. I don’t take your half-hearted refusal. I shall expect you at eight.’

The fact that he assented without a word should have warned him that she had skilfully slipped nearer than he realised: and she, having achieved her purpose, rose to depart.

As Lance stood by the car while she drew on her gloves, her eyes for the first time encountered his—and held them.

‘You won’t mind another tête-à-tête? Godfrey’s away—did I tell you?—A few days on the Samāna. Au revoir.’

Before he had grasped the full implication of all that, her car was half-way to the gate. And he remained standing there in the strong afternoon light, too stupefied for anger.

Of course she had not told him, had not meant to tell him, till she had secured him; relying on his courtesy not to back out on some flimsy excuse. If he let her come an inch nearer, she would know too well how to demolish his inner scruples.

And the mere man in him said suddenly—‘Damn it all, why not?’ The woman herself was of no account; and the brief surrender would mean nothing to him. Easy enough, in his present mood, to let himself go: but afterwards? Eve? The mere thought of her broke the spell. Emphatically, no—no.

As he turned away to write his difficult note, the sound of hoofs checked him. Another intruder. It was Duff, of the 9th Sikhs, a close friend of poor Grant. He had taken very hardly the tragedy of Sonamarg; had been sceptical about the tale of the accident; and had finally worried the truth out of Claude.

‘Come along in,’ Lance greeted him, glad of the diversion. ‘What are you after?’

Duff dismounted and came along in: a fair, sturdy youth full of fun and good sense.

‘I’m after field-glasses,’ he explained, when Lance had called for drinks. ‘Heard you had an extra pair going cheap.’

‘Lots of little oddments going cheap. You shall have ’em “coss” price, as old Chatterji says.’

‘Thanks awfully. I’m near broke.’

The drinks arrived, and Duff said suddenly, frowning into vacancy: ‘I passed that murderess, Mrs Slade, just now. She tried to smirk at me. But I cut her dead. Wish to God I could give her one between the eyes, and tell her— “That’s for what you did to Grant.”’

‘Grant?’ Lance echoed, completely taken aback.

‘Yes. You remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’ He had himself in hand now. ‘But Mansell never told me the name of the woman.’

‘Good Lord! Have I made a floater? Hope she’s not a friend of yours?’

‘No, She’s not.’ Lance disowned, with emphasis the woman who had soothed his senses and had almost ensnared him again—for one night.

‘Glad to hear it.’ Duff was obviously relieved. ‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but of course I thought you knew. I never could make out how she fooled Grant—a fine fellow like that.’

Ramazān reappeared with the field-glasses; the deal was amicably transacted; and Duff departed without any further allusion to Grant’s tragic death.

Lance left alone, confronted by that inadvertent disclosure, cursed Claude for the reticence he had commended nearly a year ago. Ina Slade—responsible for Grant’s death? The thought infuriated him; and he thanked God he had conquered his passing temptation before he knew the ugly truth. It was peculiarly bitter, at such a moment, being forced to recognise that susceptibility to the mere graces of the flesh, which lay at the root of so much self-deception about love. But, thank heaven, there were women—and women. Thought of Grace and his beloved, bewildering Eve visited his angry heart like a breath of clean air from the hills.

As to the other—he need not worry about a plausible excuse. Sitting down to his table, he began his brief note without prefix.

‘Just a line to let you know that I find I must dine at Mess after all,’ he wrote, with a vicious, bitter satisfaction at thought of her disappointment. ‘I ought not to have accepted. I’m really up to the eyes just now—and till I leave. L. D.’

He frowned at those few blunt lines: polite enough in a telegraphic masculine fashion, but obviously not the Lance Desmond with whom she had parted earlier in the afternoon. It might give her something to puzzle over: and she could make of it what she damn well pleased. She was not free to-morrow: Jinks no doubt, poor devil. The next evening was his last—dedicated to Neil and the Regiment. But, in the face of that note, she would not be likely to repeat her invitation.

She did not repeat it. And he left Kohat without seeing or hearing of her again.

Chapter 2

When two positive people try to do the right, as they see it, the usual result is—war.
— Thomas Burke

When Lance reached Peshawar he heard that Lynch was out at Shabkadr; and Sir Vincent—unaware of simmering wrath—was hopeful of his return in a day or two. In a sense, Lance felt relieved, though delay was irksome to a man whose temper evaporated as readily as it flared. But this was a matter for more than temper. He had only to glance again at Eve’s pitiful letter for his wrath to blaze up afresh. Her crazy flight would not have been possible had she not insisted on his accepting Chitral. And whose doing was that?

The Thornes had already arrived; and Vanessa had spoken to Sir Vincent, who agreed to the suggested reservation—knowing his Thea, her standard of wifehood, her jealous devotion to Lance. Sir Vincent could make allowances, even if he failed to understand the scanty explanation vouchsafed by Vanessa.

It was a simple matter to explain that Lance had originated the idea; and it was happily taken for granted that she would go to Anne Verity.

So Lance found that first evening easier than he had thought possible; but it was not till bedtime that Vanessa manoeuvred a peaceful half-hour with him. He had decided, after a brief hesitation, to hand her the whole of Eve’s letter. Her own streak of genius might help her to discern things undiscernible to his simpler mind.

‘Come to my room in five minutes, dear Boy,’ she said, low and quickly, as they parted in the hall. ‘Havelock’s sitting up late with Vinx. So we can talk.’

He found her settled near the fire in a loose yellow wrapper. No longer tired and harassed, she was looking better than he had seen her in many months; and she seemed to have put on flesh. Why had his foolish Eve fled from this sane and charming woman?

As he entered, she rose and kissed him without a word. When she sat down, there were tears in her eyes; and he, drawing up a low chair, handed her the envelope.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘you had better read it all.’

While she read, he picked up a book and absently turned the leaves. He had not the least idea, afterwards, what that book was about. He was mentally re-reading the fatal letter; and without looking up, he knew when Vanessa had reached the last line.

‘What does it all mean?’ he asked blankly, as he put aside the book. But before she could speak his own bottled up pain and bewilderment found vent at last.

‘Every atom of her is mine. Every drop of blood in my veins is hers. And she knows it. What devil has got into her that she can suppose?’

His voice broke; and Vanessa laid a hand on his knee.

‘Dearest Boy, I’m as puzzled as you are. But after a knock-out blow—at that particular time—almost anything is possible in the way of nervous reaction. She hadn’t even physically recovered when it happened. She knew the worst and had to keep it from you for days: a cruel strain. The Eve who wrote all that was desperate—haunted. Such a sensitive creature, yet so venturesome: one has to reckon with those curious opposites in her.’

‘Yes. But she might have given me a chance——’

‘She might. But at present she simply isn’t herself. You mustn’t judge her by this letter; warped with self-pity; not a gleam of humour. No one will be more puzzled over it all than Eve, when she is herself.’

‘Yes—when. . . .’

He sat silent a moment, dejected utterly, his hopeful nature in eclipse. Forced to accept her strange move, his youth and masculinity could not accept months of inaction, of not knowing——

‘I must answer that somehow,’ he said suddenly. ‘I must know where she is. She’s mine. I’m responsible. Any use writing to her mother’s address?’

Vanessa smiled—a curious smile. ‘The last person Eve would go to in trouble. If she goes anywhere, it will be to Anne Verity.’

Lance lit up at the name. ‘Anne—of course. Why didn’t I think of it? I’ll write to “Blue Hills” before I leave.’

‘I’ll write too. But she may not go near Anne for a time. She evidently means to work out her own salvation.’

‘Salvation?’ he echoed; and, on a sudden impulse, he spoke his deepest secret fear. ‘It’s that damned music she’s after.’

Vanessa glanced at him, hesitated—and said, ‘I don’t think so. But naturally, she’s lost without it. When her strength returns, it will come back. You couldn’t wish otherwise. Something more remarkable than the sonata may spring from this long dark time she’s going through. Art germinates in the dark places of the soul.’

She spoke with a curious detachment; and it touched him on the raw. To these artists it mattered nothing who suffered, so art was served.

‘I wish to God there was no music,’ he said low and vehemently, as if the truth were forced from him.

‘Lance—my dear!’ Vanessa gazed at him, startled out of her contemplative vein. ‘The music is her. Can you picture her without it?’

He discovered that he could not. And suddenly he recalled his brief vision of Eve, the mother.

‘She was a lovely thing, without it—those two weeks,’ he said, looking straight before him.

‘Yes—lost in the child; a marvel and a mystery to herself. But the music is in her blood. The restlessness would return.’

Lance sighed, realising the emptiness ahead of him. ‘I’d put up with any mortal thing, if she would return. She practically pushed me into this Chitral job. And it was Lynch—damn him!—who worked the whole thing.’

‘Lynch—? I didn’t know.’

‘Nor did I, at the time; or he’d have heard of it. He’s going to hear of it now. And he won’t hear from me again.’

She gazed at his hardened face, realising what his words implied.

‘He’ll feel that badly,’ she said. ‘In his bachelor fashion, he was working for your interests; and a good deal of his hardness is skin-deep. Remember that, when you launch your thunderbolts.’

‘I can’t remember anything but Eve,’ he said in a stifled voice; and stood up to go.

She rose also, not embarrassing him by any superfluous feminine remark.

‘You’ve comforted me, Vanessa,’ he said, as simply as a boy in trouble; and he left her—still unhappy enough, though grateful for fresh proof that there were women and women. Never had he felt so dejected, so sore and angry as now, on the eve of taking up the appointment to which he had so keenly looked forward in his untroubled bachelor days. And for him, all uncomprehending, his present darkness was the deeper for the light he had seen.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

To wake in his familiar bedroom—to have a brief puzzled sense of ‘Where am I?’—was to realise sharply the changes wrought by less than two years of marriage, the distance he had travelled from the Lance who seemed far younger, in many ways, than his present self. In a surface sense, perhaps, he had been happier then; but life meant more to him now. He meant more to himself, since he had known passionate love—its joy in union, its anguish in severance; had known, for two weeks, the unexpected emotion of fatherhood; the pang of loss; had suffered a blow from his best friend that would spell severance in that direction also.

He spent the morning alone with his Uncle in the friendly, book-filled study. Sir Vincent had given his secretary a few days’ leave to go shooting with a friend, that he and Lance might be together undisturbed; and Vanessa had smoothed the way for both by giving him further details about Eve. Distressed and puzzled as he was, peculiarly sensitive to another’s pain, he said very little to Lance. His sympathy took the more practical form of shifting their talk away from personal concerns. He had a good deal to say about Chitral affairs; and he spoke of Mason more freely than his wont. On principle, he never discussed one officer with another; but, for Lance’s benefit, he felt constrained to point out that his brilliant predecessor had made things difficult, for himself and others, by trying to be a shade too clever.

‘Just so that you may get an inkling how not to do it in that region!’ he added, a gleam in his grave eyes. ‘No white man can beat the Asiatic on his own ground. Mason’s one of those bright particular stars, who will go on—not from strength to strength, but from staff-billet to staff-billet, while the inglorious District Officer virtually rules India. Cleverness is an asset anywhere; but out here it’s character all along the line. Keep your eyes and ears open, and let them do the talking till you’ve found your feet.’

‘I’ll be glad of something to tackle,’ Lance admitted.

‘And Theo will be glad to have you there. The Mehtar is a good fellow; very friendly to us. But you have to remember that, when you climb out of Dick’s machine on to the stones of Chitral, you step from the twentieth century into the sixteenth. Diplomacy in the Hindu Khush is simply a tissue of personal intrigue. Useless for an Englishman to try and cope with it. Any attempt at subtlety will be foreseen and countered in advance. Play the cards of utter frankness, and you may rout them by sheer surprise. They’ll twist your words and try to find hidden meanings in the simplest statements. But stick to the truth; and they’ll end by giving their allegiance to the queer being who plays a straight game. Out here we can’t set our standard of personal conduct too high. It’s an asset, seldom recognised, of our long connection with India.—Who’s there? Come in.’

A peon entered with a note for Lance; and at sight of the writing, he drew in his lip.

‘It’s Lynch,’ he said coolly: opened the note and read—

‘Hullo, old Boy, So you’ve stepped in when my back was turned. Hope you aren’t off at once. Dine with me to-night. Or come along soon after tiffin. I shall have a free hour to bestow on your worship.

‘Yours ever, J. L.’

That sincere welcome to which he could not respond, quite upset the effect of his peaceful morning. He sent a verbal message that he could not dine, but would be round before half-past three.

And on the stroke of the half-hour, he arrived.

Lynch owned an ample bungalow; but he lived mainly in one room, devoted to his few engrossing occupations—coins, books, maps and Police manuals. There were neither pictures nor ornaments; but the matting was covered with a Persian carpet of price, the chairs with saddle-bags—not made in Birmingham; and the curtains were regal hangings from Bokhara. The blend of Eastern colour with the spartan atmosphere of the West, matched the curious blend in the man of a taste for luxurious surroundings and a tireless mental energy. The look of that unaltered room carried Lance back to the good days of early friendship and undivided ambitions. But a single thought of Eve steeled his heart.

Lynch rose with a ready word of greeting: stared hard at Lance, who could say nothing, because of a queer pressure in his chest.

‘Lance—what’s wrong?’ he asked, abruptly.

And the conviction that he knew released the younger man’s smouldering temper.

‘Everything’s wrong. Eve’s gone home—— I don’t know where. She’s left me—for the time being——’

The hand that gripped his cane shook just perceptibly; and Lynch pushed a chair forward.

‘My dear Boy, sit down.’

‘I’m not your dear boy—damn you,’ Lance flung out, too furious to be aware that the retort might sound ridiculous. He sat down abruptly; and Lynch followed suit.

‘You seem to be in a towering rage,’ he remarked.

‘I am in a towering rage. And you know why. What the devil did you say to Eve—about Chitral?’

Lynch moved his lips uneasily and a shadow crossed his pale eyes.

‘I said nothing that justifies your taking that tone with me.’ Of set purpose, he opposed his studied coolness to his friend’s heat. ‘Your possible appointment was no secret. She asked certain questions; and I answered her—guardedly.’

That he should even seem to excuse himself further infuriated Lance.

‘Oh, you’re mighty clever at saying nothing and implying a lot. Of course you didn’t give her the impression that I was fearfully keen—that I ought not to refuse. And you never dropped a word to me. Nor did she—till I got her heart-broken letter ‘

‘Look here,’ Lynch leaned forward: but Lance checked him with an imperious gesture, and swept on; ‘Because of what you said, she flatly ordered me to accept. And she was in such a queer state that I didn’t dare thwart her. Now I know it broke her up—that and the child. She’s gone off with Kitty Mansell. No address. God knows how long——’

He checked himself, afraid of losing control: and again Lynch leaned forward. ‘Lance—I’m damned sorry,’ he said: but Lance was adamant.

‘Well you may be. It cuts at the root of everything that you could go behind my back and put that extra strain on her, when she’d suffered more than enough. I’ll have no more to say to you. And I just came round to tell you so.’

He pushed back his chair and stood up.

‘You’ve got your way. I’m going to Chitral. And except for pleasing Uncle Vinx, I’d as soon be going to hell. But I don’t do a stroke of work for you up there—after this.’

Lynch had risen also; and the hand he pressed hard on the writing table was not quite steady. He moved his lips as if he would speak: but there was nothing to say. Lance, with his Desmond temper and Desmond obstinacy up in arms, would hear neither reason nor regrets.

Having spoken, he turned sharply away and walked out into the brilliant October sunshine, feeling dazed and shaken. He had hit out straight and hard; but every blow aimed at his friend had probably hurt him more than anything on earth could hurt John Lynch. Life empty of him, empty of Eve, would be life with the centre knocked out. He could only thank God for new work in a new country. He did not want to spend another day in Peshawar: and the air trip over that sea of mountains would have the stimulant of speed. He was no novice at the one real adventure left to over-civilised man. In Peshawar days, he had often gone up with Dick as Observer, for the fun of learning a fresh trick and exploring a new dimension. Beal business, this time: and the sooner the better. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Twenty-four hours later, they were ready, in flying gear; many friends to see them off and a mixed crowd to gape at the familiar wonder, that had not yet lost its fascination. The great winged thing, like a giant dragon-fly, seemed to palpitate with a life of its own; the engine purring furiously, so that Lance felt his teeth rattle as he climbed in and strapped himself to the seat.

They were off. Hands were waved, as the ground slid away from them, and the monster rose, with a gentle, swaying motion, up and up into the unclouded, uncharted blue.

In a few moments the earth had receded more than a thousand feet: and Lance, peering over, saw Peshawar curiously flattened out; the trees mere splashes of green in a patchwork of fields and buildings, as crazy as a cubist design; all the busy life of city and cantonments no more than a dance of dust atoms in space; and they themselves as completely detached from earth as if they had sailed into the atmosphere of another planet.

That sense of rising above their familiar world had, for Lance, its spiritual counterpart. The wind whistled; the engines roared. The sense of freedom ran like wine through his veins. In spite of pain and bewilderment and loss, life was a great game.

Chapter 3

Life is stronger than a single soul.
— Cornelia Sorabji

From the outer rim of those assembled dust atoms, a square-looking figure detached itself and walked slowly away, by a side road, that led round to the back of the D.I.G.’s bungalow.

It was John Lynch. Debarred from bidding Lance ‘God speed,’ he had gone on foot to the aerodrome, had mixed unnoticed with the bazaar and barracks crowd, for the dismal satisfaction of taking a last look at the favoured boy, who had cast him off for things said and done that seemed to him perfectly natural; since he could not, at the time, foresee the disastrous result, nor realise Eve’s unfitness for the strain he had put upon her. The disaster touched him more nearly than he could have made his infuriated friend believe, had the opportunity been given him; but Lance—no half-hearted lover or hater—had chosen to condemn him unheard.

And not Lance alone. The cruellest cut had been dealt him this morning by a letter from Grace. He could not have believed, till now, that any human indictment could so deeply wound him as the brief note tucked into his shabby case with the only two others he had ever received from Grace Yolande.

Entering his house by the side verandah—eluding his peons and many patient squatters—he sank into his saddlebag chair, pulled out a thin half-sheet and re-read automatically the few lines that were stamped on his brain:

‘You will have seen Lance by now; and you will know—so far as you can realise such things—the harm you have done to those two by pressing your own point regardless of what Eve had suffered already. I warned you; and I did think my words might carry some weight. Now I know that nothing carries any real weight with you, except your own desires and designs. Because of that, I could never really trust you. And because of the hurt to Lance and my darling Eve—I can’t forgive you. Please don’t write to me again.

‘G. Yolande.’

The shock of reading those clear hard statements for the first time had been painful enough. The second reading hurt more than anything in life had hurt him yet. The remembered pain of her refusal in the Kishengunga Valley seemed by comparison a surface wound. For now she disowned him—as Lance had done—with contumely, out of all proportion to the slip he had made. The righteous, in their blind, ethical zeal, could be unjust on occasion.

In a cool fury, he tore the hateful thing into small fragments and scattered them on the fire. He would need no visible reminder of the blow she had dealt to more than this heart.

For a long while he sat motionless, staring straight before him, forgetting to fill his pipe, seeing himself, with terrible clearness, as those others saw him; cursing—for the first time—his serviceable selfishness that had robbed him, at a stroke, of his friend and of the woman whose respect he valued and desired no less than her love. For she would never give the one without the other. Having failed in his resolve to keep clear of human entanglements, he must pay the price. A man might be as clever as the devil, he reflected bitterly, as inflexible as fate, but once his heart became involved, be was no longer his own man. Suffering of mind or body was an annoying interruption to work—the main business of life, the unfailing anodyne if things went wrong. And never, in his experience, had they gone more damnably wrong than in these two days, to which he had looked forward with unusual zest. All his own doing, no doubt: an admission that did not improve his temper or assuage his pain.

For, in that dark hour, he suffered an unfamiliar qualm, almost amounting to humility. He had made a god of his own individual will. By the force of it he had counted on moulding the lives of others to his own purposes, which had, at least, the merit of not being personal. But life—in the shape of those others—was bringing him up against forces of the heart and the spirit with which he had not sufficiently reckoned in advance. To himself he might admit that zeal had outrun discretion, but he would not go on his knees to any man—or woman living. Let the righteous sit in judgment; he knew he had acted in the boy’s interests, in the larger interests of the work that was his all. And Lance had no right, for personal reasons, to fling aside his chance of doing India that special service. But he himself would bring it off with the help of Kamāla Singh.

That astute young man had already discovered that two, possibly three, of the principals—whose capture might upset many deep-laid schemes—had not, as usual, gone back across the passes in September. They were prowling somewhere in the region of Chitral, hoping to collect new recruits for a more intensive campaign. In view of that stroke of luck, Lynch had intended to propose that, sometime in November, Lance should make a short trip into the outlying valleys of his new domain—a mountain-locked, mountain-divided region bigger than Wales. It would be quite in order for him to move about the country for a short spell, if he chose; and there was no serious reason against his including, in his official tour, a strictly unofficial adventure by the way. He could take with him Kamāla Singh: and, at an appointed place, he would be joined by Mahomed Akbar and Bhagwān, who would rig him out as a fair-skinned Kohistani. He and Kamāla Singh, offering themselves as recruits, could glean much information for the benefit of the pair who had sworn to capture those false Moslems—dead or alive.

It was a bold plan, needing, for full success, the good faith of Kamāla Singh and the skilful use of a secret code to which none but Lance and himself and Bhagwān possessed the key. Unable, at this season, to leave his own urgent work, he had counted on Lance, had been looking eagerly for further news before he arrived.

The exasperation of that thought swung him back to his personal dilemma; and the ache returned—reinforced by the bitter knowledge that Lance had come and gone without hearing a single one of his carefully planned secret instructions. And the devil alone knew when they would meet again. Not even a John Lynch—for all his strength and skill—could bid the devil stand and deliver his fell designs.

Chapter 4

Neither children nor gods; but men, in a world of men.
— Kipling

It was early afternoon in the middle of November; but the sun had already vanished behind the gaunt and barren mountains that enclose the main valley of Chitral. On the wide plain, where the river went swirling past the fort, willows and poplars fluttered golden leaves, and massed chenars glowed as if they were stamped in copper on the grey hillsides. Here it seemed almost evening; but daylight still lingered in the unclouded sky, and on the snowfields of Tirich Mir, the noble peak that dominates Chitral.

In this outermost independent State on India’s Borderland, there is no blend of charm and grandeur, as in Kashmir; but a giant landscape of rock and shale and cruel precipices; a vast silence, broken by the roar of glacier-born torrents; empty of life, except where stray villages cluster round the fan-shaped oases of silted soil that soften the harsh aspect of those mightily-furrowed hills. Here and there a lonely fort; but no sign of a town, even in the main valley, where the fort serves as palace for the Mehtar, independent ruler of Chitral. Stray houses and hamlets and the domes of a new mosque give a sporadic air of habitation to the valley between those terrible mountains, where no flowers bloom and no birds sing, where the vulture, eagle and kite seek their meat from God, and tireless Englishmen stalk ibex and markhor.

Here Lance Desmond found seven young officers in charge of the small garrison; barracks for the Chitral Scouts, a four-mile race course and the inevitable polo ground. The Chitrali is a keen sportsman after his kind; and Desmond’s prowess at the great game had won him instant popularity. Already Captain of a team, he was busy helping Greville—who commanded the Scouts—to ‘brush up’ their local rivals, and instil into the players a rudimentary consideration for the animals they rode. Hardly a pony in the valley whose legs were not screwed from galloping over stony ground. It went to his heart; and the cheerful, callous Chitralis were openly amused at his concern.

In this far valley, one could only ring the changes on work and sport; Bridge for the evening, which Lance did not play; or a chess fight with Greville—a less doughty opponent than Lynch. Most afternoons, he joined the mixed crowd on the janāli—the level stretch that served for parade ground, or polo ground, or any other form of letting off masculine energies.

To-day, it was a Chitrali polo tournament—run by himself and Greville—with inevitable interludes of dancing, when the defeated team must caper and prance for the fun of the victors, to the squealing and thrumming of the State band. Their monotonous antics were enlivened by gross good-humoured sallies from the comic men of the winning team, boisterous applause from the audience and titters from the ‘ladies’ gallery’—a group of sheeted bundles, discreetly aloof under the serried plane-trees that flanked one side of the ground.

