Captain Desmond V.C. Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  JUDGE FOR YOURSELF.

  "Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an Unseen Hand at a game?"--TENNYSON.

  Honor Meredith folded her arms upon the window-ledge of the carriageand looked out into the night: a night of strange, unearthly beauty.

  The full moon hung low in the west like a lamp. A chequered mantle oflight and shadow lay over the mountain-barrier of India'snorth-western frontier, and over the desolate levels through which thetrain, with its solitary English passenger, sauntered at the rate ofseven miles an hour. Even this degree of speed was clearly somethingof an achievement, attainable only by incessant halting to takebreath--for ten or fifteen minutes--at embryo stations: a platform, ashelter, and a few unhappy-looking out-buildings set down in a land ofdeath and silence--a profitless desert, hard as the nether millstoneand unfruitful as the grave.

  During these pauses the fret and jar of the labouring train gave placeto a babel of voices--shouting, expostulating, denunciating in everyconceivable key. For the third-class passenger in the East is nothingif not vociferous, and the itch of travel has penetrated even to theseoutskirts of empire.

  Sleep, except in broken snatches, was a blessing past praying for,and as the moon swung downward to the hills, Honor Meredith hadsettled herself at the open window, to watch the lifeless wastes glidesilently past, and await the coming of dawn.

  She had been journeying thus, with only moon and stars, and unfamiliarscenes of earth for company, since eight o'clock; and morning was nearat hand. The informal civilisation of Rawal Pindi lay fifty milesbehind her; and five miles ahead lay Kushalghur, a handful ofbuildings on the south bank of the Indus, where the narrow line ofrailway came abruptly to an end. Beyond the Indus a lone widecart-road stretched, through thirty miles of boulder-strewn desert, tothe little frontier station of Kohat.

  For six years it had been Honor's dream to cross the Indus and joinher favourite brother, the second-in-command of a Punjab cavalryregiment; to come into touch with an India other than thelight-hearted India of luxury and smooth sailing, which she hadenjoyed as only daughter of General Sir John Meredith, K.C.B., andnow, with the completion of her father's term of service, her dreamhad become an almost incredible reality.

  It was not without secret qualms of heart and conscience that theGeneral had yielded to her wish. For frontier life in those earliertimes still preserved its distinctive flavour of isolation and hazard,which has been the making of its men, and the making or marring of itswomen; and which the northward trend of the "fire-carriage" has almostconverted into a thing of the past. But sympathy with her mettlesomespirit, which was of his own bestowing, had outweighed Sir John'sanxiety. On the eve of sailing he had despatched her with his blessingand, by way of practical accessory, a handsome revolver, which he hadtaught her to use as accurately as a man.

  And now, while she sat alone in the mellow moonlight of early morning,within a few miles of the greatest river of the Punjab, not even thepain of recent parting could lessen the thrill of independence andadventure, that quickened her pulses, and stirred the deep waters ofher soul.

  At five-and-twenty this girl still remained heart-whole, as atnineteen: still looked confidently forward to the best that life hasto give. For, despite a strong practical strain in her nature, she wasan idealist at the core. She could not understand that temper of mindwhich sets out to buy a gold watch, and declines upon a silver onebecause the other is not instantly attainable. She would have the bestor none: and, with the enviable assurance of youth, she never doubtedbut that the best would be forthcoming in good time.

  For this cause, no doubt, she had failed to make the brilliant matchtacitly expected of her by a large circle of friends ever since herarrival in the country. None the less, she had gone cheerfully on herway, untrammelled by criticism, quite unaware of failure, andeternally interested in the manifold drama of Indian and Anglo-Indianlife. Her father and four soldier brothers had set her standard ofmanhood, and had set it high; and although in the past eight yearsmany men had been passionately convinced of their ability to satisfyher needs of heart and brain, not one among them had succeeded inconvincing Sir John Meredith's clear-sighted daughter.

  But thought of all these things was far from her as she watched themoon dip to the jagged peaks that shouldered the stars along thewestern horizon. The present held her; the future beckoned with anencouraging finger; and she had no quarrel with the past.

