CHAPTER XXI.
I AM YOURS
"I knew thee strong and quiet – like the hills;
I knew thee apt to pity, brave to endure."
– R. L. S.
Paul Wyndham's hopes were on the ascendant at last. After a full year of waiting, he saw himself drawing steadily nearer to his hour of reward.
He studied Honor Meredith as a man only studies that on which his life's happiness depends; and during the past few weeks he had become aware of a mysterious change in the girl's bearing. Her beauty – which had seemed to him so complete – was now unmistakably enhanced by some transformation within. Her whole nature seemed to have become more highly sensitised. Her colour came and went upon the least provocation; her frank friendliness was veiled by a shy reserve, that had in it no hint of coldness; and, more significant than all, her eyes no longer met his own with that disconcerting directness of gaze which had sealed his lips when they were upon the verge of speech.
For all his modesty, Wyndham could not fail to interpret these signs according to his heart's desire; and when, on the night of Evelyn's accident, Honor promised him an early ride, prefaced by chota hazri26 in the verandah, he told himself that he need wait no longer – that the great moment of his life had come at last.
On the stroke of seven he mounted the verandah steps. A camp table, set with fruit, freshly made toast, and a tea-tray, awaited him in a shadowed corner. Two thick bamboo blinds, let down between the wide arches, converted that end of the verandah into a room, its low-toned coolness broken only by an arrow of sunlight, shooting through a gap in one of the blinds, like a streak of powdered gold. Wyndham's eyes lingered approvingly on every detail of the homely scene; and he caught himself wondering what his sensations would be half an hour hence; what words he should speak to her when the dreaded, longed-for moment arrived.
A light footstep reached his ears; and he turned sharply round to find her standing in the open doorway.
She did not come forward at once, nor did she speak. For the man's face was transfigured. She beheld, in that instant, his unveiled heart and spirit – foresaw the ordeal that awaited her.
Noting her hesitation, he came forward with unconcealed eagerness.
"Good morning," she murmured mechanically. There seemed nothing else that could be said.
Then a wave of colour surged into her face; for he kept the hand she gave him, and drew her towards the privacy of the tea-table. She would have sacrificed much at that moment for the power to speak to prevent the pain she was bound to inflict; but her heart seemed to be beating in her throat; and she endured, as best she might, the controlled intensity of his look and tone.
"You know – surely you know what I find it so hard to say – I love you, – Honor, with all there is of me. I want you – God knows how I want you! And – you – ?"
He bent his head to receive the answer that need not be spoken in words. But all vestige of colour was gone from her face, and the unsteadiness of her beautiful mouth cut him to the heart.
"Oh, forgive me!" she pleaded. "I have been thoughtless, selfish, – blind. But you seemed so entirely my friend – I did not guess. I would have given the world to have spared you —this."
He straightened himself like a man under the lash; but he did not relinquish her hand.
"I can't let you reproach yourself," he said quietly, "because I misunderstood signs that seemed to tell me your heart was awake at last. But now – now you know how it is with me, at least you will let me hope – ?"
"I wish I might," she answered, so low that he could scarcely hear. "But – it's impossible!"
"Am I so entirely unworthy – unlovable?"
"No, oh no. It is not that."
"D'you mean – I was not mistaken. Is there – any one else?"
"Yes."
It was impossible to lie to him, and the blood rushed back into her face at the confession.
"Is he here?" Paul demanded, with sudden energy.
"You mustn't ask any questions about – him – about it, please."
"Only this one. Shall you – marry him?"
"No. Never."
Sheer incredulity held him silent; and when he spoke there was rebellion in his tone.
"Your life and my own are to remain broken, unfulfilled, because of – this incomprehensible thing?"
"There is nothing else possible."
He relinquished her hand at that, giving it back to her, as it were, with a quiet finality of renunciation that shattered her self-control. She sank into a chair and hid her face in a vain attempt to conceal the tears that came in spite of herself.
He stood beside her for several seconds in a heart-broken silence; then gently touched her arm.
"Honor – Honor, is it really so impossible – as you think? I tell you plainly I can't understand – "
She uncovered her face and looked up at him.
"Can any one ever understand – this sort of thing? Isn't it a force outside the control of reason, of even the strongest will?"
"You are right," he answered gravely; and sitting down leaned towards her, his elbows on the table. "But there remains the fact that sooner than lose you outright, I am willing to marry you – on any terms. If you have no hope for yourself, could you not bring yourself to partially fulfil mine? Will you – in mercy to me – reconsider your decision?"
She looked up quickly with parted lips; but his raised hand enjoined silence.