Now the last match was over, the last interlude ended, the smell and crackle of burning wood announced the lighting of a giant bonfire at the end of the ground; moving torches flared among the trees. And as light and colour were drained from the sky, pale domes of the mosque near the fort gleamed in the dusk, faintly lit by a risen moon. Stainless, against the powdered blue of early evening, Tirich Mir gleamed ghostly, like a great white throne set up between earth and heaven.

For Lance, that lonely mountain had already become a living presence; aloof, serene, taking no account of him, or of the troubled heart he kept under lock and key. His fellows in Chitral saw him only as a keen, clever young Political Officer, flinging all his tireless energy into work or play; and for him it was a relief to be with strangers. It helped him to live resolutely on the surface, to keep his mind away from the dark places in his soul—during the day-time, at least.

He had enjoyed the strenuous afternoon; but he would not be sorry, now, to sit quiet with a pipe in the blaze of that mighty bonfire, looking on at these people’s never-ending diversions of uncouth dance and song, interlarded with fairy lore. For here, in these harsh hills, he found the Little People—as real to the Chitrali as to his own Irish peasants—playing an active part in human affairs, and even in affairs of State.

Gradually a mixed crowd had gathered and settled round the bonfire. British officers in poshteens, the Mehtar with his sons and nobles—in gaily patterned coats and soft riding boots—sat honourably apart. Five officers had joined Desmond and Greville: Twynax the Sapper, Greene the Gunner, two Transport Officers and Greville’s guileless, good-tempered sub, labelled The Sink of Iniquity by Greene, who fancied himself as a satirist.

‘Come on, Sink, and complete your education!’ Greville greeted him in his booming voice. ‘The Pathans have got a prima donna up their sleeve.’

The Pathans, a party from Bajour, were to dance—inevitably. Everyone danced and sang in Chitral, ‘the land of mirth and murder.’ It was as much a national pastime as racing in England.

Torches, held high, illumined a group of wild figures in loose blue shirts and peaked turbans. The leader—with an air of dramatic significance—dropped a flower from his lifted hand. Round it they circled, with free swinging gestures; bodies flung forward, arms flung upwards, with a piercing cry as they whirled away, only to be drawn back again to that magnetic flower in the dust.

‘She is a lovely maiden—that flower,’ said young Afzur-ul-Mulk, sitting beside Lance. He was the Mehtar’s cousin; a handsome, arrogant youth, who lived for polo, hawking and intrigue. ‘That song they sing is love and despair; but after all they snatch her away.’

He chuckled at the prospect, as the Pathans broke into a tragic lamentation, a wilder repetition of the original dance. Faster and faster they twirled, flinging their supple bodies this way and that; the dramatic effect heightened by volleys of gun-fire from a shadowy group, as the flower was snatched up with exultant cries. And the crowd, completely carried away, yelled and clapped and yelled afresh.

The Pathans, nothing loth, took an encore; and again compelled the same electrical response from the crowd.

On Lance the whole weird scene—the dissonance of bonfire, torches and moonlight —had an oddly disturbing effect. The minor music, the rising tide of passion, and the dramatic clatter of musketry, stirred some lurking barbaric element in him, buried under layers of culture and control. Something racial, ancestral, answered to the spirit of those wild Pathans, to their discordant music and the drums. Nowhere, except in Africa, are drums used and understood, as in India. To Lance these were no mere accompaniment, but a rhythmic vibration, like pulses beating in his own body: dissolving all immediate sense of reality. Here was nothing of his own personal world. The India he knew was gone from him. Eve herself seemed, to his troubled senses, a lovely and poignant dream in a former life——

The clapping and yelling had ceased. He became aware of a low syncopated, thrumming, a thin stream of music wandering through it like a lost soul; and in the moonlit space—illumined by a moving torch—the prima donna twirled and postured, alone; every muscle of her saffron-smeared body, of her too-expressive arms and hands, rippling in response to the whispered rhythm of the drum. Her silver anklets clinked to each step or turn with fascinating precision; and her moon-face, in the wavering light, looked more odalisque than human; as though some temple goddess had been made flesh to entice the sons of men.

It was not true dancing. It was an immemorial form of a perfectly frank sensuous appeal; conveyed, through the lust of eye and ear, to every man in that silent crowd.

Lance, like the rest, could not choose but watch her sinuous motions, half-fascinated, half-repelled. Only once before had he seen her like in Peshawar City, when Lynch had persuaded him to spend an interminable evening in the company of dancing women and charas⁴³-smoking men. The memory of that far-off night disturbed him now more nearly than the posturing incarnate temptation, who held his unwilling gaze. That other Lance had known passion and had not known love—the inner flame, half-spirit, half-body, that ‘had command of every part.’

When a burst of discordant singing assailed his ears, he decided that he had endured enough in the sacred name of courtesy. Turning to Ross Greville he said, under cover of the noise: ‘I’ve had my fill. I’m off. Make my excuses to Royalty, if my absence is noticed. A heavy dāk for India—anything you please.’

Greville’s grin implied complete understanding. ‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Greene can fake the excuses. I’m not after an introduction to that lady; and we’ve done our bit for Chitral this afternoon.’

He leaned over to Greene, who merely nodded. Then they worked their way out into the moonlit plain dominated by Tirich Mir.

Greville stamped his feet. ‘Cold work watching that siren. Come up to the Mess for a drink and a spot of chess.’

Lance assented briefly. Still under that strange spell, he had wanted to get away alone. But he liked Greville, a man of natural intelligence, with a strain of cool inflexibility in him that, at times, recalled Lynch. Twynax, the Sapper, though cleverer, was queer tempered, shy and solitary, always off on some lone trek with his survey table and his Pathan orderly. Greene, the long thin Gunner, was a marksman and a polo player, with a ready wit and caustic tongue. Of the three, Greville alone had basic qualities that attracted Lance; and they spent much of their free time together. Of the inner, suffering Lance—cheered by their surface comradeship—Greville knew nothing; as Lance knew nothing of the inner Greville, except that there was a girl at Home, that the issue was doubtful, and Greville was saving every penny for long leave next year.

Lance also was saving every penny for Eve’s return passage. Though he dared not look beyond the day’s demands, his hopeful nature counted on reaching her through Anne Verity; and into that letter from Peshawar he had put all he could express of his faith in her, his unalterable love. He had promised her money for a first-class passage out, so soon as she felt able to face the hated voyage. For him, words were not the right medium; but he had done what he could.

By early December he might hope for an answer; only if she went straight to Anne. Waiting and not knowing was a twofold strain, almost unbearable, but for his faith in God, and his own natural habit of mind: a man’s best asset in the evil day. Refusing to heed the furtive whisper of fear, he could only carry on and pretend that all was well. His misery and secret doubts were his own affair.

Here, at least, was work he felt eminently fitted to do, a need to keep constantly on the alert, a satisfying knowledge that one corner of changing, half-alienated India might be confirmed in friendliness towards the Raj by virtue of this handful of Englishmen living straightly and decently among them.

After drinks, they explored a parcel of more or less new books; and Lance carried Greville off to his own bungalow, where they could play chess—undisturbed by riotous subalterns—till it was time for Mess.

But if subalterns could be evaded, not so a request for his presence from the Mehtar of Chitral, for whom—as for most Easterns—time was a thing of naught. Without the least intention of discourtesy, he would send for Lance fifteen minutes before Mess, keep him waiting half an hour for a ten minutes’ talk of no particular consequence, quite oblivious that, for the white man, dinner was a sacred function—especially if it happened to be Mess, even on a modest scale.

As a newcomer and a nephew of his friend, the Chief Commissioner, Lance was a good deal in demand at odd moments. Greene had already christened him the Bellhop; and this evening the summons came at a peculiarly distracting moment; his King cornered by Greville’s rook and knight and one impertinent pawn; Greville booming out, ‘Mate in two moves.’

‘Not on your life!’ Lance thrust aside the large hand outstretched to sweep up the fragments that remained. ‘There he stays, till we get back to him after Mess.’

They went out, leaving the chessboard, with its fated King and the turned-down lamp to keep each other company.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In the main room of the fort that served as palace, Lance found—no Mehtar, but his cousin, Nizām-ul-Mulk, chief of his nobles; smooth and courtly, with fine eyes and a mouth disfigured by the hanging lower lip of the royal clan. His choga, cut like a dressing-gown, was of gold brocade patterned with large tea roses. Loose green velvet breeches were stuffed into long leather riding boots extravagantly high-heeled; and his small turban was of pure gold. In a land where men and horses went as gorgeously clad as in mediaeval England, Nizām, with his gold coat and his silver-plated saddlery, outshone them all.

He was seated on a low divan, in close conversation with one Abdul Rahāt, an Afridi of the Zakka Khels, horse dealer and timber merchant; and, incidentally, the most influential man in the Mehtar’s court. Naturally the court hated him—to a man. Lance, lacking their reason, preferred him to Nizām, the persistent plotter, with a blend of the monkey and the tiger under his courtly bearing. No trace of the courtier in Abdul Rahāt. Though his dark woollen choga and gold-peaked turban looked dingy beside Nizām’s foppery, he had advantage of the younger man in the baffling control of voice and feature that marks the born diplomatist. Their open friendship concealed a secret enmity; and they were not putting their heads together for nothing.

As they rose to greet him, Desmond said, in Persian, ‘I was told that his Highness desired to see me.’

And Nizām confessed, with his ingratiating smile, that it was a near relation of his Highness who desired to see him.

‘We have news,’ he added, ‘of a matter that should first be told to you; since it may concern the honourable British Government.’

‘Let me hear then,’ Lance said; and they sat down again, one on either side of him.

Nizām was spokesman. ‘The Burra Sahib of Police, being here this summer, warned me privately against certain Moslems from Central Asia who are working to make trouble against the British in India.’

That brought Lance sharply to attention. Under his eyelids he glanced at Rahāt, who was tapping his knee with the packet he held, his face a study in expressionless abstraction. As he said no word Nizām went on: ‘Now, we have secured certain papers——’

‘I have secured them,’ Rahāt clutched his packet with fingers like talons.

‘We have heard of talk from foolish young men’—Nizām insisted on the plural pronoun—‘which gives proof that Lynch Sahib knew——’

‘There is little in such matters that Lynch Sahib does not know,’ Lance assured him with quickened interest. ‘And, in this case, I have some knowledge also. I must see these papers.’

He looked very straight at Abdul Rahāt, who answered indirectly, ‘I have said I will show them to Desmond Sahib only.’

Nizām sucked up his heavy lower lip. That had clearly been a source of friction between them; but he went on unheeding: ‘Because our knowledge is not yet certain, we speak first to you. His Highness—even on suspicion—would take the life of any youths who listen to these trouble-makers; such is his well-known loyalty to the King Emperor.’

Lance did not miss the covert dig at Rahāt, whom Nizām had often secretly accused of being in Soviet pay. It was as good as a play to watch that inimical pair, each hating the other, each vying with the other in pouring the best brand of oil on a guileless young Englishman, whose honesty argued him something of a fool.

It took the guileless one a full half-hour to glean proof sufficient of movements going on that were unusual at this time of year. Rahāt spoke cautiously of those stranger Moslems, seen here, heard of there, inflaming young Chitralis and the Pathans of Bajour with talk of a coming upheaval in India, that would at last ‘push the British into the sea.’ And because Chitralis had no fanaticism in politics or religion, they enlarged on the looting of great cities, of banks and jewellers’ shops, appealing to the cupidity of an impoverished race in a barren land. Lance, disguising his keen interest, recognised that familiar touch, that skilful playing on idiosyncrasies, racial or religious. Here, obviously, was a chance for the very work he was to have done had he not—in his pain and anger—discarded all that.

So he repeated coolly, ‘I must see these papers.’

Without more ado they were handed to him, under the curious eyes of Nizām-ul-Mulk, who had failed to inveigle them out of his enemy’s talons: and he stepped out into the frosty starlight with a grateful sense of passing from the unreal to the real. Modern India—glibly discoursing of political unity—seemed leagues and centuries removed from Chitral.

He found dinner nearly half-over; but the earlier courses were served to him, piping hot. Ramazān saw to that. And while he took part in the usual Mess talk, the frank chaff about the prima donna’s charms, his detached brain was occupied in wondering how to take action in this affair, when Lynch might be acting independently of him?

Write he must; a semi-official letter, and pitch it in before Greville locked up the mailbag. For the dāk-runner, that unconsidered hero, would be starting at dawn.

Alone in his room, he smiled at the forgotten King, abandoned to his fate, swept up the pieces, and sat down to his table, wondering how the devil he intended to address his closest friend. There was no getting out of it. The ingrained sense of responsibility under his Irish lightness told him he was not justified in neglecting work that concerned India. If he could not write as a friend, he could write as the man on the spot, willing to follow instructions.

That being settled, he lit his pipe, took up his pen and wrote:

‘Dear Lynch,—You will be surprised to hear from me; but I’ve run up against information, which seems to prove that certain persons we know of are prowling in this region. You probably know a lot more than I do. And, as this work concerns neither of us personally, I’m bound to do what I can. If you’ll favour me with instructions, in code, they will be promptly and cautiously acted on. One might say of Chitral politics, “interesting, curious—and vile.”

‘Yours, L. D.’

When that had been written and despatched, he felt better. For an hour he read an absorbing new book on India’s dilemma; and wondered why Soviet designs were tacitly ignored by almost every writer on that subject. Sceptics and optimists might belittle the Red menace, out here, because Communism would never appeal to the mass of Indians; but men like Lynch and Sir Abdul knew that the word of appeal in India was freedom from the yoke of the West—active assistance guaranteed from the main source of inspiration. He found the papers given him by Rahāt much the same as others, with which he had now grown familiar; and in his present mood, he needed the stimulant of working with Lynch to keep up his zest for a distasteful job.

Tired and anxious, he undressed quickly, hoping soon to fall asleep. For this was his worst hour in all the twenty-four, when his whole being ached with longing for Eve, when he could not shut his mind against the secret fear lest any harm should come to her; and if she were standing quite alone, there might be none to let him know. All day long his outward-going nature could find solace, of a sort, in doing what was required of him, in friendly contact with his fellows, and the horses that were almost his fellows. Thrusting aside his secret pain, he could carry on; running up a wall between his thoughts and his grief; his will hardened like iron against any indulgence of body or mind. But alone at night the wall would crumble, leaving him a prey to the inner desolation that nothing could assuage. Had he known she was safe in Kashmir, had he the comfort of frequent letters, he could put up with the strain of separation for a time. It was the common lot—more or less—of most married men in India. But this complete severance, this ache of lonely flesh and lonelier spirit, seemed to cut the silver cord that linked them. Did she not feel it too? Did women never quite understand?

Surely, when she read his letter, she must write at once. For how long would that sad, distorted Eve feel compelled to prove her strength by standing alone?

Chapter 5

Throw not away the hero in thy soul.
— Nietzsche

He breakfasted always in his own bungalow: and next morning—just as the meal was over—Ramazān announced that there was a young man on the verandah desiring to see Desmond Sahib.

‘When I asked a name, Hazúr, he gave me this card.’ Lance, puzzled and curious, took the card and read:

‘Kamāla Singh—from Lynch Sahib, Peshawar.’

For a few seconds he sat very still, his heart beating thickly. The name took him back to the Residency Garden, to the evening when Lynch had sounded him about Chitral.

Then he said quietly, ‘Bid the young man come in.’

The young man, who entered smiling, wore Eastern dress. His thick features were redeemed by his smile, his eyes and a thoughtful forehead.

‘You come straight from Peshawar?’ Lance asked, after greetings.

‘As straight as these crooked hill paths would permit,’ Kamāla Singh answered, in clipped student English. ‘There was deep snow on the passes. These hills are too cold in winter. I am of the Plains.’

‘Yet you have come up here. You will stay up here?’

‘Yes, I come. And I will stay; because there is a thing to be done before the passes open into Central Asia. Also because Lynch Sahib sent me. Lynch Sahib is a strange man—a great man.’

‘Yes—a great man,’ Lance echoed; and that simple statement created between two complete strangers, a sudden bond of liking and respect.

Kamāla Singh took out a thick official envelope and laid it on the table.

‘This I brought to give you in person. I think there will be orders for me—and for you. Whatever you tell me I shall do, because Lynch Sahib has put everything in your hands. You can trust me, Desmond Sahib. Having once hated the English, through thinking them other than they are, I shall not hate them again. I know now that they are a great and simple people—if at times bewildering. Can it be said of any nation that they have never done wrong to another? But all who are not blind with prejudice can see that now the English only wish good to my distracted country. There are others who wish evil, cunningly disguised as good. And I will use all the knowledge I have gained to thwart their purposes.’

‘I’ll trust you all right, Kamāla Singh,’ Lance assured him; and his mind repeated, ‘everything in your hands.’ He wished the man would go; but his natural friendliness prevailed.

‘Have some breakfast,’ he said, indicating a chair.

Kamāla Singh accepted a banana. He had breakfasted already.

‘Last night,’ Desmond told him, ‘there was talk, at the Fort, of certain men who are moving about, stirring up trouble in Chitral and Bajour.’

Kamāla Singh nodded. ‘It is because of those men that I am going now towards Shohgōt. I wear a disguise. I find out what I can. Then I come back to you, with my report. Nothing is safe in this land of plotters, except by word of mouth.’

He took his leave without further palaver: and Lance, left alone, opened the thick sealed packet. Out of it he drew a square envelope, which was all that mattered just then. Of course the moment he wrote, Lynch would break silence: a longish letter, too, from the briefest letter writer in creation.

‘My dear Boy’ (he read),—‘You may contradict it, but the fact remains. Perhaps your wrath has abated by now? Anyhow I’m taking my chance that you will be fair-minded enough to read this letter. I’m not out to fabricate excuses; simply to express my sincere regret.

‘Barring yourself, the last person alive whom I would wittingly harm is Eve. I knew she was very unhappy, that it had affected her nerves. But I know precious little about nerves and less about women of the finer sort. They’re too complicated and sensitive for my clumsy handling. And honestly—my own affairs apart—I felt you ought to go. She evidently thought so too. For the rest—I’m sorrier than I can say. And that’s all I can say, now the damage is done. Except that I hope you’ll very soon hear from her. When you can bring yourself to forgive and be friends again, I’ll be damn glad to hear from you.

‘Now—to business. I can put a fair amount on paper, as Kamāla Singh takes this by hand. Use our code or French through the post. Letters are not sacred in your country. The mutlub⁴⁴ of this bulky packet is that—as you’re quit of J. L. and all his works—I’m putting the whole of my present plan into your hands. It’s work for India—not for me; and it needs doing by a man on the spot. I think I’ve primed you sufficiently, though I had a good deal to say by word of mouth that afternoon, when you hurled your thunderbolts. K. S. is a find. You couldn’t have pulled it off independently otherwise; and I wish you luck. Mahomed Akbar’s on the war-path; and I’ll send Bhagwān when I can spare him.

‘If you get hold of the men I’ve written of in my instructions, we shall disorganise that particular chain of communication pretty thoroughly. They are principals, not underlings; and they don’t often trust their valuable bodies this side of the passes. It was because I had an inkling of this that I was specially keen to have you in Chitral. If there’s any kudos going, you’re welcome to it. All I ask is—spare no pains, trust K. S. and collar those men, dead or alive.

‘Yours as ever (when you happen to need him),

‘John Lynch.’

The tone of that letter, and its wholly unexpected contents, amounted to a frontal attack on his resolve to have no more dealings with Lynch till he knew, at least, what had really come to Eve from this disastrous turn of affairs. And—within himself—a mingled strain of generosity and constancy of heart, a sense of utter isolation, made an inimical attitude peculiarly hard to maintain, in the face of his friend’s patent sincerity and honesty. Above all, that complete handing over, of the work that was his secret bread, made Lance feel ashamed of his own stiff note. At least they had both, independently, put the work before their own personal clash; and the success of that bold plan hung mainly on the renewal of their old friendly cooperation. He would write at once: but a letter would be too slow for his impatience to cancel the effect of his own curt note.

Stowing that valuable sheet of paper in his letter-case, he reached for a telegram form, and wrote, under the code address: ‘Glad to have yours. Ignore mine. We carry on jointly. Lance.’

The bulky official envelope he locked away in a side-drawer. No time till this evening to study all that. This morning he would speak to Nizām and privately advise him not to say a word, in any quarter, about the men who were supposed to be causing trouble. He would make light of the whole matter; and Nizām would accept his word as he would not accept the word of any fellow-courtier. They had learnt—these charming yet treacherous Chitrali nobles—that even ‘a straight man’ and an Englishman was not, of necessity, a fool.

In that blend of honesty and shrewdness, combined with personal courage, resides half the secret of the individual Englishman’s hold on the people of India; an unobtrusive influence more potent than any obvious political dominion.

Lance, himself, was thankful to find, in this far off corner of wildest India, a minimum of office work, a larger scope for the interplay of character and personality and that rare sixth sense—a blend of intuition and imagination—that enables certain Englishmen to feel at home with Orientals, to catch their angle of vision, to create an atmosphere of understanding. In normal circumstances, he could have asked nothing better than this spell of trans-border service—a service eminently fitted for youth, vigour and intelligence: congenial work, sport in plenty, and a few of his own kind to keep him in touch with English thoughts and ways. That the acceptable chance could scarcely have come at a less acceptable moment was only in keeping with the frequent perversity, which is one of life’s most bewildering attributes.

It was his first experience, also, of that complete isolation with a handful of his fellows, which is a constant element in Border service; one that often reveals the young British officer at his excellent best. For isolation among Easterns tests his fibre in a world of work and sport and comradeship unshared by women. It breeds responsibility and begets friendship. It also begets unreasoning animosities, as Lance was already beginning to perceive. Six or seven men, thrown perpetually together, day in, day out, become over familiar with each other’s idiosyncrasies, over sensitive to minor rubs that would normally pass unnoticed. Each of these seven had come to know too well what the others would say, and how each one would say it: and there are few things more rasping to the nerves than the irk of foreknown repetition. When they rasped each other, they could not escape from the process, as Lance could do—and occasionally did; though individually he liked them well enough.

This morning, all who could wriggle free from duty would join the royal hawking party: a mediaeval pageant of scarlet and purple and blue, velvet and cloth of gold, Chinese silks and sober hair-cloth; horses caparisoned in silver and gold, followed by a straggle of villagers and lovely laughing children, prancing to the strains of the band. For no game, no function, in Chitral was complete without that chorus of strange instruments and tireless drums.

After the hawking, Lance would be at Royalty’s disposal for consultation over State affairs, or for aimless endless talk under the big marquee in the Mehtar’s private garden. There His Highness would sit for an hour or two, surrounded by his chief sons and nobles, discussing everything under the sun, drinking tea, rubbing snuff on his gums and eating tea-softened gingerbread nuts; entertained at intervals by singing boys with beautiful voices. And there would be young Nizām flaunting his favouritism, while old Rahāt—secure in his greater influence—sat aloof, carving patterns in the rind of a pomegranate, never missing a significant look or word.

At times it would come over Lance—as he strolled away from that garden of splendour and squalor to the scratch Mess in Greville’s bungalow—-that all this mediaeval way of life, this pageantry and plotting and absolute monarchy, was every whit as much India as the political-minded crowds of Calcutta, or the lawyers in horn spectacles and frock coats, bearing witness, in the Delhi Assembly, to that strange slogan, ‘India a Nation.’

So much for his morning. In the afternoon there would be polo or shooting gourds at full gallop; sport of some kind for themselves and Greville’s Scouts. After sport, chess, or time for reading and his own affairs. To-night—when he had dealt with those papers—he would write to Lynch and Vanessa; very specially he would write to Grace, in the hope of undoing any harm he might have done in that direction by his inadvertent revealing.

He was putting on his riding boots when Greville and Greene and the Sink broke in upon his privacy, arms linked, singing in three different keys, ‘A-hawking we will go. . . .!’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

That wire to Lynch evoked a prompt reply: ‘Good. Am ignoring it. Carry on. Lynch.’ But it was ten days before he was cheered by a letter announcing that his friend would fly over to Chitral by aeroplane as soon as his regular work allowed. There were several things he would rather say than write; and, at the prospect, Desmond’s resilient nature righted itself like a bent blade released. Any mail day now might bring him a letter from Eve.