  * * * * *

  By now the moon's last rim formed a golden sickle behind a bluntshoulder of rock; while over the eastward levels the topaz-yellow ofan Indian dawn rushed at one stride to the zenith of heaven. In theclear light the girl's beauty took on a new distinctness, a new livingcharm. The upward-sweeping mass of her hair showed the softness ofbronze, save where the sun burnished it to copper. Breadth of brow,and the strong moulding of her nose and chin, suggested powers ratherbefitting a man than a woman. But in the eyes and lips the womantriumphed--eyes blue-grey under very straight brows, and lips thateven in repose preserved a rebellious tendency to lift at the corners.From her father, and a long line of fighting ancestors, Honor hadgotten the large build of a large nature; the notable lift of herhead; and the hot blood, coupled with endurance, that stamps the racecurrent coin across the world.

  A jolt of unusual violence, flinging her against the carriage door,announced conclusively her arrival at the last of the embryo stations,and straightway the stillness of dawn was affronted by a riot of lifeand sound. Men, women, and children, cooking-pots and bundles,overflowed on to the sunlit platform; and through their midst, with adignified aloofness that only flowers to perfection in the East, HonorMeredith's tall _chuprassee_[1] made his way to her carriage window.Beside him, in a scarlet coat over full white skirts, cowered thedistressed figure of an old ayah, who for twenty years had been apillar of the household of Meredith.

  [1] Government servant.

  "Hai, hai, Miss Sahib!" she broke out, lifting wrinkled hands inprotest. "How was it possible to sleep in such a night of strangenoises, and of many devils let loose; the rail _gharri_[2] itselfbeing the worst devil of them all! Behold, your Honour hath brought usto an evil country, without water and without food. A country ofmurderers and barefaced women. Not once, since the leaving of Pindi,have I dared close an eyelid lest some unknown evil befall me."

  [2] Carriage.

  A statement which set her companion smiling under the shelter of hismoustache and beard, at thought of the many times he had saved herslumbering form from collision against the woodwork of the train. But,with the courtesy of his kind, he forebore to discomfort her bymention of such trifling details.

  "It is necessary to cross the river on foot, Miss Sahib," he said: andwithout more ado Honor fared forth into the untempered sunlight,closely followed by her two attendants, and a string of half-nakedcoolies bearing her luggage.

  From the dreary little terminus a cart-track sloped to the river,which at this point sweeps southward with a strong rush of water, itssteep banks forming a plateau on either hand. The narrow gorge wasspanned by a rough bridge of boats lashed firmly together; and on thefarther side Honor found a lone dak bungalow, its homely dovecot andwheeling pigeons striking a friendly note amid the callousness of thesurrounding country.

  An armed orderly, who had been taking his ease in the verandah, sprangsmartly to his feet and saluted; and behind him, on the threshold, ared-bearded khansamah, who might have walked straight out of an OldTestament picture-book, proffered obsequious welcome to the _MajorSahib's Miss_. Honor bestowed a glance of approval upon her newprotector, whose natural endowments were enhanced by the picturesqueuniform of the Punjab Cavalry. A khaki tunic, reaching almost to hisknees, was relieved by heavy steel shoulder-chains and a broadkummerband of red and blue. These colours were repeated in the peakedcap and voluminous turban, while over the kummerband was buckled thesevere leathern sword-belt of the West.

  The man held out a letter; and Honor, summarily dis
missing thekhansamah,--who thrust himself upon her notice with the insistentmeekness of his kind,--passed on into the one sitting-room, with itsbare table and half-dozen dilapidated chairs. Balancing herself on theformer, she broke the seal with impatient fingers, for the sight ofher brother's handwriting gladdened her like a hand-clasp acrossthirty miles of space.

  Then she started, and all the light went out of her eyes.

  "DEAREST GIRL" (she read),-- "Just a line to save you from a shock at sight of me. The old trouble--Peshawar fever. Mackay has run me to earth at last and insisted on a Board. I'm afraid it's a case of a year's sick leave at home, bad luck to it. But I see no reason to throw up our fine plan altogether. If you would like to wait out here for me, the Desmonds will gladly give you a home. He made the offer at once, and I know I couldn't leave you in better hands. Full details when we meet. It's a hard blow for us both; but you have grit enough for two, and here's a chance to prove it. Hurry up that tonga-driver.--Your loving, JOHN."