"My suggestion deserves thinking over for a few minutes, if no longer. And in the meanwhile – " he smiled with a touch of his old humorous resignation to things in general – "we might do worse than have some chota hazri. What a brute I was to upset you before you had had a morsel to eat!"
She shook her head, with a faint reflection of his smile.
"I don't want anything to eat."
"Oh yes, you do! I suppose I must set you an example of common-sense behaviour."
He peeled two bananas with deliberate care, and set one on her plate. Then he lifted the cosy.
"That tea must be strong by this time; but the water's hot, and you can doctor it with that. Now – begin."
He himself began upon his banana, and she glanced at him in astonishment, not untinged with admiration, at his effortless transition from controlled passion to the commonplaces of everyday life. They got through the short meal after a fashion; and both were devoutly thankful when the demands of common-sense had been fulfilled.
Wyndham rose, and lit a cigarette.
"Now, I'll leave you to yourself for five minutes," he announced. "It is getting late. But before we go for our ride this matter must be settled once for all." He laid both hands on the table and looked steadily into her face. "You are the most just-minded woman I know. Look all round the question before you decide. Try to realise a little what it will mean for me to give up all hope. In losing you, I lose everything. There can be no question of any one else for me. Take me or – leave me, I am yours for the rest of my life."
He turned away to save her from the necessity of answering, and walked to the far end of the verandah, leaving her alone with the strongest temptation she had yet experienced – the temptation to trample on her own imperious love, and to accept this man's selfless devotion in the hope that it might one day conquer and monopolise her heart.
Had marriage with Wyndham entailed immediate removal from the atmosphere of Theo Desmond, hesitancy might have ended in capitulation. But life-long intimacy with him, as the wife of his closest friend, was unthinkable for a moment; and if by the wildest possibility Paul should ever suspect the truth – !
She shuddered and glanced in his direction.
"Major Wyndham," she said softly.
He hastened back to her at once. But one look at her face sufficed. The eagerness faded from his eyes, leaving them cold as a winter sky after sunset.
"It was wrong of me to keep you in suspense even for a few minutes," she said, her gaze riveted on the table. "Please forgive me that I am driven to hurt you so, and please believe that I do realise what I am losing – "
"The loss is – not yours," he said on a note of restrained quietness: and in the stillness that ensued, the impatient horses could be heard champing their bits.
He sank into his chair with a gesture of unfeigned weariness; and she glanced at his face. Its mingled pain and patience pierced her heart. But when at last he spoke, his voice was natural and controlled.
"I have only one word more to say. I confess I have not the courage to let you go altogether out of my life. Since nothing else is possible, will you at least accept me as your permanent and – devoted friend?"
She turned upon him in frank surprise.
"Do you mean that – really? Can you do it? Men always say – "
He smiled a trifle bitterly.
"Do they? No doubt they are right – for themselves. But I know I have the strength to accept what I ask, or I would not dare ask it. You won't refuse me that much, will you – Honor?"
"No, indeed, no," she answered, greatly moved. "I can deny you nothing that I am not forced to deny you – Paul."
"Ah, there is no woman in the world to compare with you! Let me say it this once, as I may never tell you so again."
He rose in speaking, braced his shoulders, and stood looking down upon her, a strangely glad light in his eyes.
"I have not lost you, after all," he said.
She rose also, and gave him both her hands. "No. You have gained me – for good. I – care now ever so much more than I did when I came out to you this morning."
"You do?"
"Yes – I do."
He drew her towards him. "Promise me this much," he said, "that if you should ever find it possible to – marry me on any conditions – even the hardest – you will tell me so at once, because after this morning I shall never open my lips on the subject again."
"I promise. Only – you must not let yourself hope."
He sighed. "Very well, I will shut out hope, since you command it. But I shall still have love and faith to live upon. You cannot deprive me of those – Honor. Now shall we go for our ride? Or would you rather go in and rest after all this?"
"No. We will have our ride. I can rest later if I need it."
"Let me put you up then. Come."
And she came without a word.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CHEAPER MAN
"No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulæ the text-books show,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow:
Strike hard, who cares – shoot straight, who can;
The odds are on the cheaper man!"
– Rudyard Kipling: Arithmetic on the Frontier.
The second week in March found the little force from Kohat still skirmishing energetically through a network of ravines, nullahs, and jagged red hills; still dealing out rough justice to unrepentant Afridis in accordance with instructions from headquarters; or as nearly in accordance with them as Colonel Buchanan's pronounced views on the ethics of warfare would permit. For Buchanan was a just man of independent character, a type not ostentatiously beloved by heads of departments. He had a reprehensible trick of thinking for himself and acting accordingly – a habit liable to create havoc among the card-houses of officialdom; and like all soldiers of the first grade, he was resolute against the cowardly method of striking at the guilty through the innocent; resolute in limiting the evils of war to its authors and active abettors.