But the days passed—-and it did not come. Instead, came one from Vanessa enclosing a cable from Anne Verity: ‘Two letters here for Eve. Where is she?’ And his lifted heart sank like a plummet, his mind became a prey to new torments of uncertainty and fear. Not till that moment did he realise how confidently he had counted on hearing from her by return mail, had counted on her going to Anne. Now she might be anywhere in England; and a hundred possible dangers darted like javelins at his brain.

Next day brought Grace Yolande’s reply from Eve’s bankers to the effect that Mrs Desmond had given them no fixed address, had said she would call or write when she needed money. It looked as if she did not wish him to find her; and the mere hint of that possibility touched up his sensitive pride. If she wanted to cut loose, he was the last man to thrust himself upon her. He had done what he could to comfort and reassure her. Till she chose to write, he had no more to say. But why, in the name of all that was crazy, did she thrust him from her in her deepest grief. Was it that damned music turning her brain? The suppressed unsleeping jealousy flared afresh. But he was too unhappy to be angry for long.

And he was distracted, in a measure, from his own bitterness, by Grace’s unpromising comment on his news of Lynch.

‘I am glad’ (she wrote) ‘of what you tell me about Mr Lynch. I know how you must have hated feeling harshly towards a friend. You have a very generous nature; and I’m glad, for you, that you feel able to forgive him.’

That did not look as though she shared his ability. If she loved old Lynch, and had set him on a pedestal, forgiveness, for one of her nature, might be a hard matter.

Plunged fathoms deep in depression, he was suddenly cheered by two words flashed from Peshawar: ‘Coming—Lynch.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In Chitral, an aeroplane was still a mystery and a marvel: an eagle of painted wood and metal, fifty times magnified—carrying men for hundreds of miles—put a severer tax on credibility than legions of fairies who flew on horseback down from Tirich Mir, having neither knee nor ankle joints and their feet turned the wrong way. So when the magnified eagle, bearing Lynch and Dick Molony with his Observer came circling over the valley, the whole of Chitral—Mehtar and nobles, troops and villagers debouched on to the polo ground. There close-packed—a many-coloured throng—they stood watching, in breathless wonder, how the monster dipped earthward, lower and lower, in swinging spirals; till, with a final rush, it alighted harmlessly in front of the new mosque.

Shouts and cheers, a burst of wild music from the persevering band, as one Englishman detached himself from a group of nobles, and went forward to greet his friend.

Their hands met in a close grasp; and Lynch said only one word—Eve?’

Lance shook his head. ‘Not a sign.’

‘Don’t lose heart, old boy,’ the other urged, very low: but Lance had lost heart—for the first time in his life.

Dick and his Observer returned that afternoon. Another machine would call for Lynch in a week’s time. Press of work would not allow him to be absent for long. Meanwhile, it was good to be back in the Hindu Kush and on terms again with Lance. After watching sports, they walked for miles up the valley talking of anything and everything except themselves. It was not till after Mess that they could settle down, with pipes and papers, by a great log lire in the living-room of a bachelor Lance, that contained only a few reminders of the study in Kohat.

On the mantelpiece were two photographs of Eve, one on Zaidée and one in her wedding frock. Lynch, looking at the last, seemed about to speak—but said nothing. Lance, watching him, wondered consumedly about Grace. It was easier to imagine her in love with Lynch, than Lynch in love with any woman; and he felt tempted to speak of her, by way of experiment. But, in view of the other’s silence, he refrained.

They sat up till midnight, examining Rahāt’s papers; Lynch expounding his astute plan of capture, his reliance on Bhagwān Das and Kamāla Singh.

‘That young man,’ he said, ‘has been through terrible experiences. I won’t harrow your sensitive soul with details. But it’s put a stiffening into him that isn’t indigenous in young Hindus of the student type. You’ll find him subtle, as no European is subtle; yet simple, as few of us can be simple. It’s a combination that’s apt to puzzle the Englishman who really wants to understand—in his limited fashion—and be friends. Talk freely to him; put him at ease. He has three valuable assets for our purpose; a cool fierce hatred of the Soviet and all its works; a firm conviction that even a federated India could only cohere under a strong Central British Government, and a personal attachment to myself—as useful as it is flattering on such a brief acquaintance. In short (to quote Mr Micawber) you can trust K. S., on my authority.’

Lance smiled. ‘That’s a useful chit.⁴⁵ Goes a long way—from you. I suppose I’ll be doing some independent work with him?’

‘Yes. There must be no obvious collusion with my pair—Akbar and Bhagwān. They’ll land the fish, when you’ve baited the hook. Wish to God I could go with you.’

‘So do I,’ Lance echoed, for more than personal reasons. Lynch inspired—in all who worked with him—an absolute faith in his capacity to ensure the success of any enterprise to which he set his hand: and Lance was undertaking this risky, exciting adventure at a moment of dejection that insidiously lowered his vitality. But no word of that to Lynch, who was counting on him with an unquestioning faith—the highest compliment one man can pay to another.

‘It’s a bit of luck, anyhow, that I can spare Bhagwān. He’ll get you up inimitably, as a Moslem holy man, to the last realistic hair in your youthful beard! And when you’ve tracked down these elusive gentlemen, you’ve got to lap-up Red-hot doctrine for all you’re worth.’

Lance frowned uneasily. ‘I don’t like the would-be disciple touch.’

‘Of course you don’t. You’re too straight for this game. But you’ve got the knowledge and the grit; and you’ll need ’em both. For you must not be discovered. That’s the only risk that worries me. Bet it doesn’t worry you.’

‘Not much,’ Lance admitted; and instinctively he glanced up at Eve. ‘If she doesn’t care a damn what comes to me, God knows I don’t.’

‘She does care,’ Lynch flatly countered the unfamiliar note of bitterness. ‘So do I—not to mention a dozen others. And before I let you go, you must give me your word to run no needless risks.’

‘You can count on that, old man. I want to get back,’ Lance said, in a different voice: and Lynch needed no further assurance.

Lance, he knew, had the quality of courage that does not disdain caution and forethought, though it can rise above both at a critical moment, and give to daring the impalpable touch that lifts it to heroism. Reassured on that head, he was troubled none the less by an unusual prick of compunction.

‘Look here, Lance,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to let you in for this unless you’re personally keen?

Lance, who guessed his thought, gave him a quick look.

‘I am personally keen.’

‘Thought so. But I’m glad of the assurance. To some it might seem a biggish risk for a small matter. But you and I know the nature of the “little leaven” that aims at leavening India’s masses. Take any open-eyed risk; and you’ll pull it through. Hesitate—and the danger you boggle at will have you, sure as eggs. Remember that, if you get into a tight place.’

‘“Which I ’ope it won’t ’appen to me!”’ Lance laughed; but his laughter had not the whole-hearted ring of happier days.

Too soon for both the hour of departure arrived; and again the great winged thing came circling and humming over the valley. There had been no further mention of Eve, no mention at all of Grace; but Lance had found a measure of comfort in the stability and the straight-dealing of friendship as compared with the fervours and torments of love.

By that time, everything had been settled in detail. Kamāla Singh had returned with a report of his doings. The Soviet ‘missionaries,’ he said, were never long in the same place, nor always in the same guise. But he had seen two, and had achieved a snapshot of one, while wedged in a crowd listening to a harangue on the true interests of an awakened India.

The date was fixed for Lance to start on his informal tour of the neighbouring valleys, that would include a strictly unofficial diversion by the way; and before Christmas he should be back again, to keep the feast with his isolated comrades in Chitral.

But beneath all his surface cheerfulness and zeal, he was deeply dejected at heart. Another week had passed—and still no word from Eve.

Chapter 6

Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurance . . . For of these things cometh the making of a man.
— Hugh Walpole

‘Truly Desmond Sahib, this is a devil’s country. Is there no other way to reach the village?’

Kamāla Singh, in wadded coat and muffler, eyed with frank disfavour the track ahead of them. Track? It was a mere gallery of earth packed over branches set on rough staples that were driven into holes along a perpendicular cliff; an unpleasant form of transit peculiar to the bleak impressive tangle of rock and precipice and mountain that is Chitral. For over a mile that cleverly constructed ‘parri’ was festooned along the cliff, a hundred and fifty feet above the river that had created this narrow gorge, carving out its clay sides into a weird assembly of pinnacles, towers and balanced rocks. Their dark forms and the pale hurrying water had a sinister effect in the half-light.

It was the longest parri the travellers had encountered yet; and Kamāla Singh was apt to turn giddy at critical corners, where the road ran across polished rock, and the sais would hang on to his pony’s tail lest its hindquarters should slip over the edge. Even Lance had discovered, by now, that marching in Chitral afforded a unique test of nerve-control. When his inner leg brushed the cliff and his outer leg hung over empty space, he knew that there had been more bitterness than truth in his assertion to Lynch that, if Eve did not care what came to him, he cared nothing either. For it is a pleasant thing to see the sun; and Life has its own inestimable value, even when it slaps a man in the face, saying, ‘There! Take that.’

The day’s march had been more trying than usual; and he did not relish the prospect of crawling along that devil’s track in the waning light. A devastating cold in his head and throat had lowered his powers of resistance to strenuous days and bitter nights. The village was just beyond the cliff; but if they could reach it by another road, before dark, he would be glad enough to please Kamāla Singh.

While the party halted, the strapping youth who led them was striding on ahead, chest flung out, a sheathed sword passed through his crooked elbows, singing tunefully. When Lance shouted, he turned; and, at the question as to another way, he showed all his teeth in a broad grin. ‘Why another way? This road is good. There is a winter road below. It is much longer; but if the Sahib would prefer!’

He coolly indicated an impossible looking staircase of rock and clay that descended to the river, where dusk was deepening to night. The Sahib, sneezing violently, did not prefer. At the moment, he wanted, more than anything in life, a fire, a hot drink and his sleeping-bag. Better danger than delay.

Kamāla Singh could only repeat with conviction: ‘It is a devil’s country. Let us hasten, before darkness comes.’

So they hastened, at a foot’s pace; Kamāla Singh preferring to dismount.

Lance, feverish and tired, knew that the mountain-bred beast he rode was surer-footed than himself on frozen ground. ‘Hubshi,’ the negro, was a climber born, with sinews of steel, powerful ugly quarters and feet of flint. His winter coat curled all over his body and crisped like astrakhan on his legs. He had been presented to Lance by the young Sirdar, heir apparent of Chitral, who objected to his trick of bolting on the flat. But Lance was training him with hand and voice, more effective than bit or bridle for those who have the gift.

He had set out upon his tour of inspection and sport in the lightest possible marching order: one seven-foot tent apiece, for himself and Kamāla Singh; no tables or chairs, not even a camp bed: one tent for three servants—cook, Ramazān and Purān Singh, now a sais in charge of the ‘Hubshi.’ He clung like a leech, that boy. He would not be put off by any talk of evil roads or difficult marching. At the bare suggestion of a substitute, he had abased himself, and wept without shame.

‘Where the Sahib can go, I can go. If the Sahib should die—then I die also,’ was his unanswerable argument: a tribute peculiarly acceptable in changing India, where democracy—as in the West—is slowly killing the spirit of personal service. But in India, where it amounts to a religion, it will die hard.

So Purān Singh had not been parted from his ‘Hubshi’; but there would be a bad moment for himself and his master when sais and pony must return to Chitral. For only Ramazān could accompany Lance into the heart of his adventure. Mahomed Akbar and Bhagwān were on the war-path in another valley; and, on joining them, he must be conjured into a wandering holy man, who had taken a vow of silence and only spoke at certain times, to certain people.

They were making now for the point of junction. Any day a messenger might meet them who would guide them to the other two. Then the fun would begin. But Lance, keen though he was, preferred the more straightforward part of his programme. He had despatched two letters to Lynch; and would send a third by Purān Singh to be posted from Chitral. He had received one mail bag: nothing from Eve. And from now on, his address would be an uncertain affair. . . .

A shout, a cry of fear, startled him out of his reverie and checked the slow-moving cavalcade of ponies and men.

It took him a few seconds to realise what had happened. Their lusty guide—swinging confidently ahead in the half-light—had stepped straight into a chasm, where the path had fallen away. All in a moment, he was—and was not. And the halted cavalcade must discover for themselves whether they could cross the treacherous gap.

Lance, by virtue of his race, must give the lead: and at that critical moment, a fit of sneezing took him and shook him like a rat. With eyes streaming, he dismounted and called for Purān Singh, who pressed forward, hugging the cliff, hastily removing a brown paper blinker from his left eye.

With due caution Lance examined the gap; and discovered, with relief, that it was not much more than a bold stride could compass. He did not relish stepping over it in the half-dark. Still less would several of the others. The opposite edge might not be firm; and there were the animals to be manoeuvred across. A couple of planks would serve: an oubliette affair.

At his call, two Chitralis came sidling up from the rear; for it was difficult to pass a pony on that narrow track. Over the fate of the confident one they were philosophic in the extreme. To the careless, these little accidents would happen. As for planks, the village was not far off. They would run there and back in a few minutes. Lance knew that probably meant fifteen or twenty—and every one perished with cold. But he could do no more than promise liberal backsheesh, if the minutes were few. And as each man, in turn, skipped across the gap, he heard Kamāla Singh catch his breath.

The stimulant of backsheesh took effect. The minutes were surprisingly few; three pliable strips of wood were fixed in position; and again Lance must give the lead. He decided to trust the Hubshi. It would quicken confidence in the wavering to see him coolly ride across that impromptu bridge; and none would know how far from cool he felt within.

He held his breath as the planks dipped under his Hubshi’s unshod hoofs, and the roar of the river below him was like a wild beast hungry for its prey. But a murmur of applause from the far side told him that he had made the right move. A Chitrali followed on Kamāla Singh’s country-bred; and the Hindu, close behind, made no bones about holding on to the pony’s tail. Safe across, he laughed at himself; but when Lance clapped him on the shoulder, self-respect was restored.

Before all were well over, it was a case of lanterns and torches. Every moment the cold seemed more intense; and, for Lance, creeping along the remainder of the parri—eyes streaming, fever buzzing in his brain— was as bad a quarter of an hour as any he had experienced yet.

Camp, at last: tents and hot food and the kindly warmth of their little fold-up Canadian stove, fed by Ramazān with chips of wood till the iron glowed. After food, a bed on the ground, warmer than any camp affair. Half a foot of chopped straw, covered with resai and sleeping-bag, made a nest that was elastic and draught-proof. The comfort of it relaxed all his strung-up nerves; but that accursed cold had him in its grip; a rasped throat, burning eye-balls and a rising temperature, which he did not trouble to take.

It was at these times that Ramazān gave proof of his quality; fussing over his sick master, with the tenderness and patience for which a devoted Indian servant has no match. Having plied Lance with hot soup and whisky toddy and piled on every rug he could purloin, he rolled himself in a horse blanket and lay down near the tent flap to be at hand in case of need.

But Lance, in his acute discomfort, needed one thing only—sleep: sleep, that overpowers at the wrong moment, yet eludes the distracted brain. His fevered imagination tormented, him with visions of a wasted week here in the wilderness; he, prostrate with influenza, upsetting the whole bag of tricks. It tantalised him with visions of the Eve he had married eighteen months ago; Eve riding through the wilds of Ladāk a delight to the eye, a brace to the spirit, quick—in the true sense of the word; an Eve he could see, yet not possess. And as his temperature rose, his mind kept wandering; living again through episodes happy and sad; sincerely wishing, for the first time, that he had never been tempted to accept Chitral. His resolute refusal to obey her command might have given everything a turn for the better. This absorbing profession of his was much; but she was more.

The thought flung him back on the old torment of longing: and when, at last, he fell asleep, he dreamed of her, as in the empty bungalow at Kohat; livingly present, laughing at him, loving him. Yet, when his arms went round her, they clasped empty air. . . .

She was gone again—

He woke with her name on his lips, in a cold, profuse perspiration; but his brain was clear. Ramazān’s vigorous methods had sweated the fever out of him; and he did not feel like stirring a limb.

Yet when Kamāla Singh, deeply concerned, begged him to halt for at least twenty-four hours, he scouted the suggestion. Inaction was the one form of misery that he could not bring himself to endure.

From the village they unearthed a guide—of sorts; but it soon became evident that, beyond his own valley, he knew little of Chitral. Lance, however, possessed a compass and a sense of direction: and to-day or to-morrow Bhagwān’s messenger might run them to earth.

It was a golden day; strong sunlight undimmed by a shred of cloud. For the winter rains were not yet. And their road lay through a comparatively favoured region; villages more frequent and more prosperous. Before noon they were crossing a wide windy plain. Below them the river ran swiftly between precipitous cliffs; and on either side loomed the grey monotoned mountains of Chitral, their harsh summits transfigured by a heavy fall of snow.

It was possible here to ride abreast leisurely and talk. And they had a good deal more to say to one another than Lance had supposed possible when they set out. Kamāla Singh was no half-baked college student. He had learnt from life as well as from books; and he could talk with singular ease to this white man who dispelled his own acute sense of race by seeming unaware of it himself. He could talk—as the Englishman could not—of his own religious faith and unfaith. For religion, in the East, colours the whole of life and consciousness, as it has long ceased to do in the West. Though travel and education had devitalised belief and begotten scepticism, he could still justify himself to the Soul of the Universe by the basic Hindu dictum that each man must be free to find God in his own way, along one of the three great avenues to truth, gnana, karma or bhakti—knowledge, action or devotion.

‘And the greatest of these?’ Lance queried, ‘the scholar, the soldier or the saint?’

‘Who shall say?’ The Hindu shelved invidious distinctions. ‘Some men travel all three paths at different times of their lives; and those become wise with a three-fold wisdom, like your own Chief Commissioner Sahib in Peshawar.’

‘You’ve met him? You’ve talked much with him?’ The mere mention of his uncle cheered Lance inexpressibly.

‘Yes. Lynch Sahib sent me to him; and in him I perceived the three-fold wisdom. Therefore he understands my people as few of your race can understand them. We talked for two hours about many other matters than the terrible things that are happening in Central Asia and China—that will also happen in India, if Ghandi—who is more vakil⁴⁶ than saint—too successfully kills all kind feeling between our races. A friend of mine, lately back from England, tells me they are less friendly now to Indian students than they used to be. A pity for both races.’

‘And hard on the students,’ Lance agreed; ‘but it’s not surprising, if my people feel less friendly, when your people out here keep shooting British officers and even English women, when Congress wallahs boycott our trade and demand control of our Army and make out a false case against us—which deceives many in other countries.’

Kamāla Singh sighed. ‘I admit those are not the seeds from which good feeling can spring. Better for India, could she only see it, to keep her poverty than to lose her peace.’

‘I’m afraid she won’t see it. The industrial devil has got his fangs into her. Sometimes I feel as if India needs a taste of real fighting on her own soil. She has been so long protected from outside enemies that she has forgotten what invasion means.—Hullo! who comes here?’

Towards them came ambling on a country pony, a slender youth, in a scarlet wadded coat, the corners pinned back to show the gay chintz lining. At sight of the pair, he trotted briskly forward; stared hard at Lance and held out a small box.

‘Desmond Sahib?’ he asked.

‘Desmond Sahib,’ Lance replied, guessing whence he came.

‘It was an order that I give this box to Desmond Sahib, riding or camping in this valley.’

While he spoke, Lance had opened the small box, had found in it a token that proved the sender to be Bhagwān Das. On a wisp of paper he had written in code, ‘He who brings this will bring you to us.’

Word from the man whose skill never failed, whose plans never miscarried, lightened his heart.

‘This is the King’s Messenger!’ he informed Kamāla Singh. ‘Our karma is good.’

Then he turned to the boy. ‘You lead—and we follow.’

The King’s Messenger grinned. ‘That was the order.’

And turning his pony’s head, he trotted on before, trilling out a Chitrali love song that pleased Desmond’s musical ear.

Cheered in spirit, though fever still ached in his bones, he followed that slender casual person into the unknown.

Chapter 7

Affliction may one day smile again; until then, sit thee down, sorrow.
— Shakespeare

It was on the first Sunday of the New Year that John Lynch halted his car under the lofty porch of Government House, Peshawar. No need to ask if the Burra Sahib was at leisure. He had come by arrangement to discuss a matter that nearly concerned them both.

For Lance had not returned to keep Christmas with the Chitral garrison. Nearly two weeks had passed without any news of him. The Mehtar was troubled because he had gone with too small an escort for a person of importance; and most of those who went with him had been afterwards sent back. Others were troubled also; none more profoundly than Lynch; for none knew better the risks involved. And of course directly the boy slipped out of reach, a wire must needs come from Eve. She had wired to Mrs Thorne from a Hindhead address: ‘Where is Lance? Have written. No answer. Please wire.’ And no doubt a message for Lance was lying in his own empty bungalow. Why couldn’t the little devil have sent it sooner?

Mrs Thorne, after consulting Sir Vincent—who seemed to be in the know—had answered by cable that Lance was marching in the wilds, that his present address was uncertain; just enough to prevent anxiety and account for a delayed reply. It had now become a question whether she should write more fully—and what she should say. Only one thought gave Lynch a grain of comfort. Bhagwān had never yet failed in any undertaking to which he set his hand and applied his subtle brain.

He found Sir Vincent alone, his lean thoughtful face set in very serious lines. He had not altogether favoured the inclusion of Lance in their bold plan of campaign; but on principle he refrained—he who had never been venturesome—from checking the spirit of adventure in younger men. And he had admitted that it would be ‘a service to the State’ if, between them, they could capture those particular sons of darkness, who were sowing dragon’s teeth all over the Border.

‘Nothing?’ he asked, as they shook hands.

‘Nothing.’

He frowned: the small change of disappointment did not meet the case. They sat down together by the cheerful fire; and the silence between them was heavy with unspoken fears.

At last Sir Vincent said slowly, ‘What am I going to tell Eve? She has had enough to bear.’

‘Do you want her to be rushing out here at once?’ Lynch asked, evading a direct answer.

‘Well—I think she ought to be out here. I think he would wish it. Why she ever went——? I can’t understand. I’ve not tried to understand. But with nerves deranged anything is possible.’

Lynch nodded. ‘I don’t know much about nerves. But of course I feel pretty bad about my share in upsetting her.’

‘Your share——?’

‘Didn’t you know? Didn’t Lance say anything——?’

‘Not a word.’

And Lynch felt a slow stir of warmth round his heart. ‘He’s the very best. I might have known,’ was all he said.

Sir Vincent, perceiving he was moved, said quietly: ‘Lance usually keeps his own counsel. We may as well respect his reserve. But if you’re personally concerned, I don’t wonder you feel bad about it.’

Lynch gratefully accepted the finality of that. In any case he could not talk of it. He could only approve and admire his friend’s reticence, even in anger. For Lance had been in a proper rage that afternoon; had cast the sinner on the scrap-heap: and yet—not a word to Sir Vinx, a man slower to wrath, yet probably slower to forgive. That warmth at his heart quickened his growing conviction that he could no longer endure the inaction of waiting——for how long?—completely in the dark.

And from the depths of that conviction sprang an idea.

He would go off up there at once by aeroplane; scour the region himself, in his usual disguise. He would take Umra Khan—a cunning tracker. Something might come of it; and anything was better than goblins and ghouls, in the form of ugly possibilities, sitting on his chest. In the matter of short urgent leave, he was virtually his own master; only the Inspector General and Sir Vincent to be squared. And here was the greater of the two sitting in his pocket no less anxious than himself—as his silence gave proof.

He turned and spoke his thought.

‘Sir Vinx, I’m fed up with this waiting. I want fifteen days’ privilege leave and another trip by air to the place where my four joined up. Disguised, of course. And I’ll collect Umra Khan. He has the nose of a bloodhound for sniffing out kubber.⁴⁷ We might pick up news; and with any luck do better than that. Will you give me a backing?’

And Sir Vincent said with his slow charming smile, ‘I’ll back you—I’ll bless you, if you pick up more than kubber. If it leaked out that he was an Englishman—that’s my fear.’

Lynch nodded. ‘He worked up the part pretty thoroughly; but a man’s race will out in a score of little ways.—I don’t believe they’d harm him. More likely hold him up for ransom. But they’d make no bones about extinguishing the others, if they suspected collusion; and that would narrow down his chances of escaping from their hands. Lucky I held Umra Khan in reserve; and I know all that country as well as any of them. It’s my privilege to see that no harm comes to him from his plucky venture. Now, sir, may I go? If you say “Yes,” Buggins will say ditto.’