  Honor read the short letter through twice, then, with less ofelasticity in her step, sought refreshment of mind and body in the hotwater awaiting her in the next room.

  An hour later the tonga was well on its way, speeding at a hand-gallopover the dead level of road, with never an incident of shade, or aspear-point of green, to soften the forbidding face of it; with nevera sound to shatter the sunlit stillness, save the three-fold sound oftheir going--the clatter of hoofs, the clank and rattle of thetonga-bar rising and falling to a tune of its own making, and thebrazen-throated twang of the horn, which the tonga-drivers of UpperIndia have elevated to a fine art.

  And on either hand, to the utmost limit of vision, lay the emptinessof the desert, bounded by unfriendly hills. A pitiless country, wherethe line of duty smites the eye at every turn; the line of beautybeing conspicuous only by its absence. A country that straightens theback, and strings up nerve and muscle; where men learn to endurehardness, and carry their lives in their hands with cheerfulunconcern, expecting and receiving small credit for either from thosewhose safety they ensure, and who know little, and care less, aboutmatters so scantly relevant to their immediate comfort or concern.

  Honor had elected to sit in front by the strapping Pathan driver;while Parbutti, ayah, her flow of speech frozen at its source by thenear neighbourhood of a sword and loaded carbine, put as much spacebetween the orderly and her own small person as the narrow back-seatof the tonga would permit.

  The English girl's eyes had in them now less of dreaminess, and moreof thought. The abrupt change in her outlook brought Evelyn Desmond'spretty, effective figure to the forefront of her mind. For tenyears,--the period of Honor's education in England,--the two girls hadlived and learned together as sisters; and, despite natures radicallyopposed, a very real love had sprung up between them. They had notmet, however, since Evelyn Dacre's somewhat hasty marriage to CaptainDesmond, V.C., a brother officer of John Meredith; a soldier of nolittle promise and distinction, and a true frontiersman, both byheritage and inclination, since every Desmond who came to India wentstraight to the Border as a matter of course. Honor knew the man byhearsay only, but she knew every inch of her friend's character, andthe knowledge gave her food for much interested speculation. There arefew things more puzzling than the marriages of our friends, unless itbe our own.

  But after the first stoppage to change horses, Honor flung meditationto the winds, and turned her eyes and mind upon the life of the road.For, as day took completer possession of the heavens, it becameevident that life, of a leisurely, intermittent sort, flourished evenupon this highway to the other end of nowhere.

  A line of camels, strung together like a grotesque living necklace,sauntered past, led by a loose-robed Pathan, as supercilious of aspectas the shuffling brutes who bobbed and gurgled in his wake. Or itmight be a group of bullock-carts going down to Kushalghur, to meetconsignments of stores and all the minor necessaries of life,--for inthose days Kohat was innocent of shops. At rare intervals, colourlessmud hamlets--each with its warlike watch-tower--huddled close to theroad as if for company and protection. Here the monotonous round oflife was already astir. Women of a remarkable height and grace, indark-blue draperies peculiar to the Frontier, went about their workwith superb movement of untrammelled limbs, and groups of shiny bronzebabies shrilled to the heartsome notes of the tonga-horn. There were alsowhitewashed police _chokhis_,[3] where blue-coated, yellow-trouseredpolicemen squatted, and smoked, and spat, in glorious idleness, from dawnto dusk, and exchanged full-flavoured compliments with the Pathan driverin passing. For the rest there was always the passionless serenity of thedesert, with its crop of thriftless thorn-bushes, whose berries showedlike blood-drops pricked from the hard heart of the land; and beyond thedesert, looming steadily nearer with every mile of progress, the ruggedmajesty of the hills.

  [3] Police stations.

  As the third hour of their journeying drew to an end, a sudden visionof green, like an emerald dropped on the drab face of the plain,brought a flush to Honor's cheeks, a light into her eyes.

  "It is Kohat, Miss Sahib," the driver announced with a comprehensivewave of his hand.