He had taken full advantage of his temporary rank to run the expedition on his own lines; and although his instructions included the burning of crops, he had kept rigid control over this part of the programme; giving officers and men free scope for activity in the demolishing of armed forts and towers, and in skirmishes with the wild tribes who harried their transport trains, rushed their pickets, sent playful bullets whizzing through the mess-tent at night, and generally enjoyed themselves after the rough and ready fashion of the hillsman across the Border.
The Afridis in truth were merely tired of behaving like good children. The unstained knives at their belts cried shame on them for their prolonged abstinence from the legitimate joys of manhood; – the music of bullets whistling down a gorge, the yielding of an enemy's flesh under the knife.
Therefore, when Colonel Buchanan and his little force started punitive operations, they were met by a surprisingly concerted and spirited resistance. The cunning tribesmen, having got what they wanted in the shape of excitement, were determined to make the most of it. Thus, the expedition had flared up into one of those minor guerilla campaigns which have cost England more, in the lives of picked officers, than she is ever likely to calculate; being, for the most part, careful and troubled about weightier matters.
The sweeping movement, organised to include all villages implicated in the raid, took longer than had been anticipated. The demolishing of Afridi watch-towers, manned by the finest natural marksmen in the world, and built on bases proof against everything but gunpowder, is no child's play; and at almost every village on the line of route the troops had found their work cut out for them. That they carried it out gallantly and effectively need hardly be said, since we are dealing with the pick of India's soldiers, the Punjab Frontier Force.
Their daily march led them along broken tracks or boulder-strewn beds of torrents, winding through a land where "the face of God is a rock"; – a land feigning death, yet alive with hidden foes who announced their presence from time to time by the snick of a breech-bolt, the whing of a bullet, or a concerted rush upon the rear-guard from some conveniently narrow ravine.
Little interruptions of this sort helped to keep all ranks on the alert, and to make things cheerful generally; but they also took up time. And although the middle of March found them back within twenty-one miles of Kohat, there seemed little hope of quieting the country under another week or two at least.
On the evening of the 16th, after two days of skirmishing and a broken night under the stars, imperative need of water compelled them to encamp at the open end of a valley whose enclosing heights narrowed abruptly to the northward into an ugly-looking gorge.
Tents sprang up right and left; lines for horses and mules established themselves in less time than it would take the uninitiated to see where and how the thing could be done; and that eighth wonder of the world, the native cook, achieved a four-course dinner with a mud oven, army rations, a small supply of looted fowls, and a large supply of ingenuity. A party of cavalry, having reconnoitred the ravines branching off into higher hills, reported no signs of the enemy. A cordon of sentries was told off for duty; and the posting of strong pickets on the near hill-tops, and in the neighbourhood of the camp itself, completed the night's arrangements. Clanking of accoutrements, jangle of harness, and all the subdued hum of human life, died away into stillness; lights dropped out one by one; and the valley was given over to silence and a multitude of stars.
Touched into silver here and there by the ethereal radiance – for starshine is a reality in India – the scene presented a Dantesque mingling of beauty and terror, – the twin elements of life, which are "only one, not two."
At a little distance behind the clustering tents the ground sloped boldly upward to summits dark with patches of stunted forest; and beyond these again the snow-peaks of the Safed Koh mountains stood dreaming to the stars. Lower down, at rare intervals, dwarf oaks and the "low lean thorn" of the desert stood out, black and spectral, against the lesser darkness of rocks and stones. In the valley itself the stones had it all their own way; – a ghostly company, rounded and polished by the stream, which crept among them now a mere ribbon of silver, but in four months' time would come thundering through the gorge in a garment of foam, with the shout of a wild thing loosed from bondage. The triumph of desolation was reached in the savage peaks that almost fronted the camp and descended to the valley in a cataract of crags. Here even the persevering thorn-bush could take no hold upon a surface of bare rock, split up into clefts, and chiselled to such fantastic shapes that the whole might have inspired Dante's conception of the ravine by which he descended to the nether hell.
Absorbed in the requirements of earth, and untroubled by ghostly imaginings, officers and men slept soundly, with one eye open, as soldiers experienced in Frontier warfare learn to do; and when at last the earth, turning in its sleep, swung round towards the sun and the still air quivered with foreknowledge of morning, a sudden outcropping of life, where no life should be, amply justified the need for vigilance.