Sir Vincent’s grave face lightened. ‘The Buggins type has its uses! Of course you must go. The sooner the better.’

‘Trust me for that. I’ll pay a call on the Mehtar and make things clear—up to a point. I’ll collect any dāk that may be lying in Lance’s bungalow.’

‘And I’ said Sir Vincent ‘ must write Eve a diplomatic letter about him. The truth—but not the whole truth; the most difficult job on earth. I’ll tell her if she doesn’t come back soon, I shall disown her! She wouldn’t like that.’

He was forcing the lighter note; and Lynch followed suit. They discussed details briefly and briskly. Lynch calculated that he could be off in twenty-four hours; and his calculations were seldom at fault. Sir Vincent would write a line to Buggins. He would also write to Thorne. Heartened by the prospect of action, they parted more cheerfully than they had met half an hour ago.

Lynch himself wrote only one letter—if a few bald sentences and his initials amounted to a letter. It was addressed to Dr Grace Yolande; and it ran: ‘As you are no doubt anxious about Lance Desmond, I feel you ought to know that I am off after him at once. I don’t intend to return without him. By the time you get this, I shall be gone. J. L.’

That would make it clear that he expected no answer; and he offered no excuse for disobeying her royal command.

Next day as he was leaving the bungalow, his peon handed him a telegram.

Lance? His heart missed a beat, as he tore it open—and read: ‘Thank you for writing. You must succeed. G. Y.’

What was a man to make of that wholly unexpected response? This one was damned if he knew: and the effect of it, in any case, was minimised by the extinction of his hope for news of Lance.

Folding the flimsy paper, he tucked it into his letter case.

‘My talisman,’ he thought—and spurned himself for the superstitious fancy. But anxiety will catch at any straw: and his anxiety went deeper than he had allowed Sir Vincent to guess.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A week later, Sir Vincent received a brief message in code: ‘I think we are on the track of my party. Will write when I have definite news and the means of sending it.’

After that, silence——

Book Five — Near or Far

Chapter 1

But lo, compassionate, out of glory leaning,
You have called forth the music and the meaning
From doubt, retreat, confusion and despair.
— Gerald Gould

London fog: thinner here, thicker there; but nowhere any hope of escape from the smell, from the penetrating chill of that all-pervading yellow twilight.

On this particular evening of late November, South London seemed lost and drowned in it. The street lamps that struggled through had the effect of eyes blurred with weeping. Buses and taxis loomed up and passed on in endless succession; and the scurrying figures on the pavement had a ghostly air, as of lost souls, condemned to keep moving for ever, from aimless beginnings to unknown ends.

It was the ‘rush’ hour. From offices and shops, lost souls without number debouched into streets already over-crowded. Beside the pale signposts, buses thundered up—and were besieged: each for himself—more often herself—and devil take the hindmost.

Eve, in her old green leather coat, carrying her fiddle in its waterproof case, was always one of the hindmost. So finally the devil took her; and she gave it up. She was cold and tired and hungry; her inadequate lunch forgotten; no tea till she reached her attic room, five flights up, and made it for herself. Fog was in her nose and throat, aggravating her troublesome cough. The gloom of it seemed to penetrate into her brain. But mechanically she hurried on, pushed and jostled; a fragment of life caught in a huge machine; aware of ghostly faces, visible for a moment at close range, then swallowed up in the darkness, or in the traffic, that seethed and screamed and roared: hell made audible.

Who were they all? Why were they rushing, always rushing, as if their lives hung on the issue? The machine had got them too. It kept them running all the time, lest they should fall out of the race. And before most of them really knew where they were running to, they would be dead.

And this fog-bound inferno was civilised London. Could mediaeval Chitral be more barbarously uncomfortable and restless than England’s mechanised City of Dreadful Night? Chitral—Lance; magic words, striking a shaft of light through her blurred brain that could hardly now believe in the existence of either.

A stout woman—charging at a bus already on the move—crashed into her, and nearly knocked her down.

‘Sorry, Miss!’ she called out cheerfully, as a conductor hauled her on to the platform at the risk of her life.

It was the last straw. Eve, breathless and shaken, too tired to walk home, would have hailed a taxi, could anything be seen in this inspissated gloom. But a taxi would crawl and crawl; and she was starving for tea. There was but one refuge, when the upper earth behaved like the nethermost hell—the detested tube. No familiarity could ever quite reconcile her to the tube. Her fanciful mind saw it as a gigantic sausage machine. In they all went at one end; swaying and clanking through a glorified main drain. Out they all came at the other end, like so much mince-meat. But there, at least, would be respite from fog.

So in she gratefully went at one end; and out she came at the other, back into a slightly thinner fog. Very soon she turned with relief into a square, almost empty of traffic and scurrying ghosts. Instead there were ghosts of trees, quiet patient people, living their beautiful, unhurried lives in this machine-ridden world. Grouped in these London squares—clean and stable and dignified—they seemed mutely to rebuke the spawn of restless, noisy life swarming and surging round them.

It was into a stately square, fallen on evil days, that she turned at last, mounted the steps set with stucco pillars, and let herself into a narrow hall, stuffy yet cold, with a pervasive smell of food that was never appetising, however hungry one might feel. And she was painfully hungry now.

Then it was up and up—sixty-five stairs, each flight steeper and more cheaply carpeted than the one below it; for there are nice distinctions in these matters.

‘Excelsior!’ she breathed, confronted with the last and briefest. Her lean purse and her love of the ‘tip-most-top’ consigned her inevitably to the highest room available.

Little more than a spacious attic it was, with a box of a room behind it, which served as dressing-room and general ‘glory hole.’ In the front one she lived, and slept on the low bed that became a divan by day; a useful supplement to her one decent, if not very sympathetic, arm-chair. It was, at least, more sympathetic than the cheap little gas fire, which she hated with all her soul.

It gave her a headache, and if she sat close to it, for comfort’s sake, it viciously burnt her shins.

Above it, on the mantelpiece, stood the familiar photograph of Lance that had lived on her writing-table at Kohat; and the small vase beside it was never empty of flowers. Whatever else she must deny herself in order to buy them, there they would be; a votive offering at her deserted shrine. To-day there were pinkish anemones, because funds were low and anemones were cheap. They opened slowly and lasted many days.

To atone for the gas fire and a bell warranted not to ring, there was an aristocratic gate-leg table and ‘one window that looked to the sky’—whenever the sky fitfully appeared through the November gloom.

It also faced the sunset and the square; and from it one could look down on a dark tracery wrought by the uppermost branches of a great plane-tree, that had already become a friend, because of its kinship with the lordly chenars⁴⁸ of Kashmir.

Briskly she filled her kettle and set it on the gas ring. First a cup of tea to warm her through. Then she would make toast and scramble two eggs—hateful occupations; the more hateful because her youth and hunger and love of ‘scrumptious’ food set her hankering for a real dinner, daintily served. While the kettle hummed softly, she tried not to realise that, within fifteen minutes’ walk, in one of the lordly old Queen’s Gate houses, she could find—if she sought it—not only a real dinner, but a real welcome from her girlhood’s friend, Sir Clive Arden, elder brother of Tony Arden in Peshawar. But Clive and his delightful Molly were closely linked with Anne; and she could not yet face the difficulty of trying to explain why she was there at all.

She had set herself the hard task of standing alone: and during these three weeks—since she left Kitty under the wing of a married sister—she had been desolately alone, as it is only possible to be in a crowd of indifferent fellow-beings.

On board ship it had been otherwise; her fellow-beings far from indifferent; Kitty and the twins loving her and leaning on her, while she longed inexpressibly to lean on someone herself—Lance for choice. Then, from among the few passengers, a man had emerged and fallen abruptly in love with Kitty, who had spurned him, hugging the memory of Claude. The man, a Major Arnold, R.E., was plain yet attractive; turned forty and, in Eve’s opinion, worth ten Claudes. He clearly intended, for all Kitty’s gentle rebuffs, to keep on walking round the walls of Jericho. And Eve privately suspected that he would not have to do it seven times. Kitty, the incompetent and soft-hearted, could not for long resist the temptation to catch at a supporting hand.

It was thanks to Major Arnold and his kindness to the twins, that Eve had been caught in the net of a surface friendship with a clever woman sculptor, who came on board at Port Said, and rejoiced in the name of Delysia Vaughan. Her brother, a youngish Colonel, had squared the passage for her at this empty season; and she had seemed much amused at finding herself ‘all among the Philistines.’ Only in Eve, under her abstraction, she had discovered a fellow-artist, and had pounced accordingly. She was eight and twenty, and no novice at her art; very modern, with a taste for primitives. She had been spending a month in Egypt, looking for queer subjects. She had a lively, intelligent face, with irregular features and pale-brown hair cut straight across her forehead. It was a provocative face, a provocative personality; and, in or out of season, she talked and talked. It was the kind of talk one never heard in India: and after weeks of Kitty, it had acted like a tonic on Eve’s brain, without disturbing her emotions. For Delysia did not deal in emotion. She was primarily interested in herself and her art; and she had a good deal to say about both. She saw life frankly in terms of sex rather than love; and she had a good deal to say about that also, chiefly in connection with a certain Philip Marcel, a distinguished pianist—half-Irish, half-French—with whom she seemed to have some undefined relation, and for whom she clearly had some sort of feeling, by whatever name she chose to call it.

Frankly cynical about marriage, she had implicitly concluded that Eve was returning to England because her first experiment had proved a failure. And Eve had felt it would be futile to offer even a surface explanation of the truth.

They had parted on friendly terms. Delysia had given Eve her address, and an invitation that sounded genuine: ‘Come along and have a look at my primitives, when you feel like it. You’ll be welcome.’

Eve had given no address, having none to give; and not feeling sure that she wanted to see the girl again. But she had realised that there would be musicians in Delysia’s circle; that Marcel might help her to a decent opening, when she could bear to play real music again. Meantime, she must use her fiddle mechanically, as a breadwinner; try for an engagement in some small orchestra, some cinema or restaurant horror, where real music would never be allowed to intrude.

Kitty’s friendly married sister, Polly Ashenden, had prevailed on her to stay and rest for a few days before starting on her desperate search for an attic and a job. It was through Polly, a practical being, that she had found her attic in this quiet old square; through Delysia, and her own technical skill, that she had been taken on—just when things looked hopeless—as first violin by the conductor of a common little orchestra that played in a cheaply smart restaurant. It was clearly a case of take what you could get, and be thankful, though she was dishonouring her fiddle to the limit; forcing it, in her dire need, to associate with a herd of plebeian fiddles and ’cellos—scraped, rather than played—with a shrill saxophone, clashing cymbals and a viciously thumped piano that produced a sound like the rattle of broken china.

Every day—sometimes twice a day—the twelve of them assembled on that hateful dais, overlooking a wilderness of bored men and women, scuttling waiters and swinging doors. To drown the clatter of knives and forks and human tongues seemed to be the sole object of their instrumental uproar—one could call it nothing else. The conductor, a man of doubtful nationality, swore at them, in picturesque Italian oaths, when they outraged even his negligible artistic sensibilities. And always there was the smell of food and cheap tobacco that haunted Eve’s nostrils for hours.

That she actively hated the whole thing, yet kept on at it—finding her way to and fro in all weathers, mainly vile—seemed proof that by degrees her natural self was regaining its rightful supremacy; but she could still hardly bear the sight of a mother with a very young child. Kitty had been angelic over her persistent ignoring of little Claudia. Time has no specific power to heal the intimate ache of losing that which is a part of ourselves: and deep down, under her surface activities, the old numb misery lay like a stagnant pool waiting for an angel to trouble the waters. But as yet no angel had visited her heart; only at times a devil of black depression; causeless, impervious as a November fog, without even the blurred street lamps peering through. Until she felt free of that dark dominion, she was no fit wife for Lance, no fit associate for anyone but the stray human fragments of Marillio’s orchestra.

Things had been better lately within herself, though London was indulging in a grimy sequence of drizzle, frost and fog; and Marillio—seeing she was not as the others—had been pestering her with undesired attentions. Twice he had asked her to dine with him at another restaurant; and she, craving for a decent dinner, must tactfully refuse. He had taken her second refusal as a personal affront; and she was beginning to wonder how much longer she could bear with him rather than face the trials and uncertainties of pursuing another engagement.

This evening—on the plea of her cough and the fog—she had boldly excused herself from the ordeal of playing at a night club. He had been distinctly annoyed. To-morrow he might give her summary notice to quit. Let him. She would survive. That flash of her young ‘don’t care’ spirit was a promising sign; though it may have been partly induced by the warmth and stimulation of hot tea and chocolate biscuits.

For the present she felt warmed and soothed, disinclined for the effort of unearthing food and utensils. When, at last, she bestirred herself to hunt them up, it was only to find that she had run out of eggs and salt, that the casual Irish maid had carried off her little saucepan and frying pan, with the kind intent of giving them ‘a good clean up’; and had of course never put them back. To ring and ask for them, also for eggs and salt, when she ought to be presently strolling down to dinner in last summer’s best frock, made her feel a very ‘reduced lady’ indeed. And that poor over-worked Maggie: sixty-five steps up—not counting the basement: then down at once, and up again: nearly two hundred steps, all on account of her own trivial needs. But as she did not feel like splashing three-and-six on a badly cooked, aggressively English dinner, she must harden her heart and ring the bell.

Easily said: but the bell had the laugh of her. It was warranted not to ring; or if it ever did, nothing happened, nine times out of ten. Exasperated, yet deadly tired, she had not enough spirit to swear.

‘It’s a dog’s life,’ she murmured aloud; and her cough racked her again. Nothing for it, but to trail down herself to the drawing-room landing, where there lived a bell that did ring; and any summons from the first floor was sure of prompt attention. In dire straits, she had tried it more than once.

Slipping on her cast-off shoes, she ran quickly down; and was arrested just short of the landing by a low sound of music from the drawing-room. A man lived there who played real music. Once before, she had heard a fragment of Chopin; and had fled, on instinct, from the lovely sound that was like a secret touch on her heart. But this evening, swift recognition startled her into a moment’s hesitation: and the music had her in thrall.

It was Grieg’s elfin lyric, that Lance loved to play when he was pleased with things in general. Bear it or no, while it spoke to her in those familiar tones, she could no more move away than if someone were talking to her. Tense and rigid, she stood there, dizzied by the swift uprush of emotion after months of deadened feeling.

It was over: and still she remained motionless, wondering—what next?

A pause; a murmur of voices. Suppose someone came out and caught her shamelessly listening? She must risk it. She could not stir; though her feet were cold, her body chilled and empty. Above everything, she must not cough.

A few pensive chords told her that more was coming: but she was wholly unprepared, by that simple prelude, for a Beethoven sonata, rendered with delicacy, precision, and power. What was it—that soft thoughtful arpeggio, those tremulous single notes so full of troubled questioning, checked by another brooding arpeggio; as it were a whispered, ‘Peace be still.’

She knew it now—the dramatic D. minor. All the taut feeling inside her relaxed, as she surrendered herself to the potent, familiar spell: agitation more urgent and profound; a scurry of insistent triplets, countered in the bass by steadfast single notes, audible footsteps of fate; the two contending for mastery; subsiding, through conflict, into a belt of calm. And, out of the calm rose a thin melody, poignant, appealing. Then again those urgent triplets; again, thundering through them, crescendo, fortissimo, those resolute bass notes—till conviction conquered, and the questioning brain was stilled.

Through the subdued murmur of the last mesmeric bars, Eve’s heart seemed scarcely to beat. She seemed hardly aware of her chilled body, of the fact that she was standing on the lowest stair, one hand clutching the banister. Yet in every nerve, she was aware of the sublime Adagio—the peace and calm of attainment through sorrow—blossoming into a final movement of infinite lightness and grace; wind among the leaves, racing clouds and ripple of streams. That spirit of delight carried Eve miles away from the badly lit staircase, the dank London fog, to the orchards and iris meadows of Kashmir in spring . . .

Suddenly she heard the front door closing; steps and voices in the hall. They were coming upstairs; and she swore under her breath. She had the spirit to swear now; but not the spirit to stay and face them—an apparent eavesdropper on the stairs.

Turning, she fled back to her attic—eggs and salt and frying pan forgotten; till she sank breathless into her unsympathetic armchair, and realised that dinner was a ‘wash out,’ unless she chose to go all the way down again.

She emphatically did not choose. She would rather squander her valuable three-and-six on desperately needed food.

But, at present, dinner seemed quite beside the mark. She was chilled and shaken with the strange new excitement of feeling alive again. What had happened? What had the music done to her? Starved of the real thing all these months, it affected her like a dazzle of daylight to eyes long blind. And it was more than a dramatic sonata that had brought her back to life again. It was the spirit of that ill-mannered, ill-tempered, mightily inspired old German—dead a hundred years—speaking directly to her spirit through his music, because he had wrought it, with utter sincerity, from the heights and deeps of his profound experience; because he had taken Fate by the throat and had accepted suffering as the basic condition of life. He himself had said of his own music, ‘it will free him who understands it from the misery which afflicts others’: and to-night—because she understood—it had freed an insignificant Eve from the brooding misery of months; from the unprofitable torment of living and thinking things over again, of seeing precisely how and where she had failed. To-night she could say to her dark imp, ‘Be far.’ for Beethoven had troubled the waters; and the cloud on her spirit had been riven by his wind among the leaves.

If only Lance could know it—now. The sense of him, the need of him sprang sharp as a physical pain. Impulsively she stood up; and holding his picture in her hands, she gazed and gazed at that living likeness till it took on almost the illusion of life. But a swift rush of tears blurred everything: and the illusion was gone.

Gone, too, was the dreadful constriction of grief within her, the persistent ache that had cramped all her emotions these many months. At last she could write to Lance; beg him to forgive her for that crazy cruel letter, which she could scarcely now remember, scarcely believe she had written.

Replacing his photograph beside its vase, she sank limply into her armchair; and the good tears rained unheeded.

A quickened consciousness of him, of everything, invaded her; an enveloping warmth; and with it a tingle of pain, as when sensation invades a frozen limb; a glad rush of recovered personality.

She was her troublesome, exciting self once more. She could really play, perhaps even compose again. But not another note would she play in Marillio’s hateful orchestra. Rather would she go without many dinners. And there might be no call to starve. Through Delysia she could seek an engagement with a real orchestra; one of her dearest dreams. She could even go to Anne.—and tell her everything.

All the darkened windows had been flung open, light streaming in; though outside her actual window the fog was glooming and glowering as sullenly as ever. Her dazzled eyes could look back on that poor desolate Eve of a few hours ago almost without recognition, as a dragon-fly might look back on its larval sheath.

Were it not for the fog and her cough, she might have felt tempted to seek out Delysia after dinner.

But that terribly clever artist and her primitives would not be in time with her own exalted mood—she who swore by Wagner and spurned Beethoven; called him ‘as dull as the Bible’; and fancied she was being funny. Besides, one might stumble into a cocktail party. Eve had done so the first time she went there; and had been asked to another.

As a glimpse into a world outside her ken she had been interested, puzzled and vaguely depressed by that odd collection of virile women and neurotic demi-semi men, who blandly talked indecent nonsense, and called each other ‘darling’ or ‘my dear.’ It was the girls and women who used masculine oaths; and some of them had fine strong faces. Was there but a fixed amount of vigour and virility available for the newly born? And if more of it went into the women, was there less left over for the men? By comparison with Lance, these lesser lights of the art world seemed two-dimensional, and rather grubby. The general trend of their conversation produced on her an effect of brains and bodies at a premium, heart and spirit at a discount. No doubt many of them were capable of deep feeling; but most of them seemed actively anxious to avoid it. They talked freely of passion, but even about that they were lukewarm. Delysia’s musician had not been there either time; and Eve’s attempts at talking to a few of the others had failed dismally. She had felt herself a hopeless outsider, with no desire at all to become an insider.

No—not to-night. She had no use for the ultra-moderns to-night. Till it was time for dinner, she would play—and play. . . .

Taking out the beautiful instrument she had sinned against, she played and played, fragments of remembered things as they came into her head. And suddenly some trick of double stopping, some sequence of notes recalled the sunset Largo of her own sonata. Her sonata—and she had forgotten its existence. The real Eve had been submerged indeed.

Perhaps it had already been published, and copies had gone out to Kashmir. Vanessa would be so grieved that they could not share the excitement of that great event. She would go to-morrow to the publishers and find out all about it. Meantime, the precious forgotten thing came completely back to her. Happily absorbed—in her half-warmed, badly-lit attic—she played the violin part, hearing the piano part in her head.

To-morrow—to-morrow!

For the first time in months that veiled word had regained its magnetic quality of hope.

Chapter 2

Toujours nous voulons chercher l’eternel d’ailleurs qu’ici; toujours . . . nous attendons de mourir, comme si tout instant n’était pas mourir et revivre
— Alain

Outside the window of a large music shop in Oxford Street, Eve stood staring vaguely at an assortment of Classical Albums and new publications, nerving herself to go in and prove her own identity as the composer of a Sonata in C. Minor for violin and piano. Suddenly she realised that she was staring at her own name. There it was confronting her—confronting the world! And all these people, jostling past, had no conception of the electrical thrill that tingled through her. She was merely an obstacle that impeded their perpetual rushing. She vanished; and they rushed on—unaware.

She had entered the shop. She was facing a correct robot young man; proving her own identity with the help of Vanessa’s name and her banker’s address. She was being politely informed that copies had gone out to India, that no royalties were due till after the New Year.

Outwardly dignified, inwardly exultant, she left the shop, clutching her roll of three real copies; feeling slightly drunk with the strong wine of happiness, her feet treading on some springy substance that was certainly not mere London pavement. She had wired to Marillio. She might be kept dangling for weeks without an engagement. But the prospect did not trouble her at all.

Cold though it was, with a brisk wind, she childishly climbed to the open top of a bus, that her head might be a shade nearer to the frail blue wisps of sky that showed between tatters of grey cloud. But before she reached Delysia’s corner, the sun had peered through; thin winter gold-light, no warmth in its pale smile. And she ran down the bus steps, frozen, with glowing cheeks, unaware how the inner change had illumined her whole aspect.

On the studio door hung a malign brass imp; and as she knocked, she heard a man’s voice inside.

‘Marcel?’ she thought hopefully.

Then the door opened; and Delysia waved her down the stained wooden steps into a large airy room. It ran right across the upper storey of an old Georgian house that Delysia shared with a fellow-sculptor, who lived on the first floor. How much else she shared with him it might seem invidious to ask. She was ‘Delicious,’ as they called her, and clever enough for three. Why expect her to be what she obviously was not?

She looked delicious this morning, with her formal, straight-cut hair, her pale skin and geranium red lips; her blue overall patterned in orange and yellow, her strong clever hands messy with red clay. For Eve had clearly interrupted a sitting.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she began; but Delysia laughed.

‘Quite superfluous! Fidgety Phil is pining for a cocktail.’

She waved a hand towards the man who had risen and stepped off the dais.

‘Philip Marcel—Mrs Eve Desmond.’

‘Mrs Lance Desmond,’ Eve corrected her.

‘Lance? How picturesque! I didn’t know the discarded one’s name.’ The coolness of that, in front of a stranger, annoyed Eve; but she could only bow, with a detached air of dignity, to the loose-limbed man in grey flannels and blue shirt open at the throat.

As their eyes met, she had a lightning impression of a foreign atmosphere; sallow skin, long almond eyes and a prominent ill-shaped nose. The thin humorous lips had more of character than of kindness. Their owner might be arrogant, bitter, bad-tempered; but he looked clever, and more masculine than most of the two-dimensional young men at Delysia’s parties.

‘Pleased to meet Mrs Lance Desmond!’ he said, with a curiously intent look that made her feel restive. ‘Délice tells me you are musical.’

‘Yes,’ Eve assented briefly. His tone and manner made her feel fatally self-conscious. She would never be able to talk, to feel at ease with him, to get the help she had hoped for.

While they spoke Delysia had turned away to open a corner cupboard, grotesquely carved. Now she set down a bottle and three green glasses with twisted stems, filled them with pale gold liquid, and pushed one towards Eve.

‘Still hacking in that old orchestra?’ she asked, noticing the roll in her hand. ‘Been buying anything good! ‘

And Eve answered with studied coolness, ‘No—not buying. It’s a thing of my own.’

‘Yours? You write music?’