  A breath of ice-cool air came to her from an open watercourse at theroadside, and the fragrance of a hundred roses from the one beautifulgarden in the station that surrounded the Deputy-Commissioner's house.They passed for a while between overarching trees, but the glimpse ofEden was short-lived. At the avenue's end they came abruptly into thecantonment itself: stony, barren, unlovely, the dead level broken hereand there by rounded hummocks unworthy to be called hills. On theeast, behind a protective mud-wall, lay the native city; on the northand west, the bungalows of the little garrison--flat-roofed,square-shouldered buildings, with lizard-haunted slits of windowsfifteen feet above the ground, set in the midst of bare, pebble-strewncompounds; though here and there some fortunate boasted athirsty-looking tree, or a handful of rose-bushes blooming bravely inthis, the Indian month of roses.

  At the foot of the highest hummock, crowned with buildings of uniformugliness, the tonga-driver drew rein and indicated a steep pathway.

  "The bungalow of the Major Sahib is above," he said, "and the Presencemust needs walk."

  The Presence did more than walk. In the verandah at the path's end atall figure stood awaiting her; and before Parbutti and the orderlyhad collected her belongings, she was in John Meredith's arms.

  The remarkable likeness between the two was very apparent as theystood together thus; though the man's face was marred by ill-health,and by the distressing prominence of his eye-bones and strongly-markedjaw. He led her into the dining-room with more of lover-like thanbrother-like tenderness; for despite his forty years no woman had yetdethroned this beautiful sister of his from the foremost place in hisheart.

  He set her down at the breakfast-table, himself poured out her tea,and dismissed the kitmutgar as soon as might be, Honor watching himthe while with troubled solicitude in her eyes.

  "It's crushing, John!" she said at length. "And you do look horriblyill."

  "Well, my dear girl, is it likely I'd desert the regiment, and forfeita year of your good company unless devils within were prettyimperative?"

  She smiled and shook her head.

  "But you ought to have told us about it sooner, ... me, at any rate.When did you know the decision of the Board?"

  "Yesterday. Desmond was with me at the time. I didn't write beforethat about things being uncertain, for fear the good old man shouldtake fright and whisk you off home. And I thought that even if Icouldn't square the Board, you'd find waiting out here for me thelesser evil."

  "Very much the lesser evil. What a barbarian people at home wouldthink me if they knew it! And you must go, ... when?"

  "In four or five days; as soon as my leave is sanctioned."

  "And, naturally, I stay here with you till then."

  "Well, ... partially. But when your heavy luggage came yesterday, itse
emed simpler to send it straight to the Desmonds, and that youshould settle in and sleep over there. We're all sitting in oneanother's pockets here, and you and I can be together all day, neverfear. Will that arrangement suit your Royal Highness?"

  "My Royal Highness is as wax in your hands," she answered, with aswift softening of face and voice. "I won't start being autocratictill I get you back again. Only--sit down at once, please. You don'tlook fit to stand."

  He obeyed with unconcealed willingness, at the same time handing her anote.

  "It is from Mrs Desmond. She is expecting you over there thisafternoon."

  Honor looked mutinous.

  "But I want to stay with you. I shall see plenty of Evelyn later."

  "Still, I think we must spare her an hour to-day. The little woman'skeen to see you, and I'd like Desmond to feel that we appreciate hisprompt kindness. He'll be down at the Lines all the afternoon. It'sour day for tent-pegging. You might ride down with Mrs Desmond, andbring me news of what my men are doing. I'm mad at not being able tobe there myself."

  She deserted her breakfast, and knelt down beside him.

  "Dear man! Of course I'll go and find out all about it from CaptainDesmond. I needn't stay long to do that."

  "No. You can say you want to get back to me. Desmond will understand."

  "He's rather a fine fellow, isn't he?"

  "One of the best I know. The last man who ought to be hampered by awoman."

  "I might take that as a dismissal! How about yourself!"

  "Ah, that's quite another matter." And he laid a hand upon the softabundance of her hair. "Mine is only a two years' contract. And, inany case, _I_ would never allow myself to be handicapped by awoman--not even by you. But I don't feel so certain about Desmond."

  "Poor little Evelyn! Do you mean, ... is there any question of herreally hampering him, ... seriously?"

  Meredith hesitated. A half-smile hovered in his tired eyes.

  "As I'm strongly against the whole affair, and have hardly forgivenhim yet for marrying at all, it is fairer for me to say nothing abouther one way or the other. You must judge for yourself."