From the darkness of a ravine some distance above the camp, a shadowy mass of figures poured hurriedly, stealthily, into the valley – men of splendid physique, in loose dark draperies or sheepskin coats, carrying leathern shields and the formidable Afridi knife, bone-handled, with a two-foot blade that will halve a man's head as if it were a lemon.
By a preconcerted arrangement they divided into two parties, and keeping within the deepest patches of shadow, bore down upon the nearest pickets with a fierce, soundless rush, – the most disconcerting form of attack to sleepy sentries in the small hours, when life and courage are at their lowest ebb. But the picket sentries happened to be Sikhs; and they are ill men to tackle at close quarters or to spring on unawares.
Close upon the first determined rush came a scuffle, a smothered shout, the sharp crack of rifles in quick succession; and before the hills had flung back the volley of sound, the whole camp hummed with life from end to end, like a broken ant-heap.
A fusilade of shots rang out on all sides. Men hurried about among the tents, concentrating at the two points of attack. Here and there, amid the puffs of smoke that rose and vanished in the blue, a lifted sword or sabre gleamed like a flash of light.
A number of Afridis forced their way into the camp, lunging at every tent-rope within reach of their long knives, and in the dim light it was not easy to distinguish friend from foe. But the first sharp shock of encounter past, it became evident that the troops were getting the best of the affair; and the Afridis, whose valour is not always tempered with discretion, saw fit to beat a rapid retreat up the valley, hoping to reach the ravine before the cavalry started in pursuit.
The men in camp, meanwhile, had leisure to breathe freely, after their rough awakening; to look about and recognise one another, and exchange cheerful congratulations on the resolute stand made by the Sikhs.
"That you, Desmond?"
The Colonel's voice greeted Desmond as he emerged from his tent where his servant had been pressing on him a half-cold cup of cocoa; and the two men faced each other, bareheaded, in shirt and breeches, unmistakable stains upon their naked blades.
"The Ressaldar's falling in your squadron," Buchanan said briskly. "Lose no time, and follow 'em up like hell. They'll break away into the hills, of course. But the chances are they'll concentrate again in the gorge and try to catch the main body as it passes through. So if they give you the slip now, ride straight on and secure the defile for us. I'll send out a detachment of infantry at the double to crown the heights; and I can safely leave all minor details to your discretion."
"Thank you, sir." And Desmond departed to carry out his orders with high elation at his heart.
There is no compliment a soldier appreciates more keenly than one which takes the practical form of leaving details to his own discretion; and, coming from Buchanan, it was doubly acceptable. For, in Desmond's opinion, there were few men in the world like the Colonel, hard and uncommunicative as he was; and it never occurred to him that his strong, unspoken admiration was returned with interest by the reserve-ridden Scot.
During the next fifteen minutes he fully justified his sobriquet of "Bijli-wallah Sahib." Before the Afridis were out of sight a hundred and sixty sabres, headed by himself and Denvil, dashed along the rugged pathway in gallant style, the men leaning well forward, and urging their horses to break-neck speed. But the enemy were well ahead from the start, and in any case, they had the advantage on their own rough soil. The squadron overtook them – breathless and eager – just as the final stragglers plunged into a lateral cleft, which would hold the darkness for another half-hour at least.
Further pursuit was out of the question; and, by way of consolation, the foremost sowars were ordered to dismount and open rapid fire in the direction of the fugitives. Groans, curses, and the thud of falling bodies testified to its effect; and with laconic murmurs of satisfaction the men remounted, and rode on up the rapidly narrowing gorge.
By now, along the silver snows to eastward, the great change had begun. The sky was blue above them; and the last of the stars had melted in the onrushing tide of light, which had already awakened the sandstone peaks to the warm hue of life.
The party mounted the ascent at a foot's pace to ease their horses; and Desmond's eyes and mind, being as it were "off duty," turned thoughtfully upon the Boy who rode at his side, a very incarnation of good health and good spirits. It seemed that the outcome of his critical inspection was approval, for it ended in a nod that confirmed some pleasant inward assurance. During the past few weeks Denvil had proved himself thoroughly "up to the mark"; – hot-headed but reliable; square and upright in mind as in body; a fine soldier in the making. He had not yet arrived at the older man's keen mental interest in his profession; but closer intimacy with Desmond had kindled in him an answering spark of that idealism, that unswerving subordination of self to duty which justifies and ennobles the great game of war. He coveted action, risk, responsibility – three things which the Staff Corps subaltern, especially on the Frontier, tastes earlier than most men; and which go far to make him one of the straightest specimens of manhood in the world. In Denvil's eyes the whole expedition was one tremendous spree, which he was enjoying to the top of his bent; and Desmond, remembering the good years of his own apprenticeship, could gauge the measure of that enjoyment to the full. He felt justified in expecting great things of the Boy, and decided to work him hard all through the hot weather; – in his eyes the highest compliment a man could pay to a promising junior.