‘Sometimes I do. Last year I wrote this sonata for violin and piano. And I’ve only just remembered its existence.’

That casual statement seemed to amuse Marcel.

‘Written it with one hand, and forgotten it with the other?’ he twitted her, setting down his empty glass: but it was Delysia who answered him.

‘Nothing to laugh at, Phil. She’s been in great trouble——’

‘Oh don’t—it doesn’t matter,’ Eve protested hurriedly, her flayed sensibilities shrinking from that frank allusion to her very private grief.

But Marcel was saying in an altered voice, ‘Forgive me, Mrs Desmond. I spoke on impulse. But you are less unhappy now—n’est-ce-pas?’

‘Yes. I’m less unhappy now.’

She could feel his critical eyes on her face.

‘And while you forgot about the sonata, they published it?’

He seemed amused again. Even if he had been struck at sight, he clearly did not take her achievement seriously.

‘Yes. They published it.’

She would not say a word more than politeness compelled.

‘May I read it?’ he asked; adding—by way of encouragement to a modest beginner—‘I’ve done a little in that line myself.’

She slit the wrapper and handed him a copy without a word. As he sat down on the edge of the dais, she went over to the roughly modelled bust on its pedestal—an ugly, powerful study, full of promise. It only needed a few shy comments to set Delysia going. You pressed a button. She did the rest. She always had a great deal to say about her own work; and Eve, who could never manage to talk of hers, was a good listener.

But to-day her ears and her mind were distracted by small sounds behind her; a page turned; another; something muttered that she could not catch. Then a sudden exclamation—the end of the first movement?

He had risen; he was standing near her, interrupting without ceremony the monologue on ‘Delysia—her work.’

‘That’s a very striking movement,’ he said; no patronage now in his tone. ‘A strong modern flavour. But you’re no modern. You’ve got the right fundamentals.’

This was quite a different man. With him she felt entirely at ease.

‘I was taught by a woman who believes in the great German tradition—Beethoven, Brahms——’

‘Stuffy old sentimentalists!’ muttered Delysia, annoyed at the interruption; but he dismissed her with a gesture, and went on addressing Eve.

‘That was fortunate for you—the way things are moving now. For the last ten years music, like the other arts, has been in an experimental ferment; and out of ferment there often comes a reaction to sanity. Of course negroid music, with its sickly adenoidal bathos, still hangs on in talkie temples and the music halls. But in Western Europe the old traditions are returning to life, enriched and enlarged. Out of confused values and false freedoms we are waking up again to the glory of workmanship. Not only in music: in all the arts.’

He flung a look at Delysia, who grimaced and tweaked the nose of her counterfeit presentment, giving it a ludicrous air. But she left him to his monologue; and he reverted to Eve.

‘As I said, you respect the old values. But this is very individual stuff. When you find your feet, you may do original work. I like your Largo——’

He ran his eye down the printed page.

And while Delysia remodelled the insulted nose, Eve stood very still—the stillness of sheer surprise and delight—hoping for more.

He looked up again; slapped the open page with the back of his hand.

‘That’s a fine stimulating finale. But you’ve given the cream of it to the violin.’

‘It’s my instrument.’

‘Mine’s the piano. I’d enjoy playing this, if you’re up to the difficult scoring of your own music?’

‘I think I am.’

‘Well, let me have this copy. I’ll soon get the hang of it; and we’ll try it together—eh? I’d like to hear you on the fiddle. Come along to my flat about five. That’s my address.’

He handed her a card; and she stared at it, divided between an instinctive reluctance and the keenest desire she had known for months.

To her relief, Delysia swung round on him.

‘Can’t you see you’re rushing her, Phil? She’s not used to these impromptu invitations. If you’re keen to hear her play, we’ll both come along about five.’

He gave her an odd look, as if he meant to say something, but thought better of it; and she turned to Eve.

‘There’s no holding him, if a piece of music takes his fancy!—Can you manage it, Eve? Isn’t that the hour when your Symphony Orchestra does the Tin Pan Alley touch?’

‘It’s not mine any longer. I’ve had enough of doing robot first violin.’

She could feel Marcel’s eyes on her face; and she only half-believed her own statement. Everything—including that unaccustomed vermouth—had gone to her head. But she had enough sense left to know that she was making a hole in Delysia’s morning and had let her in for a triangular musical afternoon.

‘You’ll be wanting to work now,’ she said, picking up her two copies.

Marcel would have seen her to the door; but she said, ‘No. Please don’t’—and ran lightly downstairs.

The pale sky had clouded over; a fine rain was falling. But what matter? What did anything matter? He had said she might do original work. She was alive again.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At half-past five she was standing beside Marcel’s Steinway grand piano, in a room as mellow and restful as Delysia’s was provocative; a blend of browns and greens, only two dark pictures on the walls; a wide sofa, big comfortable chairs, every facility for music to have its say unhindered. Two inverted bowls of amber-coloured glass hung from the ceiling. The fire was no clever substitute, but a living warmth and light. Marcel, Eve decided, must command big fees, or have means of his own.

Delysia, curled up on the sofa, was absorbed in an outrageously modern novel. Her harsh blue and purple frock clashed as aggressively with the mellow room as Eve’s old green frock was in tune with it.

Philip Marcel sat near the fire in a winged armchair. His curious dark face was alert, concentrated, critical; his arrogant lips compressed to a thin line. They had not played together yet. He wanted to hear her alone, if she ever played without accompaniment.

And now she stood there, in the diffused light, fiddle tucked under her chin, wondering—what?

There was not a large choice; and she had decided on leaving it to the moment’s inspiration: so much depended on surroundings and mood. If she could only play him her Ode to Joy—and see what effect it produced? But the thing was too intimately linked with Lance. It must be something soft, something in harmony with this mellow room: afterwards, when she felt more confident, the wild Mussorgsky, in which she could run away with herself and forget her audience.

And while she was tuning up, it came to her; the violin solo from Vanessa’s Tone Poem, ‘Gangabāl.’

‘This is only a fragment,’ she explained to the figure in the chair without looking that way. And lifting her bow, she closed her eyes, that her mind might see clearly the vision expressed in Vanessa’s music: splendour of sunset on the shining snow peaks of Haramok, bare rock walls descending sheer into the turquoise blue waters of Gangabāl. Now that she herself had passed through dark places, she could infuse into that limpid melody its winged quality, as of a free spirit rising beyond the confines of earth . . .

And while she played, her vision changed. It was not Gangabāl but Sonamarg; not Haramok and the still lake, but the Grey Peaks and rushing river. She was playing to Lance, a few days after the cruel, senseless tragedy of young Grant’s death; the dying melody reft by a sudden harsh discord—the scream of an eagle shattering the stillness of that high and lonely lake. Sudden and clear it all came back to her—their last week of freedom from the world and its claims; the jarring note of tragedy—‘death struck sharp on life’—shattering the enchantment, as the eagle’s scream reft Vanessa’s lovely melody . . .

It was over. Without shifting her violin, she dropped her right hand.

She was aware of Delysia looking round at her; but the figure in the chair had not stirred. Under her lids, she glanced at him. He was staring into the fire; his face no longer alert and critical. He looked simply at peace; waiting for more.

As it did not come, he turned and stared at her, a lost unfocussed stare.

‘Go on—go on,’ was all he said: the attar of praise.

Giving her violin a small hug between shoulder and chin, she lifted her bow—and crashed into the Russian rhapsody, brilliantly scored for her by Anne. The wild thrill of those swift chromatic passages, as of the elements let loose, told her that her music had indeed ‘come again with power.’ Faster and faster she played, her fingers running away with her, yet entirely under control . . .

As she dashed her bow across the strings, in a last discordant wail, she knew that Marcel had risen to his feet. He was clapping. Delysia was clapping. She would feel more akin to Mussorgsky’s Bare Mountains than to the unearthly beauty of Haramok and Gangabāl.

‘Mon Dieu! But you can play,’ Marcel greeted her as she came forward to warm her hands. ‘Would you like a drink after that? Or are you sufficiently intoxicated with all the music?’

‘I think I am sufficiently intoxicated!’ she laughed, wondering why he had half-repelled her this morning.

‘You sometimes feel you are possessed by the devil—no?’

‘Yes, often,’ she gravely stated.

‘So I thought—the way you played that thing.’

Then he offered Delysia a drink; and as she sank into his chair with a graceful abandoned gesture, the back of his hand brushed her cheek.

‘She cares only for the lust of the eye. And she is a victim to my lust of the ear!’ he said lightly, as she shifted her head away from his touch. ‘Can you stand any more, Délice? Would you rather go across to Waldemar’s studio, while I try the sonata with Mrs Desmond?’

‘I’d rather sit here. When Eve goes, I go.’

‘Bien,’ he said, with an odd smile, and turned to Eve. ‘With your playing and your composing, it seems to me you have a future before you, Madame Eve, if you take up music in earnest. No more domestic experiments.’

‘I’ve always taken my music in earnest,’ she answered, evading the awkward implication. ‘What I fearfully want just now—if you think I play well enough—is to get into a good orchestra as first violin.’

‘First violin——?’ he eyed her quizzically. ‘Soloist would be nearer the mark. They might give you a hearing at Bournemouth. They know me. I’ve played there—Tiens! Better still. Bernstein shall have first chance.’

‘Who’s he?’ asked ignorant Eve: and Marcel shouted with laughter.

‘If he could hear you! Bernstein is our leading impresario. The “big noise” of our little world. He makes all business arrangements for musicians; and on that side he is like a flint. On his German side he cares for nothing except music. But he has always an eye out for a new star: a little weakness to be the first——’

‘But I’m not a star,’ Eve modestly protested.

‘That is for Bernstein to say. If he thinks not, he will tell you so in two words. If he thinks otherwise—you will have all the engagements you require—not as first violin. No harm for him to hear you. He’s a friend of mine, when he has leisure to remember my existence. I ask him to dinner. We work up your sonata and play it together—no? Délice will make the parti carée. You agree?’

‘I should be terrified,’ Eve confessed, shaken with excitement and cold fear. ‘But if you can, it would be very kind——’

‘Kind?’ His short laugh had a different quality. ‘If he takes you up, I get a bigger hearing also. You do not play alone.’

‘I see,’ she said simply. And if she only saw in part that he was thinking first and foremost of Philip Marcel, she recognised that she must accept his alarming programme; must screw up her courage to face a musical encounter with an unknown German, who cared for nothing in the world except music. That at least was a point in his favour.

Before she left the flat, everything had been arranged. For a week they would practice, intensively, the sonata and other things. Then the great man should hear them. The practical question—what she would live on meanwhile—did not actively trouble her. After an hour of making her own music with a skilled musician, she returned to her attic and her hard armchair with a sense of tumbling back to earth out of fairyland.

But her fairyland was no less real than the attic. And her first natural impulse was to write and tell Anne. Her second was to abstain until the great man had heard her: and then—tell all.

To Lance she would write by the very next mail: and again the sense of him, the longing for him, sprang sharp as pain. Where was he at this very hour? What dangerous things might he not be doing in that wild and cruel Chitral? Even now she hated the sound of the word; hated Lynch for his obsession that had driven her to do the thing she had least desired in those days of benumbed misery. But although she suffered fear for him, and torturing anxiety as to whether they would ever come together again, one thing she confidently knew—as the mind knows essential facts: he would never dishonour the link that bound them; a link involving more than heart and body, as she had become increasingly aware during her unwilling severance from the dearest part of herself.

Yes: she would write soon; and she would not over-emphasise the resurrection of her music—his only rival.

But mail day was not yet: and that evening she wrote no letters. Though she had played her fill at the flat, her brain was alive with a craving to compose again. It was not enough—being artist—to live in her own life, through her own emotions. Some of her must also live in other people. And from that ‘must’ sprang the creative impulse: the desire to speak, in terms of music, saturated with her own personality, to the thousands of fellow-beings who had ears to hear.

From the depths of a box in her ‘glory hole,’ she dragged out her discarded portfolio, untouched since Gulmarg, and spent a happy half-hour looking through her many fragments and notes for possible themes. Suddenly—with a thrill of discovery—she pounced on a sheaf of jottings from the weird Indian music that she had heard in Peshawar nearly three years ago. Reading them over, she was enspelled again by its queer fascination, its lack of emphasis, its finer scale of intervals, its blurred continuous rhythm, mysteriously in accord with the unheard sound of life.

At the back of her notes, she found a few scribbled lines recording her ambitious idea for a Wagnerian symphony that should express the fierce, lawless many-coloured spirit of Peshawar City. What a theme! Her mind leapt to it; to something complex yet primitive and profoundly stirring, with orchestral effects far beyond her power to execute. But no sense of limitation could dim the glory of her conception. With Anne’s help, anything was possible. Nerves and blood—after long quiescence—were troubled again with the tyrannous impulse of her power. Once again life was having its triumphant will of her.

Chapter 3

I choose between my soul and him—no choice,
Since he became my soul. — Humbert Wolfe

They were sitting round Marcel’s fire, the four of them, sipping coffee and liqueurs; cigarette smoke mingling with cigar smoke; a cordial after-dinner atmosphere that undermined perceptibly the big German’s heavy formality of speech and manner. Eve found him quite as formidable as she had expected, though in a different way. Sensitive always to human atmosphere, she felt at once interested and faintly repelled. The best of him, she suspected, lived in some sentimental corner, carefully locked away, lest it hinder the dictates of his business brain. Outwardly he was unattractive yet impressive: thick-set and carelessly dressed; florid as to complexion and taste in jewellery: a big ruby ring, a ruby in the centre of his shirt front, and a watch chain across his expansive waistcoat. The leonine head was typically Teuton; a thatch of fair hair, brushed back from a vast forehead, and standing out behind his ears. The look of sleepy power in the eyes was matched by the more definite hardness of mouth and chin.

During dinner Eve had talked very little. Aware that he was taking stock of her, she had trembled lest her self-confidence—that very uncertain quantity—should desert her at the fifty-ninth minute. For days she and Marcel had concentrated on the sonata, practising together and separately; and she herself had discovered in her own music new depths of meaning; proof that, like every true artist, she had builded better than she knew. Marcel, though frankly critical, had been clever enough to see that encouragement was a need of her nature; that the gift was there, but not full confidence in it, except at rare moments of exaltation. And this was not one——

‘Ready?’

He stood up; and she rose also, her heart beating thickly as she followed him to the piano, without even looking at the ‘Big Noise,’ who was chuckling over a risky story he had been telling Delysia in a low tone.

The first thirty bars were anguish unalloyed. Her knees shook; her fingers shook; but she forced them to obey her will.

Then, as Marcel turned the page, he said, just audibly, ‘Ça marche’: and she forgot everything but the music they were making between them . . .

When it ceased, she very gently laid down the fiddle that was half-herself; knew, without looking, that the leonine head had turned their way.

‘Goot,’ was all the oracle said; and his sleepy eyes were on Eve. ‘You haf written other music?’

‘A few small things,’ she admitted, as if she were owning to a secret vice.

‘And you are—how old?’

‘Twenty-one and a half.’

The hard mouth relaxed into a smile.

‘You are older than that—in your mind.’

‘Years and years,’ she agreed: and Marcel glanced up at her.

‘Play the Mussorgsky,’ he commanded; and Bernstein was alert again.

‘What’s that?’

‘A small solo arrangement, scored by Astra.’

‘Ha! That is a woman.—Play it, then.’

Eve smiled at the repeated command. They did not ask her to do things—these men. But she would rather play than talk. So she picked up her violin; and standing back, in the mellow shaded light of electric candles, she played her Mussorgsky with assured fire and verve. But this time the devil did not enter in. One could not expect the Prince of Darkness to come on demand.

Again Bernstein merely said, ‘Goot.’ It was a blunt but satisfied sound. He added, as Eve laid down her fiddle: ‘They are too violent those Russians, like angry children.—You like to play Beethoven, hein?’

‘Yes: more than any other music.’

‘Goot. I will hear some Beethoven—another time.’

She came forward now, holding out her hands to the fire. And he sat there frankly staring at her, with a concentrated air that at once excited and frightened her. It was the way an ogre might look at a succulent human morsel he intended to devour. Did he imagine, because he was a Big Noise in his own world, that he could devour her body and soul?

Whatever he imagined, he kept it to himself. He jerked a heavy watch out of his waistcoat pocket, as if he were lifting a bucket from a well.

‘To-night I haf another engashement. Yes. It is time.’ He took out a small note-book and scanned its pages. ‘To-day week, I will hear some more. You come to my flat, five o’clock. Marcel will come also. Any other things you have written—bring. Other things for violin and piano, you will play.’ This was no mere invitation. It was a royal command.—‘You play the Beethoven, violin and piano, Op. 30, in C. minor?’

‘Not well enough, I’m afraid. I haven’t played it for three years.’

‘Nefer mind. You practice. It will come. I wish to hear how you render it. Zo.’

He gravely shook hands, accepted a drink, and departed—leaving her, in spite of elation, not quite knowing what to make of it all.

When Marcel returned from seeing him out, he treated her to the long, over-intimate look that had troubled her at their first meeting.

‘Tiens,’ he said. ‘You are a surprising young woman. And you take it coolly enough. You have got Bernstein.’

‘Have I?’ Eve queried, with a nervous laugh. ‘I feel much more as if he’d got me!’

‘Good fortune for you—for us both!’

He was clearly excited: while she felt strung up and tongue-tied; aware of Delysia in an inimical mood. These people, with their intruding personalities, spoilt the music that was the real wonder of her evening. She was tired. Virtue had gone out of her. She had no wish to cause friction between this curious couple; and she could feel it in the air. So, in spite of protests from Marcel, she insisted on going straight home to bed.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

And still she refrained from writing to Anne, who would at once fly up to see her, and create in her a human thrill that would distract her from complete concentration on Beethoven’s grave and splendid sonata—the heroic first movement, the fascinating cross-rhythmed scherzo, written to sound wrong. For that one week, she would live and breathe music. For that one week, human demands and complications were of no account. She herself was of no account, except as a medium for the loveliest and least earthly of the arts. An injured letter from Marillio—that would normally have moved her to penitence—scarcely troubled her. Almost every day she went to Marcel’s flat. Once Delysia came as before, and sat through hours of practising, a sketch-book on her knee, making queer, bold studies of them both.

In an interval for refreshment, she showed them to Marcel, who flicked a finger and thumb at the parody of Eve.

‘Tiens! That’s how you see her, with prejudiced eyes.’

‘Why prejudiced?’ There was challenge in her tone.

‘Ask the bon Dieu, who made woman—not in his own image!’—Eve standing apart, was aware of deeper conflict under their surface clash.—‘You wish me to like your friend. I like her very well. Then you begin to like her—not so well. Seeing is your function: can’t you see that we are only making music, not making mischief?’

And Delysia retorted lightly, ‘Who mentioned mischief? I’ve seen enough of musicians, Phil, to know that music is the most inhuman of the arts.’

Marcel sprang up with flashing eyes.

‘Do we take that insult lying down, Eve?’

It was the first time he had used her name; and she knew he was only hitting out at Delysia.

‘There’s no insult, if we don’t take it so. Let’s give her some more Beethoven to calm her!’

And she went back to the piano without attempting to look at the caricature.

While they were playing, Delysia went out; and Eve had not seen her again for three days. Feeling temporarily outside all that, she could not be bothered to hunt her up. Surely she knew the man well enough to see that he was in love with nothing but music, with no one but Philip Marcel: though at moments Eve herself was aware that he would make love to her, as readily as play with her, if she showed the least sign of expecting that form of attention.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

On the evening of the third day she settled down, after dinner, with her Peshawar notes, dimly hopeful of conjuring them into a fragment not quite unworthy of Bernstein’s consideration. Steps outside on the stairs portended an interruption: the last thing she expected or desired at this hour.

As she looked round, the door opened without ceremony and Delysia walked in.

‘The Princess in her ivory tower!’ she remarked, without formal greeting; and her gaze wandered round the shabby room, back to the litter of music on the table.

‘Not much ivory about it,’ Eve answered rising, and wondering to what she owed this unusual honour. ‘Will you take the chair, or the divan? The chair isn’t very kind.’

‘I’m not feeling very kind,’ Delysia stated in her cool tone; and she took the chair.

Eve sat on the divan, still mystified; leaving it to her.

‘You two didn’t like it when I said music was inhuman,’ Delysia remarked, as if carrying on the argument where it had broken off three days ago. ‘Perhaps you also won’t like it when I say that musicians are—sometimes—flesh and blood.’

‘I hope they are!’ Eve murmured, wishing the sex obsession of Delysia and her set at Jericho.

Delysia ignored the soft answer.

‘Say what you please,’ she went on. ‘Of course I know, and you know, you’re doing more with Philip than playing your grumpy old Beethoven. Because you’ve muddled your own first experiment, it’s no reason why you should steal my man to help you get quit of yours.’

At that, Eve lost her temper outright. ‘Quit of my husband?’ She sprang up and indicated the picture on the mantelpiece. ‘Look at him. Is it likely?’

‘Anything’s likely, between a man and a woman,’ Delysia retorted; impressed, yet unconvinced.

It was not a remark calculated to pacify Eve.

‘That’s what you think. It’s nothing but sex with your lot. You see everything twisted into terms of that one fact. It’s a big fact; but it isn’t quite everything. And if you want plain English, I’m not after any of that, I’m after music. I won’t have it spoilt with your ugly thoughts. I won’t play another note with your Philip; I’ll tell him so to-morrow.’

That startled Delysia into perceiving that she had indeed maligned this furious young woman, who must not be allowed to let Philip down, or he, in his turn, would be furious with her for unwarrantable interference. No doubt, as usual, he was only thinking of himself, keen to get a lift by means of a promising young ‘star.’

She looked up at Eve—very erect and vital in her righteous wrath.

‘Don’t be a fool, my dear.’ She preserved her surface coolness. ‘And for God’s sake don’t tell Philip I said anything. Can’t I speak a word of warning, without having it turned into an indictment? You certainly allowed me to suppose—on board ship——’

‘Oh, on board ship, I was miserable. I couldn’t explain my private affairs to an outsider. And I can’t now. But if you take back what you said, I’ll go on with it. Not otherwise.’

‘Of course you’ll go on with it. Bernstein is God Almighty in the profession. And as you seem so straight-spoken, I’ll take your word that it’s nothing more than music.’

‘That’s terribly noble of you,’ Eve said with a gravity that dared Delysia to suspect sarcasm. ‘May I ask, in return, are you by way of marrying Marcel?’

Delysia regarded her with an air of amused speculation—and hedged.

‘Does he strike you as a man whose idea of bliss would be a stuffy domesticity with the One Woman?’

‘It needn’t be stuffy,’ Eve stoutly asserted.

‘It’s regrettably apt to be. In any case, it’s hampering. Even the great Keyserling says saints and artists shouldn’t marry. I have my profession. Phil has his. Why should we?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. You called him your man. So I thought you cared in that way.’

And Delysia said slowly, ‘Yes, I think l am in love with Philip. But Philip at bed and board, for the rest of my natural life—I’m not so sure. Because we can’t do without men, why go through a binding form that involves troublesome unbinding forms, if we happen to change our minds? It’s all rather tiresome, this question of marrying or not marrying, of husbands or lovers. Phil and I do very well as we are; so long as you don’t go upsetting our apple-cart.’

To Eve’s immense relief, she rose to go.

‘What are you doing there?’ she asked, looking down at the litter of papers.

‘I’m supposed to be writing music,’ Eve said meekly. ‘But it doesn’t like interruptions. You’ve rather upset my apple-cart.’

‘Profound apologies!’ Delysia was her pleasant natural self again. ‘You’ll pick up all the threads when I’m gone.’

But the threads were hopelessly lost. After Delysia’s modern analysis of men and marriage there was no recapturing the wild wayward spirit of Peshawar. In any case she could hardly submit a mere fragment—however original—to the ‘God Almighty of the profession.’ She must wait for help from Anne.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

It was well after six, on the evening of the appointed day. They were alone, the three of them, in Bernstein’s music-room; a lordly room that had made Eve at first feel like a midge. But Marcel, strung up and assured, had felt convinced they would bring it off. And they had brought it off. They had played Chopin and the fierce Beethoven and the wild lovely Grieg in E. Then the great one had actually asked to hear her sonata again.

As before, he said little in the way of direct praise; but his manner was more genial; one could feel approval in the air. He had looked through her Ode to Joy, her Hymn to the Rising Sun, for violin, piano and flute, emitting an occasional critical comment or grunt of satisfaction.

He congratulated Marcel on playing far better than he had played a week ago.

‘You haf practised—hein?’

‘Mrs Desmond saw to that,’ Marcel modestly admitted. ‘It’s all the fruit of her abounding energy!’

‘Not only energy,’ Bernstein amended: and, as she laid down her violin, he beckoned her to him. He had obviously made up his olympian mind about something.

To her unspeakable surprise, he laid a large careful hand on her shoulder.

‘My dear young lady, it is clear that you haf a vocation. It is pozzible you haf a future. Where did you learn—what conservatoire?’

‘No conservatoire,’ Eve answered, feeling microscopic, in spite of his praise. ‘I learnt chiefly from Astra, the composer.’

‘Aha! That is where you get the style. She has it in her music, that woman. But you have a lot still to learn. Lucky you haf not to unlearn. No more composing yet. You haf got to play and play. I settle all that. I gif you six months with the best violin teacher I know. But you must put yourself altogether in my hands. You sign an agreement. I make every arranchement. It must be music first: other things—nowhere. Afterwards—a little tour. You shall play in Europe: Marcel also. You go well together. Then—we shall see: hein?’

Eve had listened to all that in benumbed amazement: at once excited, yet alarmed; for she could not tell what manner of change her answer might produce in the genial, autocratic impresario, who was taking it for granted that she would rise, overjoyed, to his flattering offer.

And Marcel—sitting over by the piano—was he also taking it for granted? These two men, wrapped up in music as a profession, seemed suddenly alien to her. Flattered she felt, indeed, and tantalised; yet not for a moment shaken in her certainty of refusal.

When his ‘hein?’ invited grateful acceptance, she could only answer in a low steady voice: ‘I didn’t realise my playing amounted to all that. If I had come to you three years ago, I would have been terribly tempted to give up everything for music. But now—it’s quite impossible.’

‘Impozzible? Nonsense!’ He struck his fist upon his open palm and stared at her with so curious a hardening of his whole powerful face that her feeling of the ogre and the succulent morsel came vividly back to her. ‘ I say I can make you a name. And you say “impozzible”?’

‘Yes, because I’m married,’ she valiantly interrupted him. ‘My husband is in India. I’m going out there in a month or two.’

‘Got damn,’ he fiercely cut her short. ‘I offer you fame and money through music. You talk of a husband and India. What madness! Music is for you the first thing.—No?’

‘It is,’ she answered truthfully; ‘ except—my marriage.’

He waved away her futile exception. Clearly, in his eyes, a husband was of no account beside her gift and all it offered her. She felt herself up against an adamantine substance on which her human plea would make no more impression than a paper pellet flicked at a stone wall.

‘If you haf genius—and I say you haf—’ the deep voice boomed at her with terrible conviction—‘it will be served, at any price, to you—or to others. Zo!’

An answering qualm within her secret self told her he might be fatally right; but the thought of Lance—the swift stir of warmth that only he could create—gave her courage to say with decision: ‘If—if it’s going to override everything, as you say, then—I must give up music altogether.’

‘Gif it up? You play like that, and you talk—child’s talk. It will not gif you up.’

Again that terrible note of conviction; again the answering qualm.

‘You are young. You only begin to know what a power is working in you. I am near to fifty; yet I often ask myself—“Gott im Himmel what is this strange thing—music?” I seem to know less and less. But I know more and more that we are still only at the beginning of it, though that giant, Beethoven, is dead more than a hundred years.’

When he spoke like that, he was no devouring ogre; and Eve warmed to him. But not for many moments would he suffer the true musician to oust the impresario, whose main concern was with contracts and profits and the discovery of ‘stars,’ to the greater glorification of Otto Bernstein.

‘I talk like this,’ he said in his harder voice, ‘because I must make you understand. You say “no.” But I do not take “no.” To me your reason for refusal is—that.’

He snapped his thumb and finger almost in her face; and she caught her breath. She had not counted on a clash of wills. Part of her was tempted beyond measure: and that man knew it. She could only cling, with all her strength, to the thought of Lance, as if he—and not Bernstein—awaited her answer.

‘But to me,’ she said, looking straight into his uncomprehending eyes, ‘my reasons are everything. To me music is great and wonderful—for itself. Not for a profession.’

At that he lost his temper outright. ‘Gott damn—if it is not for a profession, if you do not take it seriously—what the deffil you come to me for?’

That he was justified of his wrath only made things harder for her. With her fatal knack of covering up what she would rather not see, her joy at having impressed him, she had not stopped to think that he was as deeply concerned with business as she with her art.

She could but say, lamely enough: ‘You ordered me to come. Marcel wanted it so much. And I wanted so much—the honour of playing to you again.’

The obvious sincerity of her frank admission moved him to a grunt of appreciation.

‘And you gif me the honour to hear you—that is very well. But now it was for business; and I gif you my business hours—just to haf a little pleasure. That is not very well. Now then, listen—-if you would only not be sush a fool——’

Rapidly he sketched out a plan of campaign, no doubt prepared for her acceptance; mentioning continental cities, big names in the world of music, sums of money that took Eve’s breath away. She saw that he was trying to dazzle and flatter her; rush her into some form of agreement; and the devil whispered, ‘See what you might earn in a year or so, while Lance is in Chitral. What an experience!’

But if part of her was tempted, the saner part was just alert enough to realise that escape would be no easy matter, once she was caught in the wheels. And the strain of it all on her nerves, her health——

Screwing up her courage to face more thunderbolts, she checked him in mid-career.

‘Please—please, it’s no use telling me all that. For me, it’s impossible. I can’t do it.’

She held her breath: but no thunderbolt fell.

He simply stared, till she wished the ground would open and swallow her. Then he said in a slow, incredulous voice: ‘And it is all because of one husband?’

‘Yes.’

She could say no more; but he seemed impressed by that unadorned affirmative.

‘Gott im Himmel, he is a luggy man. And you hein?—the goot woman whose price is above rubies. But I thingk’—vexation spurted again; ‘even Solomon would say—you are a damn little fool.’

With an impatient gesture, he turned to Marcel. ‘Tague her away, before I say more rude things to her. For you, perhaps, I could make some goot arranchements. Sush improvement means you can improve more. You come to me Monday, 11.15. We will talk of it.’

That cheered Marcel; and Eve, tacitly dismissed, felt thankful—yet strangely shaken—when the big double door closed with a dull thud behind them.

Now she would be up against Marcel, up against Delysia. Neither of them would understand; for to neither of them could she show the deep and secret places of her heart. Only Anne, who had given her whole life to music, would understand and approve. The mere thought of Anne—so serene and unemphatic, yet so strong—was like port after stormy seas.

Marcel took her home in a taxi. Seeing she was overwrought, he left her in peace. But when they arrived, he came straight up to her attic without invitation.

‘I’m for it,’ she thought; but she said nothing. She was beyond combatting anything or anyone. But if he still hoped to persuade her, if he tried to take her in his arms, he would find she had some strength left in her.

As she knelt down to light the gas fire, she knew he was looking at her photograph of Lance. Perhaps Lance would help him to think her less of a fool.

But, as she stood up, he only said, ‘That’s the husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘Soldier?’

‘No. Political service.’

‘’M. You will tell him about this little episode?’

‘Yes.’

His long dark eyes brooded on her, till she felt restive, as at a too intimate contact.

‘If you didn’t want to make a fresh start, what the devil were you getting at, Eve?’

‘I was getting at music after endless months of starvation. I think it went to my head. I only saw the chance to play and play.’

‘Yet you throw it all up, because of the “discarded one” who, it seems, is not discarded after all?’

‘He never was. And I don’t throw it all up. I can play out there, compose out there, without being tied up to contracts and programmes.’

‘Without the personal triumphs and the shekels they bring in. Mon Dieu! With such a gift—the waste of it! All we might have done together.’

‘You’ll get your triumphs,’ she consoled him.

‘Yes. I owe that much to you. But I’m a known name. Bernstein won’t work for me as he would have worked for you—a new discovery of his own.’

And, his tongue being loosened, he paced up and down the room pouring out his ambitions, his expectations; revealing unconsciously, beneath the brilliant artist, the undiluted egotism of the man. It was Philip Marcel first—the others nowhere.

And she leaned back, tired of opposing people, letting it all flow over her, not venturing to ask—when he spoke of a European tour—‘How about Delysia?’ Seeing too clearly his alien point of view, she recognised, now, that she had been abysmally stupid, as only the clever can be at times. She had not realised that in music, as in all professions, there is a ring. If you are not inside it, you are nil. As usual, she had not stopped to think. ‘The history of Eve, in a nutshell’: as Vanessa had said on her wedding day.

She was thankful when at last Marcel realised that she was too tired to stand any more; thankful to be left alone with Lance, whose values were her values and his standards, her standards. If the artist in her knew a twinge of regret, Eve, the woman, knew beyond a doubt that she had chosen ‘the more excellent way.’ The idea of such a chance had never entered her youngest wildest dreams. Had her livelihood depended on music, this amazing offer would never have come to her out of the blue. But the dark demon of irony could delight in offering her a golden chance that she was constrained to set aside by her love and given allegiance, her dim hope of another child. It was no case of doing her duty by Lance; it was simply a case of recognising his clear supremacy in her heart and life.

Delysia would call her many kinds of fool to refuse that golden chance on account of a mere husband: but though they used the same word, it had not the same meaning for both: a fruitful source of confusion in all attempts at human intercourse. Delysia and her set so frankly philandered, so often fell in and out of love that they had lost the word’s true import. It amounted to little more than pursuing themselves in each other. Votaries of passion without obligations, without dignity, without roots, they found existence meaningless; yet they strangely failed to see that only from roots real life and happiness could spring.

They seemed instinctively to avoid the difficult thing, whether in life or art: and undeniably marriage was difficult. It demanded more and more of those who dared to undertake it; but something vital grew out of it that grew out of no other human experience. And surely it was laid upon those who believed in it to uphold all it stood for in a fundamentally shaken world. Very well: if Delysia pulverised her with cheap cynicisms, she would up and speak her mind for once, because of the faith that was in her.

And now—now, at last, she could write freely and fully to Anne, who believed in marriage, yet had devoted her life to art. She could fly to Blue Hills, to the mother of her spirit, who would not deal in reproaches, but would simply welcome her with open arms.

Chapter 4

The best dreams come through the gates that never open.
— May Sinclair

Eve had spent Christmas at Blue Hills; a Christmas so spring-like, even on the heights of Hindhead, that sparrows—first of their kind to mate—mistook it for February, and blackbirds hunted hopefully for unattainable worms.

It had been a happy, peaceful time, enlivened by Anne’s ‘family gathering’—Clive and Molly Arden, with Henry Verity, a resolute person of three, and one-year-old Nancy, whose official name was Anne. To meet them all again was to realise how far the inner Eve had travelled in the short three years since her impetuous flight to India, that had flung her into the arms of Angus Monteith. She had always admired Clive and they had been good friends; but now more than ever she could appreciate his quality. Nothing two-dimensional about him: a very real person, who could be formidable at times. And he, the musical critic, had said things about her sonata that gave her more than pleasure; had not only appraised it as music, but had recognised it as intrinsically Eve. He knew all about Bernstein; and had congratulated her on her Declaration of Independence.

‘You’ll make a fine thing of your gift,’ he assured her, ‘without selling your soul to an impresario, which wouldn’t have been fair to that good-looking young man in Chitral! Bernstein would have side-tracked the composing in favour of the playing that would bring in more shekels. You go on writing music, Eve. Send your stuff to Anne. She and I will see that it gets a hearing.’

That was the language Eve understood; and the implicit compliment, from Clive, had lifted her higher than any flamboyant word of praise from the ogre, with his own ends in view.

Now the Ardens had gone. She and Anne were alone again. But they would presently be running up to Queen’s Gate for a Suggia recital. So swift and complete a turn of the kaleidoscope made those weeks of the attic and the plane-tree and the excruciating orchestra seem an unreal phantasy. But it had been an experience: and experience was the true stuff of life.

She was sitting now in the verandah, fur-coated with a rug round her knees and the remains of a ‘snack’ luncheon at her elbow. Anne was over at the Beacon Hotel with a friend. The long low house looked southward to the bold scarp of Blackdown, to the interlacing curves of hills beyond hills, mistily clear; and the verandah caught all the sunshine that was available, these brief December days. Eve, with a pad on her knees, was writing to Lance; reading over again, for the sixth or seventh time, the letter he had written from Peshawar; the letter that had been lying for weeks unanswered, because—in her misery and after absorption—she had so sinfully delayed writing to Anne. Though she knew it by heart, she re-read it at intervals, simply to feel in touch with him again. For, as yet, there were no others; and she had only her tormented self to thank for that.

On arrival, she had at once sent him a costly cable: ‘Got yours. Delighted. Coming later. Eve.’ She was glad that her London letter had been spontaneous; no mere response to his. And she had answered this one at great length. It was as if they had clasped hands across six thousand miles of sea. In all his long letter, not a word of reproach; but she could feel his bewilderment and unhappiness; could realise, now, the cruel blow she had dealt him in her blind attempt to escape from her haunted self.

Vanessa’s letter she had also read many times: Vanessa—expecting a child in January, explaining how and why she had refrained from telling Eve that surprising news at Gulmarg. It was to have been told when Eve was safely through her own affair; but, after the death of little Ian, Vanessa could not bring herself to speak of it. She told her now in the hope of awakening her interest and inducing her to write at once, to relieve Vanessa from the pain and strain that were increasing Havelock’s natural anxiety over her belated achievement.

More than anything else in that characteristic letter Eve was moved by one sentence: ‘Of course, if it’s the boy I’m praying for, we will not call him Ian. You have first right to your father’s first name—for future use. We shall take his second name, and call the boy Kaye, which will mightily please our Kaye—when he knows. Come back to me, darling Eve, the moment you can face it all.’

That letter had involved another costly cable: but here, at Blue Hills, there was no hateful weekly account to empty her starved purse and distract her mind.

They both said, ‘Come back’; and had it been a case of returning straight to Lance, she would have taken the first passage available. But there could be no possibility of seeing Lance till he came to Kashmir for his summer leave. It was a case of going to Vanessa, of encountering another very new baby; the ache of remembrance, the sinful ache of envy. Fate, having robbed her, kept viciously thrusting her up against other people’s babies. It was not fair. But Fate was inhuman, implacable, quite unconcerned with playing fair.

And here was Anne, in this lone cottage, needing her, loving her, eager to help with her ambitious Tone Poem, ‘Night in Peshawar.’ The symphony, she had said, would be flying far too high. It would need months of intensive study and work. But, together they could conjure those jottings into an effective and original Tone Poem, with very special use of the drum. The thing had seized Eve as she had not been seized since the sonata first began to haunt her brain.

From Anne, also, there had been no word of reproach, which was more than she deserved. Anne had clearly understood her need to stand alone; and, being Anne, had done her the supreme service of enabling her, at last, to speak frankly of all she had been through, even to her blackest thoughts and fears. So swiftly she had recreated the old loving confidence between them, that, a few days after Eve’s arrival, they had sat up over the fire till one in the morning, talking and talking—first of Eve’s tragedy, then of the ultimate things as only Anne could talk of them, with the true mystic’s grasp on the realities and vitalities.

That night Eve had heard, for the first time, how Anne had originally been trained for a musical career, but had given it up on account of Clive’s father, whom she had loved and been unable to marry. After his death, through many strange vicissitudes, she had been drawn into a peculiarly close link with his son. To Eve, her poignant story had made many things clear: and it was then that she had decided to stay on till the end of February, or early March. Since she could not be with Lance, she longed for a quiet spell in this familiar atmosphere, so stimulating, yet so restful. Having been torn in many pieces, she was putting herself together again; simplified, in a measure, by her disintegrating experience; impregnated with her new theme, with the nameless, disquieting joy of creating from material just beyond her thoughts, the limitless region at the fringe of consciousness. . . .

Sounds in the hall. Anne was back again. And it must be time for the afternoon post, for the mail letter that might arrive this week, if Lance wrote directly he received her wire. And she could not picture him doing otherwise.

The drawing-room door opened; and there stood Anne, her delicately decisive face framed in the high collar of her squirrel fur coat, her clear violet-grey eyes smiling a welcome. One could hardly believe that she was over fifty. Except for a few more fine lines, a few more flecks of grey in her warm brown hair, she did not look perceptibly older than the Anne of three years ago.

Eve glanced quickly at the letters in her hand.

‘Not for you, darling,’ Anne answered her look; and as Eve’s face drooped, she came quickly forward and kissed her.

‘More likely next mail,’ she said: and Eve knew she was right. But the sharp disappointment had awakened her natural pessimism, never very sound asleep.

‘If he was well, he’d write at once. He’s like that; a quick person. I thought he might wire. And now—another whole week. An age.’

‘We’ll cram all we can into it. Suggia and your Tone Poem. It’ll be Thursday again before you realise,’ she encouraged the despondent one, as they gathered up her impedimenta and went in to tea.

After tea, they tried over a new composition for ’cello and piano; a strong thing, unmelodious, yet arresting. But Anne turned it down.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t like it. I’m not a cast-iron Victorian, and I welcome fresh ’cello music. But most of these very new people are so taken up with being clever, they don’t give themselves a chance of doing really fine work. It’s an age without style. But then—style implies rest and harmony and some ultimate aim. And we only have unrest and discord. Not much faith in anything—except success.’

‘I suppose,’ said Eve of little faith, ‘that’s more than half the trouble.’

‘I should say it’s the root cause. But there’s always the little leaven that leavens the lump. Perhaps we can produce a mite of it between us, though the lump may not visibly respond! Let’s see what we can do, instrumentally, with your fascinating Indian scribbles.’

For two hours they wrestled with the groundwork of the Tone Poem, happily absorbed, in that ecstasy of endeavour which is at once passion and peace. Then Anne—with a wary eye on Eve’s health—said, ‘No more to-day.’

Eve lay back among her cushions feeling physically tired, mentally exhilarated, inclined to rebel against arbitrary limitations.

‘It’s not fair. I’m turned on like a rushing tap. I could go on rushing till midnight.’

‘And to-morrow you’d be a rag.’

‘What matter? There it would all be. Lovely stuff. When it gets hold of me, like this, I almost feel I don’t want anything else in life.’

Anne gazed at her; a deeply understanding gaze.

‘Yes—it takes one like that. But there are between-times when one does very much want other things.’

In her low tone Eve divined the secret yearning for those other things that had never been hers.

‘You do want children, Eve?’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Eve sighed profoundly. ‘I’m greedy and grasping. I want all I can get. Can I manage both?’

‘It won’t be easy. Art is a jealous god.’

‘Are you thinking——’ Eve hesitated painfully—‘that it might come to be “no more music,” or “no more children”?’

Anne looked at her very straightly. ‘I hope not. Have you ever thought, if it did—which?’

Eve covered her face. A chill foreboding trickled down her spine. Then she let her hands fall and said in a steadfast voice, ‘There’s Lance to think of. I suppose it would be—no more music. I told Bernstein I’d have to give it up, if it was going to tyrannise. He said—“It won’t give you up.” Perhaps he’s right. After all it’s me. And if it comes—it comes. You can’t play King Canute to that rising tide.’

Anne smiled at the apt flick of humour in the midst of seriousness that was so peculiarly Eve. ‘Being an artist—and a woman,’ she said, ‘is one of the most difficult things in life.’

‘I like difficult things,’ murmured Eve. ‘Do you think . . . are women really greater artists if they refuse to be women? I mean in the wife and mother sense.’

‘No,’ said Anne with decision. ‘Art and life are one and indivisible, down to their least expression. The deeper your experience of life, the richer and fuller your art. But if they both take full toll of you, it may be a strain on your health, your nerves.’

‘I’d put up with any strain,’ said Eve, in the valiant arrogance of youth, ‘sooner than miss a crumb of either. I’d rather live—and be battered, than sort of simmer in peace and comfort——’

‘“Left, in God’s contempt, apart,”’ Anne quoted, half to herself— ‘“Tame in earth’s paddock as her prize”?’

‘That line,’ said Eve, ‘always makes me think of Mummy.’

They exchanged a look of understanding.

‘D’you ever write to her, you bad child?’

‘Not conspicuously often.’

‘Are you not going to see her once, while you’re at Home?’

‘Not once,’ Eve stated unblushingly. ‘How could I possibly explain my errant wifehood to Mummy? Besides—she doesn’t want to see me: nor I her. And I can’t pretend. That’s always been my cardinal sin. Mummy spends most of her life pretending beautifully.’—She flung a wicked look at Anne. ‘I suppose as bad daughters go, I do take the cake?’

Anne smiled at that flash of the very young Eve who had fled three years ago from the suburban atmosphere of Compton Court.

‘You’ve been a beautiful daughter to me.’

‘I belong to you—in the spirit: that’s how. And I’ve treated even you sinfully, in these last few months. But I’m going to make up for it now. This is our given time. It’s come to us out of the blue. I needn’t go back till the middle of March. Lance will get no leave till June or July: and he’ll quite understand.’

What that assurance meant to Anne Verity, Eve herself could not fully know; could not guess how it eased her heart, after much anxiety, much vicarious suffering on account of that lost child.

But when Thursday brought no word from Lance, vague wild anxieties tormented Eve afresh; this time with more justification. Even the music could not hold her mind.

‘I must wire to Vanessa,’ she said at last. And she wired: ‘Where is Lance? Have written. No reply. Please wire. Eve.’

For twenty-four hours she could hardly contain herself. Then the answer came: ‘Lance away on special work. Address uncertain. Hope for news shortly.’

That accounted for his silence. And it would continue. How long would it be before they had news to send her? Were they telling her the truth, or putting her off with plausible hopes, trying not to frighten her? After one brief month of respite and happy companionship, those few words—fired at her like bullets across half the width of the world—cruelly shattered her peace of mind, let in all the demons of doubt and dismay.

And Anne—unable to speak peace where there was no peace—saw very soon that the coveted gift from the blue was not to be hers after all.

A few days of vain preoccupation, vain looking for news that never came, brought Eve to an end of her endurance.

‘Anne,’ she said with a strained air of composure. ‘I can’t carry on like this. I must go. I must be nearer to him—wherever he may be.’

With feverish haste—that recalled to both her flight of three years ago—she booked her passage, bought her few necessaries; wired again to Vanessa, date and steamer and a demand for news at Aden. Possessed by the thought of Lance in possible danger, she dropped her Tone Poem as if it were a half-written letter. They scarcely spoke of it, in those few last breathless days.

Then—the familiar wrench of parting: and she was gone; leaving Anne enriched, yet the more bereft; too anxious for the child to indulge her own sense of bereavement.

Chapter 5

A crown of stars and a slaying sword. . . .
— Fiona M‘Leod

India again; visible palpable India, rushing past the railway carriage windows—the right way this time. In the familiar sights and smells, the sense of swifter movement, there was comfort after the protracted torment of the voyage—a torment of the spirit that had made mere sea-sickness seem a trivial misery. For the wire that came on board at Aden had said ‘No news of Lance.’ It had also announced the arrival of a son—‘Vanessa fairly well.’

At Bombay, she had been greeted by a note from Havelock, repeating the same dismal negative and adding that Lynch was now up in Chitral with one of his Afridis, on the track of Lance and two men who had gone with him. Inevitably there trooped through her brain a succession of eminently possible terrors and disasters. Her imagination never missed one. And the news of Vanessa was hardly less dismal. For though the child flourished, she was very ill: some kind of internal poisoning. Grace Yolande—who specialised in the troubles of child-birth—had been persuaded to leave her hospital in the charge of Dr Savarkar, and attend Vanessa herself. Havelock had planned to meet Eve at Pindi and escort her to Srinagar; and the dear kind man actually begged her to excuse him, as if he were guilty of some discourtesy. He would send, instead, the faithful Sher Ali with the car. The snowfall had not been heavy in the low hills; so the road was in fair order. He welcomed her warmly; and would be glad to have her with him. It was only between the lines of his careful understatements that Eve could detect his acute anxiety.

She would know nothing more till she reached Pindi: two nights and three days. These enormous Indian distances gave one a feeling—after England—of living on a magnified plane of consciousness. Books she always had with her; but they failed to hold her mind. Hour after hour she sat by the window—in her mercifully empty carriage—writing to Anne, watching the panorama of India unfolding, mile on mile, in a blaze of early February sunshine. At Home, they talked of blazing sunshine, with never an idea of this quivering, blinding incandescence, which seemed to need some other word to do it justice. At Home the sun was friend and life-giver. Out here he was a god of radiant and terrible power. The moon was the kindly deity, softening the harsh face of the land.

For those three nights a full moon accompanied the rushing train, and filled the dark carriage with her ghostly presence. The whole outside world dripped with moonlight; the stars mere dew of light; thin clouds floating pure and pale as snowdrifts. No wonder Indians worshipped their many-splendored country. England’s low skies and friendly trees warmed the heart. India stirred the imagination with mingled wonder and fear——

The Punjab, at last, with its keen night air, its drifts of wood smoke and welcoming sense of home. Yet, for her, there could be no true home, while Lance was a lost atom, wandering among those cruel mountains of Chitral. What had he been doing to get lost? Eve suspected Lynch had a hand in it; and more than ever she hated the fateful word, Chitral.

Pindi was full of cheerful, cold-weather activity; camels, bugle-notes, and clanking sowars. And far off, on the edge of things, hung the silver frieze of the snows. At sight of them, her heart lifted in her body. Only a hundred and ninety-six miles, now, to Srinagar; a trifling distance, as distances go in India. By to-morrow night she would be with them all. And here was Sher Ali, smiling and salaaming, presenting another line from Havelock.

‘Vanessa,’ he wrote, ‘is not yet out of danger; but Dr Yolande seems hopeful of a turn for the better—if her strength holds out.’

No mention of Lance. He was too kind-hearted to keep rubbing it in. But his silence spoke louder than words: and Eve’s heart, that had lifted to greet the Himalayas, sank like a plummet into fathomless depths.

Driving, endlessly driving, she scarcely heeded the unfamiliar winter beauty of that familiar road. But at sight of the Kashmir Valley, hope could not fail to flutter a wing.

No leaves or blossoms now, no obvious glories, but a silvery stillness under a dappled sky; tracery of bare trees against the snow that lay thick on the near hills; the lakes like polished shields reflecting the pale sky; the river with its leisurely winter traffic; garden roofs and golden roofs of Srinagar, City of the Sun, ringed by the magic circle of the Pir Panjāl. Nearer at hand, and drawing steadily nearer, the long low Residency, the line of leafless poplars, striking their note of aspiration. And there in the verandah stood Havelock, big and fair and resolutely smiling.

‘Welcome home,’ he said, almost lifting her out of the car; and drawing her into the hall, he kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Did that mean bad news?

‘Vanessa——?’ she asked; and his eyes clouded, as if with tears.

‘She’s much the same: making a splendid fight for it. But God only knows——’

He could say no more: and Eve, seeing him so shaken, could not at once ask about Lance.

He moved towards the study.

‘Will you have a belated cup of tea with me?’ he said. ‘I didn’t trouble to have it. I’m nearly always alone. Dr Yolande’s with her most of the time.’

They stood together by the fire; Eve trying to still the quiver of her limbs. And as she sat down, rather abruptly, he looked at her—realising.

‘You poor plucky child. I’ve no news for you yet. But I honestly don’t believe any Asiatic limb of Satan could out-manoeuvre John Lynch.’

‘But how did it happen? Why did Lance go off like that?’ she flung out desperately. ‘I don’t know anything.’

He took one of her hands between his two large ones and cherished it.

‘My dear, I forgot you were all in the dark.—Here comes tea. I’ll tell you.’

Making tea and serving it, he told her as much as need be about those secret movements, that aimed at unsettling the Border, about the unofficial adventure that had not worked out according to plan.

‘But it wasn’t his job,’ she protested. ‘I’m sure Lynch made him do it. He shouldn’t have gone.’

‘Strictly speaking—he shouldn’t. But it seemed to him—or Lynch—a bit of unauthorised work worth doing. It looked a good deal simpler than it turned out to be. Obviously there’s been a hitch somewhere. But movement is difficult up there in winter; and news takes time to get through: I don’t think we need be afraid’ he stated with obvious conviction—‘that any harm has come to them. It’s just a case of knowing how to wait: the hardest job on earth.’

‘’Specially when you’re waiting in the dark,’ murmured Eve, wishing her conviction equalled his.

At the sound of a quick, light step in the passage, he started. One could see how his nerve had been shaken, how Vanessa was everything in life to this unromantic-looking man. He had not even mentioned the child, who was responsible for it all. Did he curse himself for letting her take the risk? But Vanessa if Eve knew her—must have been as willing as he. People overlooked that, sometimes, when they laid it all on the man.

Then the door opened—and there stood Grace. Neither could speak: and Eve had not known that Grace, who discouraged effusion, could put so much fervour into a kiss.

Then she turned to meet Havelock’s gaze of mute inquiry.

‘I think—I do think,’ she said, with the caution of her kind, ‘that we’re at last getting rid of the poison. I had Dr Norman over this afternoon; and—he congratulated me. But it’s Vanessa’s vitality that has conquered. She is determined to live.’

His lips moved; but no words came. He had stood up to the long strain, had steeled himself to face death and loss: but happiness defeated him. His face worked in an effort at control; and as he turned his head away, Grace drew Eve quickly out of the room.

Upstairs, she helped her to unpack and settle in; was full of concern for her anxiety. But she spoke in the quick contained voice of her professional self; her mind centred on ‘the patient.’ If Eve found it a trifle quenching—when human sympathy was her chief need—she admired it none the less; and she wondered, none the less, about Lynch. But she dared not ask this professional Grace, who had all a man’s capacity for discouraging personal intrusions. Once Vanessa really turned the corner, she would be more approachable.

When Eve begged for a glimpse of the patient she was told sternly, ‘Not till to-morrow.’ A pause: and Grace added, with perceptible hesitation, ‘Would you feel like—seeing the boy?’

Eve could not answer at once. It would be an ordeal; but each time would make it easier. She had never taken little Claudia in her arms; but she would not be able to resist Vanessa’s son.

They went to the nursery, and found him in his cot prepared for sleep; a silky down of fair hair over the flattened head; a minute nose that promised to jut out like his mother’s; and undoubtedly he would have her eyes.

Eve could only gaze and gaze, and say nothing; though the very new nurse stood by, expecting compliments and correct remarks. A sudden tidal wave of feeling impelled her to stoop and kiss the silky-soft head: and that kiss seemed magically to melt the last morsel of ice lurking in her heart. She was going to love her small godson, to do everything for him that the possessive young nurse would allow. If she suffered twinges of envy, Vanessa must never know. But later on, she would ask Grace to tell her truthfully whether, in killing her child, she had killed her chance of other children-to-be. Grace could be trusted not to deal in false comfort, to raise false hopes.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

After dinner, on a plea of journey-weariness, she went up early to her room that overlooked the poplars and the river. And as she stood by the fire in her dressing-gown—thinking of Lance, of Anne, away at Blue Hills, missing their fruitful two months together—the door handle was softly turned.

The real voice of the real Grace said: ‘Dear, are you awake? May I intrude?’

‘Oh please intrude!’ Eve welcomed her. For, in spite of being home again, she felt unspeakably alone: no Lance, no welcome from Vanessa.

Grace came forward in her quick way.

‘I’ve dumped down the night nurse,’ she said. ‘And I’m off duty till eight in the morning, if all goes well.’ With softened eyes, she searched Eve’s face. ‘I haven’t seen you properly yet!’

She pulled two chairs forward. ‘Sit.’ And Eve knew that the inner barriers of reserve were lowered; knew it for the best augury of Vanessa’s real turn towards recovery.

‘What a woman!’ Grace said, as they sat down. ‘I’ve seen a good deal of human courage, here and there. Doctors do. But I’ve seldom seen anything more gallant than the way she has been fighting this insidious poison, for the sake of her husband and the new little son—and you. I’ve sometimes felt that, for herself, she would almost as soon have let go——’

‘That’s very clever of you,’ said Eve. ‘There’s a reason behind. She’s been through terribly hard times in her life—as if Fate had a down on her.’

‘Well I hope Fate will give her a rest, after this. All the anxiety about you came very hard on her. Eve, would you have gone, if she had told you a child was coming?’

Eve shivered. ‘Oh I don’t know—I don’t know. My sane self wouldn’t. But I think—I was crazed.’

‘Your sane self is in full possession now,’ Grace told her. ‘And will be always. So I can honestly confess that I was afraid it might be touch and go: such a blow, at such a time, the wrong way you took it, and all that composing . . . Well! Music, for some reason, is the most unbalancing of the arts. Have you been writing any more? Are you going to write more?’

‘Yes—yes,’ Eve said very low; and turning, she looked full into her friend’s eyes. ‘Grace—don’t you understand? It’s me. It’s more than me. How would you feel if anyone wrenched you away from your hospital and said, “Never, no more”? That’s your form of genius.’

Grace smiled: a strange smile. ‘There’s no one who could or would wrench me away from that,’ she said.

And Eve, emboldened by a change in her tone, asked, ‘Couldn’t even—Lynch?’

‘He’s not likely to try.’

‘Have you seen him, since Gulmarg?’

‘No. But—things have happened, since then.’

‘Couldn’t you possibly tell me? I do so want to know. I’m hating him rather, just now. But there’s good in him. There must be, if he can care so for Lance—and for you. Do tell me what’s happened.’

And Grace—leaning forward, elbows on her knees—told, as best she could.

When it came to her cruel letter—and she quoted it word for word—Eve’s fingers closed sharply on hers.

‘Darling Grace! All on account of me? What a disastrous person I am.’

‘Not quite all on account of you, conceited one! Chiefly on account of his ingrained selfishness; and the way he went behind Lance’s back, after I’d warned him. Lance was in a furious rage. I’ve never liked him better. What he said to Mr Lynch, I don’t know. Nor how they’ve patched it up. But in January, I had a few lines from Mr Lynch (though forbidden) to tell me he was going after Lance. I wired, wishing him success. And that’s all—ultimately all.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said the sceptic.

‘Believe it or not, I’ve no intention of asking him to marry me. And he’s not likely to make a move, after all that. So no earthly power is going to wrench me from my hospital, or my Indian women.—And, in my capacity of doctor, I order you to bed at once. You stay there till after breakfast. Then you shall see your Vanessa.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

But Eve woke early and sprang out of bed, weariness forgotten in the first rapturous sense of return to her world of mountains. To run out and greet the dawn, on such a morning, was for her almost a sacred ritual, an act of praise; so intensely she marvelled over all living things, simply because they lived.

Pulling on her few garments, she slipped out of the house just as the sky was palpitating with the full blaze of dawn, and snow-peaks flashed a greeting to the risen sun. All around her lay the half-awakened earth, waiting, like herself, for a new beginning. As life drove the sap upward in trees and grass, so the sap of invincible hope moved in her veins, in her heart. She was filled with the spirit’s unending desire to be recreated, to become again the very girl whom Lance had loved three years ago, to recapture the first shy ardours of mating. But the wise mountains warned her that although earth renews year after year her miracle of young leaves and opening buds, in human life and love there can be no complete recapture: either a falling off, or a finer fulfilling.

To a finer fulfilling she pledged herself, if—if . . .?

Chapter 6

Cast thyself upon the flame when his candle is lit;
Thou wilt never more endure without the flame,
When thou hast known the rapture of burning.
— Jalāludin Rumi

There could no longer be any lurking doubt on the subject. Vanessa Thorne’s body and will were clearly set towards recovery. It might be a slow process; she might never again be quite the woman she was before she took her brave risk; but she and Grace Yolande between them had fought a good fight. Once more life—the pre-destined loser—had triumphed, for the time being. Grace herself, cool-headed, discerning, knew precisely how much she owed in this case to her own skill and devotion, how much to her patient’s resolute refusal to be beaten by weakness or pain. Because of her fundamental faith she could admit, more readily than most, that defeat of death is almost as often a triumph of the spirit as of medical skill.

If virtue had gone out of her, during these weeks of unremitting vigilance, a large measure of understanding had entered in—understanding of a woman with whom she had scarcely an attribute in common, save courage and humour and a mutual feeling for Eve. It was the last that had forged a link between them in the summer: hence the special request for her from Colonel Thorne, when matters took a serious turn. And the past anxious fortnight, had drawn her closer to Vanessa Thorne than she would have thought possible from her own definite first impressions.

In Gulmarg, she had half distrusted the brilliant Mrs Thorne, artist and woman of the world, who probably wondered why Eve had picked up a ‘mish’ for a friend. Prejudiced a trifle, apt to be hard in judgment, she had not at first recognised Vanessa’s light touch on life, as the gallant gesture of one who had come through tragedy and ugliness and irony by using lightness as a weapon of defence. But illness and the threat of death strip character of its surface trappings; and to discover Vanessa’s finer qualities one had to dig deep. For the sake of having made that discovery—in the course of saving a life—and for the sake of being here with a newly returned Eve, Grace felt justified, on the whole, in having left the hospital, that was never deserted except for her short yearly holiday.

She had been aware, at first, how—even in illness—her patient had opposed a touch of challenging hardness to the strain of hardness in herself. No trace of that now. Vanessa, murmuring feebly, ‘“My head is bloody but unbowed!”’ depended on her in every way and meekly obeyed her most unwelcome orders. No flicker of rebellion, till Grace had remarked, two days ago, that she ought to be returning to Kohat. That had roused Vanessa to insist that the Lady Sahib must stay another two weeks at least.

And the Lady Sahib—-with Eve back again, with the shared ache of anxiety for news and the pleasure of seeing Vanessa’s delight in her son—felt loth to leave them all. But her work, her cases, her Indian women friends, tugged at her heart and conscience, as none else could realise. The tyranny of the chosen work, only the born worker knows. Every few days she received long adoring letters from Maimie; detail piled on detail that she might miss nothing. But Maimie was an incurable optimist. Without the smallest intention to deceive, she would gloss over problems or unpleasant complications; only concerned that Grace should not be allowed to feel worried.

There were thankless moments of exasperation when Grace said to herself, very privately, that these clinging devoted human beings were ‘the devil.’ It was Eve—exasperated on her own account—who had once said to her, ‘If you were a centipede you’d still have a helpless one clinging on to every leg!’ And as usual there was a pin’s head of truth in her quaint exaggeration. In a sense, too, she missed them all, even with an interesting patient on her hands.

Yet although she gave lavishly of her time, her strength, her hard won wisdom, she could not readily give her essential self to man or woman. And after one lapse into passionate love, she had decided that those who felt constrained to do the world’s work were best equipped for it if they did not depend for their happiness on any one human being. On India and India’s women she would bestow her undivided allegiance; letting personal desire be consumed in ‘the glory of the single flame.’ And she did not doubt that John, himself, would ultimately bless her for her hard refusals.

To her great good fortune she had discovered, in Dr Savarkar, a devotee who did not cling, who suffered from no inferiority complex, and, in professional matters, was entirely dependable. But for that, she would not be here; and even so she could not quite believe that, in her absence, the wheels would unfailingly run round. So hard it is for the very capable to realise that they are not indispensable to their fellows.

Nor could the kind people here conceive the strangeness, for her, of living in this unwonted luxury, divorced from the unvarying hospital routine, the ever varying demands on her time, her skill, her sympathies. Constantly, at the back of her mind, she felt the tug of all those lives down there; though up here she had many friends among Indian women and in the Zenana hospital. She had also been able to consider Eve’s inner state of health; to assure her that if she were careful of herself, for a year at least, she might reasonably hope to achieve another child without risk of disaster. Vanessa had begged her to stay for the christening of Kaye Havelock Thorne; and she had not yet given a definite answer. In her opinion, as Dr Yolande, she ought to go; but, as Grace Yolande, a deep and secret anxiety urged her to stay till they had news of the two men. And Vanessa still needed careful watching, to ensure that she made haste slowly.

To-day, for the first time, she was spending a few hours in a long chair. They were all to have tea in her room; and Grace, having settled her among many cushions, had left her with her husband.

Returning at tea-time, she found Vanessa alone with Eve: a fragile ghost of her normal self, but very lovely and appealing, in her loose yellow jacket, the child asleep in her arms.

Eve sat at the tea-table in a shaft of sunlight that revealed the hovering shadow in her eyes. The French window on to the balcony stood open. A ghost of a breeze stirred the curtains and the tall poplars by the river. The first exquisite intolerable ache of spring was in the air.

Eve and Vanessa were talking in low tones, so as not to disturb sleeping Royalty; and as Grace entered, a yellow butterfly came wavering in through the open door.

Vanessa held up a finger; watching the aimless fairy thing as it fluttered nearer; holding her breath when it rested, light as thistledown, on the child’s head. He never stirred: and, as the creature flittered away, Grace came forward.

‘That’ said Vanessa, ‘is Kaye’s real christening. A kiss from the first butterfly of the year!’—She smiled sidelong at Grace, to see how she would take the pagan remark. But Grace was inured, by now, to pagan remarks from that quarter. ‘We’ve fixed the official christening for this day next week, in the drawing-room. And you are not given leave to depart, till this important person has received the name and status of a human being!’

Before Grace could answer one way or the other, the door was thrown open by Colonel Thorne, who had been called away to the telephone; and the child, with a small start, opened his eyes.

‘Havelock, my dear, what a bull in a china shop you are!’ A hint of annoyance lurked in Vanessa’s light reproach. ‘You’ve waked him up.’

‘I beg his pardon!’ the chidden husband apologised in a tone of jubilation, ‘but it won’t harm him to hear my good news. A wire from Lynch, as long as your arm. He’s found Lance. They’re in Bajaur now, making for Peshawar.’—He consulted the paper in his hand: and Grace, after one glance at Eve’s shining eyes, turned her head away. ‘“Have got Lance all safe. Played out, but not injured. Caught our fish, but we’ve lost Bhagwān. Lance unfit for rapid travel. Must halt at Peshawar. Will wire again in a few days.”—There my dear.’

He set the wire beside Eve’s plate, and laid a ponderous hand on her bowed head.

She neither spoke nor stirred; and her tears fell on the paper.

Grace, rising quickly, put an arm round her and caught her shaken whisper, ‘Lynch did it.’

To that there could be no answer; but as Eve brushed away her tears, Grace went back to her seat and very carefully finished her tea, while they talked and talked of the meagre details in that heaven-sent wire. Very carefully she did not hurry over her scones and sandwiches. She even asked for a third cup of tea, which she did not want in the least; drank it too hot and burnt her throat.

Then she stood up and said briskly, ‘Such a perfect afternoon. I think I’ll walk up to the hospital.’—She looked straight at Eve; daring her to see anything in her statement, except the fact that she wanted a little exercise.—‘Take care of Vanessa between you. I’ll be back about six.’

Then she went out, leaving them happy in their news; only Eve aware that it was also her news.

She had mentioned the hospital on impulse. Equally on impulse, she walked in the opposite direction, along the river road towards the Nasim Bagh, Akbar’s beautiful Garden of the Morning Wind.

She walked with long strides, as if she were on an urgent errand, hardly aware of river or mountain or lakes; her whole being filled with a deep strong excitement such as no other man had ever aroused in her.

He was coming. And unless she fled, he would find her here. Believing himself dismissed—what would he say? What would he do? In Gulmarg she had offered him friendship, when he had implicitly asked her to marry him—for the second time. Even that, in an access of pain and anger, she had taken from him; had believed that, at last, her will and judgment had conquered the unreasoning constancy of her heart. Then those few bald words from Peshawar had come upon her like a touch of his hand; had shown her his hidden pain, his resolve to make amends, asking no recognition from her. And, before her will hardened, she had sent that wire. What he had made of it, she could not tell; nor could she face him, now, without recognition that the next move must come from her. A man like that would not abase himself for the third time, uncertain of the issue. Though he had shaken her faith in him and harmed two whom she loved, she had at last forgiven him—slowly, but without reservation. Through those weeks of wearing anxiety, she had admitted to her own heart that, if she lost him altogether, something vital would be gone out of her life, even out of her work.

And if he returned, if he stood confronting her, as in the Residency Garden, with his mutely demanding gaze—what then?

Looking back to that moment, and forward to its counterpart, the sense of him pervaded her with startling actuality; so forcible he was, even in absence, so determined to bear down her difficult opposition—not only to his forcefulness, but to her own demanding human nature. Though she had resolutely closed her mind against the thought of him, he refused to be shut out: a faulty, unbelieving, yet curiously compelling man. And it was no weakness in her, but her own strength that paid homage to his; her innate singleness that understood his instinctive recoil from the threat of a permanent bond.

Here and now the inevitable was upon her. If she did not mean to marry him, she must return at once to Kohat, and do her best not to see him again. If she stayed, she must be prepared to make him, by some means, understand that her letter was cancelled; that they stood, now, where they had stood in Gulmarg.

If——? Did it amount to ‘if’? Her heart knew otherwise, even while her brain debated the matter. But it means far more for some women than for others, this affair of giving themselves and their lives into the hands of a man, however beloved; and this one was not prepared, even now, to make a burnt-offering of her whole personality. Only by being honest with one another, by some agreed form of compromise, could they accept the conditions of a bond peculiarly difficult for them both. Though their love was not halo-ed by romantic sentiment, the years had proved it to be a power in their lives. And because she herself had never dabbled in surface emotions, it came upon her the more overwhelmingly, this driving force of the strongest thing in Nature; this curious sense of incompleteness; as if, indeed, ‘God separated truth when he separated men and women.’ They were old enough, both, to recognise that diversity of work, independence, yet interdependence, were the true component parts of an enduring passion; old enough to recognise that so close a link between co-equal beings must involve almost as much of pain and strain as of joy. She, at all events, was ready to accept the one with the other. She could not picture John as a husband, still less as a father; but his honest recognition of his own hardness and selfishness went far to discount them in her eyes; and she had never yet been daunted by difficulty, as such. On her make of mind it acted as a stimulant; which possibly accounted for the potent attraction of so difficult a subject as John Lynch.

Confronted by news of his safety and the near prospect of seeing him again, she saw herself as a woman compelled, whose own heart and will were her strongest compulsion——

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

That wire was followed, not too soon, by a letter from Lynch and a short note for Eve in case she had arrived. She answered it to Peshawar, where Lance must rest for a few days: and they had time to grow impatient, even anxious, before a second wire from Government House eased the intolerable strain.

Eve, unstrung by the waiting and the longing, said very little even to Grace. Only once she remarked with a small smile, ‘What a pair of strong silent women we are!’ A pause. ‘You will see him now, Grace. You have forgiven him?’

‘Yes ‘ Grace said, ‘I have forgiven him. But I shall not ask him to marry me!’

Another wire from Pindi strung anticipation almost to breaking-point. It was only a matter of two days. It was to-day. . . .

*  *  *

Eve was in the drawing-room playing the piano, Grace with Vanessa giving her a little gentle massage, when the sound of the car and of dogs barking was followed by men’s voices in the hall.

‘Thank God, there they are.’ It was Vanessa who spoke. ‘Run out, Grace, and see that they let Lance go in to Eve alone. Havelock’s a dear dunderhead about that sort of thing. Tell him I want him. You freeze on to Lynch.’

And Grace, smiling at the innocent injunction, went out to obey orders.

After the bright bedroom the hall seemed dim. Lynch over by the front door, was speaking to Colonel Thorne, Lance stood near the staircase, one hand on the rail, as if he needed support.

Quickly she went to him.

‘Lance,’ she said, ‘I am thankful you’ve come safely through.’

His hand, that gripped hers, was cold; and she drew him towards the drawing-room.

‘Eve’s in there,’ she said under her breath.

Then, as the door closed on him, she turned and went straight to John Lynch, holding out her hand.

‘It’s splendid——’ she said, as his fingers closed hard on hers.

But it was Thorne who spoke.

‘Poor old Lance looks a wreck. I thought he’d want a drink.’

‘I’m sure he will—presently.’ She smiled, thinking of Vanessa and feeling a trifle light-headed. ‘Just now, he only wants Eve.’

‘I stand corrected!’ He motioned Lynch to the open dining-room door. ‘A drink’s more in your line than a wifely welcome—eh?’

Lynch, who had been looking at Grace, quickly looked away again, and accepted the proffered consolation. But his eyes had said, ‘You come too’; and she had Vanessa’s orders.

While Colonel Thorne unlocked the tantalus, she and Lynch sat down at a table near the window. The clearer light revealed marks of strain in his face. It looked less hard, more human. And now, as at Gulmarg, she could not but be aware of the strong tides of feeling that swept through him in her presence.

‘A devil of a journey you must have had,’ Colonel Thorne remarked, setting down decanter and syphon.

Lynch assented briefly; and Grace, watching him, with a sudden possessive tenderness, wondered if Colonel Thorne—having insisted on the drink—would go out unprompted and leave them alone. After that hand clasp, that revealing look, she had simply not the face to say that Vanessa wanted him; and just now he was seldom long away from his wife.

Yet he continued to hang about, asking aimless questions, quite unaware that two people, who sincerely liked him, were wishing him at the world’s end.

Lynch answered mechanically, avoided looking at Grace; and was at last inspired to ask with concern: ‘Is Mrs Thorne quite fit now?’

At that he awoke visibly to the fact of his wife.

‘Not fit, yet,’ he said, ‘but well on the road—thanks to the best doctor in India!’ He turned to Grace. ‘Is she asleep?’

‘No. I was giving her massage.’

Half afraid of her moment, now it was imminent, she rose as if she would return to her patient.

But that was not Thorne’s idea.

‘If she’s awake,’ he said, ‘I’ll go to her till teatime. You stay here and amuse Lynch.’

Grace drew in her lip. The commands they issued, these unsuspecting people!

But as the door closed, Lynch stood up to go.

‘I won’t put you to the trouble of amusing me,’ he said, in a constrained voice. ‘I’ll go and unpack my things. I—of course I didn’t expect to find you here.’

‘I apologise’ she smiled, without looking at him, ‘for being off my beat again. I do seem fated to thrust myself on you.’

She heard him draw a deep breath.

‘I haven’t observed any tendency that way. If ever a man was persistently—and brutally given the boot . . .”

The suppressed pain in his voice so moved her, that she flung out both hands to him.

‘John——!’

for an appreciable instant, he stared at her; unable, all in a moment, to take it in. Then his hands closed on hers—slowly, firmly, as a man grasps recovered treasure.

‘Does that mean—I’m forgiven?’

‘More than forgiven.’

She averted her eyes; and he knew, now, with mingled triumph and relief, that there was no further need for his unskilled wooing.

‘Accepted——?’ he asked; and she gave him, at last, the full light of her eyes.

‘Grace——’ he said in the same low tone, ‘is it true? After all these years . . . you can bear to marry me?’

‘I’ve discovered that I can’t bear not to marry you.’

‘Does that mean you’d give up the hospital?’

She hesitated. ‘I—yes; the hospital. But I couldn’t——’ she faced him honestly. ‘Even for you, I couldn’t live without work. I can’t give up everything.”

‘My God! I won’t let you give up everything.’

That, from John Lynch, gave her fuller assurance than any clasp or kiss.

He loosed her hands; deliberately laid his own upon her shoulders, and gazed at her, as if he were seeing, for the first time, this utterly unexpected Grace, who had the temerity to link her life with his. No vagueness, now, in his eyes. His sceptical mind was dominated at last by the fulness of his heart.

‘You’re a wonderful woman,’ he gravely informed her. ‘And I’m a zubberdust⁴⁹ by nature and habit. It’s not such a simple matter between us two. You’ve got to feel very certain.’

She smiled, remembering that other John Lynch, who had tried to sweep her off her feet; and she answered steadfastly.

‘I’ve never felt more certain of anything on earth.—Does that satisfy you?’

Words deserted him. With a curiously cautious movement his arm went round her; and they kissed—a long slow kiss, as of husband and wife re-united, rather than lovers new made.

When he released her, they smiled at one another; bewildered, still half incredulous.

‘Come out,’ he said ‘into the garden. Thorne may come blundering in again. I’ve got to take this in very completely before I can face Lance.’

Chapter 7

Despairs I have met. and conquered—who has not?
Man’s high and restless heart is braced for these . . .
But happiness defeats me.
— Gerald Gould

And Lance in the drawing-room, was facing his Eve, after that blank six months of severance, of new experience and hidden suffering that creates character.

She was still sitting at the piano, one thin clenched hand resting on the keyboard. As the door opened and closed, she sprang up and stood confronting him; startled at sight of his altered aspect—his face woefully thin and strained, as if it had been chiselled by inner stress of suffering.

So vividly she had pictured this instant of meeting, that at the sharp impact of reality she was smitten with a sense of strangeness, almost shyness——

Then he smiled at her, holding out his arms; and in a flash the strangeness passed, but the pang remained.

‘Lance—oh Lance!’ she cried in dismay; and his arms closed on her convulsively, as if even now he feared that she might be snatched from him again.

The sheer relief of her living presence, close against him, was like a draught of water to a man parched with long thirst. It was as if he could hardly cease from holding her; not even kissing her; still half afraid—after long repression—to let himself go. She seemed to complete some circuit in his being that alone made full life possible.

At last, in the slow careful fashion that was not Lance, he turned his face to hers.

‘You darling—you darling,’ he murmured; and his kiss dissolved all strangeness, all sense of her separate self.

Yet she was crying helplessly; her tears were salt on his lips. This was no dream, this weeping, palpitating Eve; and pulling out a handkerchief, he dabbed her eyes.

‘Nothing to cry for now, my treasure,’ he said.

But she saw that his own lashes were wet, that his hand was shaking. He was quite unfit for the emotional strain.

‘Lance—you’re ill,’ she exclaimed; and half-freeing herself, she gently pushed him down into the largest chair, terror knocking at her heart. How ill was he? Had she really got him safe, even now?

For him, at the moment, all sensation was submerged in release from strain, as he lay back with closed eyes, every taut nerve relaxed. But the light touch of her fingers on his forehead struck fire through his veins; and he opened his eyes to find her kneeling by him on the floor cushion, her face anxious and troubled, as it had no business to be.

‘Don’t worry, my sweet,’ he said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘You’re not all right. Shall I get some brandy?’

‘I’ve got some in my flask.’

He drew it out and drank a few sips neat. Another kind of fire tingled through his veins. The water of life was a potent restorer. He felt almost himself again; and as Eve leaned forward, kneeling on her cushion, he took her head between his hands, gazing deep into her eyes, as if to assure himself that the long pain of more than separation was actually over.

And she, steadfastly returning his gaze, nerved herself to bear that terribly intimate contact with the husband she had left to suffer alone.

‘Darling, forgive me,’ she said at last in a shaken voice: and he drew her head down, pressing it to him, stroking it, his fingers stirring in her hair.

‘That’s all been done long ago,’ he told her. ‘But we did say, “for better, for worse.” And you were a sinful woman—if you want it straight—to go back on your sacred word, when we came to the first difficult corner.’

‘Oh, I never saw it so,’ she cried in genuine distress. ‘I only saw how badly I had hurt you. I felt I’d let you in . . . let you down——’

‘Eve!’ he checked her sharply; and the true Lance sounded in his tone. ‘Did I ever say, or even imply, anything of the kind?’

‘Of course not. You never would. It was what you didn’t say that frightened me. And my own troublesome conscience “said it very loud and clear. It came and shouted in my ear”!’

She forced the lighter note, longing to hear him laugh.

He did laugh; a queer broken sound. And he caught her to him, kissing her with passionate fervour, telling her, as no lame words could do, that she had indeed come home again into his heart, into his life——

Chapter 8

The ways of lovers are many as sheep tracks on the mountains; but they all lead into shadow-blue distances, into stress and blessed grief and god-like laughter.
— Mary Webb

There are times when life comes, as it were, to a pause in the inexorable process of moving on, as if to let a few insignificant human beings hold in their hands a brimming cup and no drop be spilled. So it was during those silvery-golden days of February, the month of hidden stirrings, when everything is happening, though nothing seems to be happening. Over lake and river and mountain and formal Moghul gardens the melancholy sweetness of the year’s renewal shed a tranced stillness; the prophetic soul of the Valley ‘dreaming on things come.’ And the lakes, these windless days, held, in solution, blues of sky and mountain, and the silver sheen of snow, lying thick on the near hills, emitting a pale light of its own. No clash of politics, no echoes of an India in transition, troubled the quiet of her holy Himalayas.

As in the Valley, so within the Residency, nothing seemed to be happening, yet everything was happening. For events of profoundest moment are secret as the secret life of earth.

To Vanessa Thorne every day brought its fraction of increasing strength, of increasing delight in her child. To John Lynch, beneath his unrevealing surface, those few peaceful days brought a deepening conviction that with this one woman—who so amazingly understood his innate singleness, his lack of adaptability—he might yet achieve the seemingly impossible. And he was shrewd enough to perceive that the chances of achievement sprang not only from her love for himself, but from her allegiance to a faith he could not share, yet would always respect, since it had helped to make her the inimitable being that she was, with her feet set firmly on earth and her soul among the stars.

Because her work was for the good of India, he would put no selfish spoke in her wheel; and from her he would demand an equal respect for the kind of work he must still continue to do, married or no. She was woman to the core; yet he could rely on her, as on a man. That, for him, was not the least surprising discovery in a week of many discoveries.

They had decided to marry in July, that she might accompany him on his yearly trek in the wilds of the Hindu Kush. A woman? He could scarcely credit that incredible conjunction. The strongest thing in life can do strange things to a man, for all the assertive arrogance of his own individual will.

To-morrow his happy days of fruitful idling would be over. To-morrow he—and she also—must return to the work that, for all its magnetism, could not keep them permanently apart. And this time, he reflected—with mingled amusement and satisfaction—she would not be refusing a seat in his car.

As for Lance and Eve, if he had sinned against them, in his obstinate self-determination, it was worth all he had risked to know that, at least, he had made amends. Of the cost to himself, in losing Bhagwān, he could not say much even to Lance, who had taken it terribly to heart. The more so since Bhagwān’s death had been indirectly due to the slip through which his own nationality had been discovered; a slip so purely instinctive that he could not, in justice, blame himself. He had been sitting with the rest—he told Lynch—at a nautch tamasha, unconsciously tapping his foot to the rhythm of the music, quite unaware that it happened to be a thing no Asiatic would do. They were acute observers, those trained fishers of men; and, to be watching him so closely, they must already have had their suspicions.

Once the game was up, Bhagwān had secretly smuggled Kamāla Singh off to Peshawar; and Lynch, marching up through Swat, had encountered his Hindu friend; there being but one passable road, and that none too passable in January.

Followed the unpleasantest game of hide-and-seek in which he had ever taken part. What those sharp fellows had intended to do with their find, none would ever know. Lance, besides being a detested white man, had much secret information lodged in his brain, which they could not remove, as they had removed many papers from his person. It was Bhagwān who had devised the plan of escape, that missed fire at a critical moment and involved them in a free fight. Akbar had accounted for two of the enemy; and the third man had been taken alive. But before they could bind him securely, he had whisked out a pistol and shot Bhagwān through the head.

Lynch had the facts from Akbar, not from Lance, who refused to be drawn out on the subject of those harassing weeks of hardship and exposure, when he had despaired of ever seeing Eve or India again.

‘It was a hell of a time. And thank God it’s over,’ was his characteristic conclusion of the whole matter. ‘Whatever’s any use, I’ve told you. And not a word to Eve, mind. I’ve told her as much as she need know.’

Thus, in his sane fashion, he rang down the curtain on all that. It was an attitude Lynch could not choose but respect; though, for several reasons, he would fain have known more. Especially he wanted to know whether Lance intended to carry on and complete his two years in Chitral. He and Sir Vincent had spent a whole morning together in Peshawar; but Lynch had only been told that the Chief Commissioner would recommend Lance for two months’ sick leave; and instinctively he avoided asking that particular question of tragic memories. He could only hope that Lance would speak of it before they parted in the morning.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lance himself was feeling as little disposed to look beyond the becalmed present as to look backward on all he had been through; but the question must be faced, must be discussed with Eve. And before that happened, his own mind must be clear on the subject. So, after breakfast that morning, he went off alone, for the first time since his return, to take stock of himself and things in general. Though he was not yet fit for much walking, he could reach the Gap; only a hundred-foot rise above the Valley, and a grand view both ways. He set out briskly enough; no Bijli trotting at his heels. He had been obliged to leave the faithful one with Greville in Chitral; and to walk without Bijli felt like walking without his shadow.

As his feet took him up to the Gap—that runs between the Takht-i-Suleiman and the Great Northern range—his thoughts carried him leagues away from Eve and Kashmir to the cruel grey mountains of Chitral, eagle-haunted, unfriendly to man. Those mountains he had seen in their harshest aspect during his days of search, his weeks of exposure, illness and inadequate feeding, of being shifted from place to place by men who knew how to make their hatred felt in a score of maddening ways.

When at last—after that weary journey with Lynch—they had reached the familiar Border country, he had wished with all his heart never to set foot in Chitral again. Even now, healed in body and mind by Eve’s enveloping tenderness, the queer bruised sensation remained. It would pass; but the effect on his inmost self would not altogether pass away.

It was noble of Uncle Vinx giving him so long a breather. But after that—Chitral. Did Eve realise, yet, his intention to return and complete the usual term of his appointment? She had said nothing; and he had been resolutely shutting out problems and painful memories. But this afternoon he must sound her about it.

They were driving out, the four of them, to the Nishāt Bagh. Encouraged by the spring-like weather they had planned a tea picnic under the bare chenars. Grace and Lynch—an astounding conjunction—would surely wander off afterwards. Then he could speak to Eve.

She would feel it terribly, his leaving her again; and he would feel it no less. If he could only leave her with the hope of another child? But, in view of that warning from Grace, there must be no more risk for her, at any price. Child or no, they had created something between them that was not there a year ago. If she still remained, in part, a mystery he could never quite understand, that was only to say that he was man—and she, woman. Probably man and wife never could quite understand one another; yet love would never suffer them to give up their mutual assault on the impossible.

Here was the Gap at last—mercifully; for his legs refused to go any farther. Some way above the road, he found a stretch of brownish grass where he could sit at ease, with his back against a rock, and smoke and enjoy the beauty of the half-awakened valley; bare orchard and fields, bare willows and chenars, the land rising in gentle gradations to the ‘many lifted hills’ of the Pir Panjāl.

From that wide scene there breathed a spirit of calm, of all-pervading peace. In view of those high, enduring mountains his own urgent problems seemed of no earthly importance, even to himself, for all his young ambitions, hopes, and desires. And strangely enough he did not feel disheartened by that reminder of his personal insignificance, that sensation of being absorbed into the vast unheeding landscape. The hurts he had suffered, in heart and mind and body, these last six months, hurts to his pride and his deeper self, seemed reduced, as his body was reduced, to a mere speck on the empty hillside. Peace fell like dew upon his spirit, weariness stole into his limbs—and he fell fast asleep.

*  *  *

The day’s early effulgence melted into an afternoon softly radiant; and they drove out early, in Lynch’s big car, along the shores of the Dal Lake to the beautiful Nishāt Bagh, laid out by the great Jehanzir.

Straight above the lake sprang the rocky slopes of the Takht-i-Suleiman, throne of Solomon; bare to the wind and sun, its bold outline unblurred by trees; its small temple cut sharply out against the milky softness of the sky.

‘I wonder if Solomon ever reached India and sat upon that throne,’ mused Lance, leaning back against a cushion insinuated by Eve. ‘If he did, he must have imbibed a good deal of his wisdom from the beauty of Kashmir.’

‘I don’t believe,’ said the sceptical one, ‘that Solomon ever set eyes on Kashmir; or he couldn’t possibly have been such a pessimist, grousing about vanity and vexation of spirit. Anyway, I won’t let a crumb of vanity vex my spirit on this fairy-like afternoon.’

Fairy-like it was, in its silvery softness and blurred reflections; and Eve, in her old irresponsible mood, was more like the very young Eve of Ladāk and Kohat than Lance had seen her since her return. How could he bring himself to vex her spirit with talk of problems? How east the shadow of separation on the new completeness of their coming together again?

Here was the Bagh: its seven terraces climbing up and up from the lake’s edge; its waterfalls and fountains flowing down and down, from terrace to terrace, through the inevitable avenue of chenars. Here was peace and all-pervading solitude that would be scared away, in the time of leaves and blossoms, by motor launches and picnic parties and restless Americans—more and more of them every year.

Nothing would satisfy Eve but the seventh terrace.

‘Seventh heaven!’ she cried, as they flung down rugs and cushions under a group of noble chenars, whose branches and twigs wove traceries on the blue above, on the ground below. A score of their fellows trooped down to the silvery stillness of the lake, where cloud answered to cloud and snow peak to snow peak, where poplars and willows stood head downwards, delicately etched, line for line.

While Grace made tea and dispensed it, Eve kept the men laughing at her sallies, and dared Lynch to pulverise her with his mocking repartee. But under the lightness and the sparkle, content brooded still and deep, like the waters of the lake.

Lynch, after a second cigarette, rose and stretched himself and stood looking down thoughtfully at his semi-prostrate friend.

‘Sheer lotus eating!’ he said. ‘You need it. I’ve neither the excuse, nor the taste for it. We’ll be back before the air gets too cool. This infernal laziness has bitten me. I don’t intend to go far.’

Grace, who had risen also, pointed with her stick at a clump of trees beyond the garden, some little way up the hillside.

‘That’s my objective,’ she stated. ‘I’ve been up there once. And I vowed I wouldn’t leave the Valley without getting up there again. You wouldn’t discourage me—would you?—from keeping a vow.’

‘Well—if you put it that way—’ Lynch assumed an air of resignation; ‘“I am, as dog says to rat, in tight corner!” I’ll be asking some stiff ones of you, in July.’

And Lance murmured pensively, to no one in particular, ‘“When a man’s married he’s not his own man.”’

Lynch frowned. ‘Extinguish him, Eve.’

But it was Grace who spoke, laying a hand on his arm. ‘This one intends to be. He’s marrying—with reservations.’

‘Because you still intend to be your own woman?’ Lance queried shrewdly.

She laughed at that, and appealed to Lynch.

‘Do I dare say “yes” to his impertinence?’

Lynch regarded her gravely, an odd gleam in his eyes.

‘After the way you’ve treated me, up and down the length of our acquaintance, I should say you dare anything!’ And slipping a hand through her arm he added: ‘Where you go, I go. Come along.’

Eve, leaning against her chenar, watched them go, her mind full of interested speculation, her heart suffused with a warmth that only Lance and the feel of his nearness, could set aglow within her. And he knew all about it, lying there, peacefully smoking, his fingers interlocked with hers, in the old, remembered way.

Unaware of lurking problems, she wondered what he was thinking of that strangely assorted pair; but she did not trouble to ask. If he had anything to say, he would say it presently. And presently, in this haunt of peace, she would tell him about her music, and the choice she had made. Her whole being felt delightful to itself, quickened by the deeper sense of unity wrought from shared suffering. That was the talisman. She saw it now, after these dark months of separation in more than body. That haunted Eve—too hardly punished for her ruinous impulse—had instinctively shut away her deepest sorrow; and, in so doing, had given him no chance to help or to understand. She had fatally taken it the wrong way. One had to be worthy of sorrow as well as of joy. And only from such sorrow as both had endured could so fine a quality of happiness be distilled.

For this brief and lovely while, she was untroubled by ‘the secret questioner,’ who forbids stillness in the midst of life. She knew Lance now—this Lance who had so suffered—as something more than the husband, whose touch, whose whole personality she had so achingly desired over there in England; knew him as the origin of much in her that was greater than herself. By a faith, to which she could not attain, he lifted her seeking, doubting spirit on wings that were not her own. And he did not know it. His outward-going mind was apt to be more aware of others than of himself. For her, that was his crowning charm.

And Lance, half-lying beside her—confronted by the beauty that had so moved him in the morning—had now no eyes for anything but the change, in sameness, of her pensive face; no clear thought for anything but his acute reluctance to disturb her dreamy content.

As if drawn by that thought, she turned and smiled down at him, and his fingers tightened on hers. The thing had to be settled; get it over.

‘Eve,’ he said in a grave voice. ‘I’ve got something to ask you—rather difficult.’

‘Oh, Lance!’—he caught the note of apprehension.

‘And I’d got something to tell you—rather nice.’

‘Let’s have it,’ he urged, frankly relieved.

But her curiosity was awakened, her instinctive dread of some intruding shadow.

‘No: you ask. We’ll keep the nice thing to the last, like I used to keep my tit-bits. I often do now.’

She sounded so young, she looked so young in her blithe mood, that his heart contracted afresh. And as he hesitated, her gaze softened on his face.

‘Darling Lance,’ she breathed with sudden fervour, ‘you can’t ask anything I wouldn’t do—if it’s for you.’

He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips.

‘It isn’t exactly for me. It’s just—life. Perhaps I needn’t worry. Perhaps you’ve understood all the time that I haven’t done with Chitral, because of this mishap. There’s still another year or eighteen months to run. And I may not get summer leave, because I’m having an extra big slice now.’

Again his fingers tightened on hers; and he saw the tears start. Too soon life was pitilessly thrusting in its wedge.

‘My Beauty, did you realise?’ he asked anxiously; and she told him the truth.

‘I think I tried not to. I was afraid you’d have to go back. I wasn’t sure—if you could possibly arrange——?’

She broke off; and his long pause told her what was coming.

‘That’s a damned hard question to answer,’ he said, ‘when we’ve only had a week together. But it’s the truth between us now, Eve; not like that awful last time. Of course, a man’s free to chuck any appointment for private reasons, if needs must. But I haven’t a washable pretext. I’m a starter. I was in luck to get the transfer so soon to real political work. It would do my prospects no good if I trumped up some excuse for going back to the executive. They’d guess it was because I’m married. That’s why they bar married men. Uncle Vinx is keen to have me there because he knows I can create an atmosphere of confidence and good feeling. The Mehtar’s friendly enough; but there’s something astir all over the country; something we can only counter in a generous spirit of understanding. Mason rather took the wrong tone; and it’s part of my job to undo the effect of that. So, you see, darling, it’s hardly a personal question. But if you really feel it’s going to be too much for you——?’

She turned on him now a changed face; instinctively rising to the big demand, like a high-mettled horse to a stiff fence.

‘It’s not going to be too much for me, Lance. What you can stand, I can stand. I quite see that, officially, I don’t exist! You oughtn’t to be married in this service—not for years to come. It’s all my fault for being a magnet! And I refuse to be a millstone as well. India’s a cruel country for separations. But look what one gets between whiles——’

She flung out her arm with a wide gesture.

‘Of course you’ll go back. And we’ll make the most of being together now.—Will that do for an answer?’

She heard him draw in his breath. Then he sat upright, in his swift fashion, and pulled her close against him; thanking her in the only way a man can thank a woman for accepting, uncompelled, the call to stand aside. Because her artist’s brain could see this thing with a man’s eyes, she could rise to it with the courage of a woman who loves with all her faculties, and accepts marriage as more than a union of persons—a union of destiny.

‘You’ll be safe here,’ he said, only half releasing her.

‘Yes, I’ll be safe. I shall have Vanessa and little Kaye and my music to keep me out of mischief! And I’m going to make a real study of Indian music. It’s more subtle and wonderful than we realise. For them sound is the vital principle. So it is for me.’

A faint contraction of his forehead reminded her that she had not yet told him. His difficult question had banished everything else from her mind.

‘Lance,’ she said, leaning to him and speaking gently, as a mother to a child, ‘you mustn’t be afraid of my music any more. I said I had something nice to tell. Lie back on your cushion and feel at peace, and I’ll tell you what happened to me when it all came alive again.’

Puzzled and intrigued, he lay back, willingly enough, and accepted the cigarette she lighted for him. Then she leaned beside him on one elbow, and told her story, vividly, dramatically—from the dinner at Marcel’s flat, to her battle with the uncomprehending impresario, who had naturally regarded her as a fraud of the deepest dye.

And as Lance listened, scarcely shifting his eyes from her face, light flowed in upon him and fulness of understanding, and peace of heart that is the rarest gift of love. Here indeed was the Eve, whom no vows could bind, giving him direct proof that his hold on her was a stronger thing than he knew. She and her music were one. It was nothing but his own hidden fear of it that had made it an element of danger. He hoped he would never fear it again.

But they still had a long way to go. They were still only at the beginning of their great adventure. And if all could not be understood, there would but be the more to discover by the way. Married lovers must surely go on finding themselves and each other through all the days of their years.

Parkstone, September 1929.
Parkstone, March 1931.

The End