"By the way, Harry," he said suddenly, as the defile, deep-sunken between towering rock, loomed darkly into view, "I've got a word of encouragement for you before we part company. You did an uncommonly gallant bit of work in that skirmish yesterday. The Colonel spoke of it; and congratulated me on having the smartest subaltern in the regiment. Of course I've known it myself this long while; and I don't think it will hurt you to know it too."
Denvil flushed hotly through his tan.
"I should be rather a poor sort of chap if I didn't manage to do pretty well – under you," he said, with awkward bluntness, looking straight between his charger's ears.
Desmond laughed. "Very neatly turned off, old chap. Now, I'm bound to call a halt till the Sikhs come up with us. Hope to goodness they'll be quick about it. Confounded nuisance having to wait."
Both men reined in their horses, and their consuming impatience. The squadron followed suit; and in an amazingly short time the Sikhs came into view, toiling lustily up the incline at their utmost speed.
Desmond turned in his saddle and raked the hillsides with his field-glasses.
"Looks empty enough, in all conscience," he remarked.
The words were hardly spoken when a single shot startled the echoes of the rocks, and instant alertness passed like an electric current through the squadron. The advance guard, which had already entered the defile, consisted of three promising young Pathans from Denvil's troop; and anxiety for the fate of his favourites pricked the Boy to keener impatience.
"I say, Desmond," he urged, "can't I take twenty men and push on to find out what's up. They'll be taking pot-shots at my men, unless I put a stop to it. For God's sake, let me go."
Desmond could not repress an approving smile at an impetuosity that matched his own. He glanced down the valley at the advancing Sikhs, and saw that he would not be long delayed in following on. Moreover, he shared the Boy's anxiety for his three picked men; and a shot fired, being tantamount to a declaration of hostilities, justified immediate advance to the scene of action.
"Go ahead then," he said. "Advance warily; and good luck to you."
The Boy needed no second bidding. Eagerly, yet with all due precautions, he went forward with his handful of Pathans; and was soon lost to sight and sound in the darkness of the giant cleft.
Desmond, left alone, could hardly contain himself till the infantry came up. Dividing into two flanking parties, they scrambled up the steep slopes into the full radiance of dawn; while Desmond, with his squadron ready drawn up, awaited the signal, "All's clear," before entering the defile.
In due time it came; and they moved on between the frowning cliffs at a pace as rapid as the exigencies of the situation would permit.
Here night fronted them, dank and chill. It was as if the clock had been put back four hours. Only a jagged strip of sky, between projecting crags, announced the advent of day. No living thing seemed to inhabit this region of perpetual twilight. At intervals a gnarled and twisted bush grew out of a cleft, lifting spectral foliage toward where the sun should be, and was not. Silence pervaded the dusk like a living presence; unseen, but so poignantly felt that the whisper of the stream and the crunch of shingle under the horses' hoofs seemed an affront to the ghostly spirit of the place; and the sowars, when exchanging remarks among themselves, instinctively refrained from raising their voices.
Desmond, closely followed by his trumpeter, rode ahead of the troopers, chafing at their leaden-footed progress. A hand-gallop would have been too slow for the speed of his thoughts, tormented as he was by anxious wondering what had become of the Boy; while his ears were strained to catch the first sounds of contest from the heights, which were already widening out a little, and beginning to slope towards lower ground.
Sounds came at length – harsh and startling; – the unmistakable note of the jezail; answering shots from his own men; – proofs incontestable that a sharp engagement was in progress up above.
"Ambuscaded, – by Heaven!" was Desmond's instant thought. Mercifully the exit was already in sight; and flinging brisk instructions to the Ressaldar to follow him closely with a hundred sowars, leaving the remainder to take charge of the horses, and hold the opening till further orders, Desmond made for it full tilt, spurring Badshah Pasand as he had never been spurred in all his days. On dashing out into the sunlight he was greeted by a rattle of musketry from behind a tumbled mass of rock; and a dozen bullets buzzed about him like bees.
One riddled his helmet, stirring his hair as it passed. A second struck his left shoulder, inflicting a flesh wound of which he was not even conscious at the moment; for Badshah Pasand lunged ominously forward; swayed, staggered; and with a sound between a cough and a groan, fell headlong, flinging his rider clear on to the rough upward slope.
Luckily for him, Desmond pitched on to his sound shoulder; and though bruised and shaken, was none the worse for his fall. The foremost of his men dismounted and opened fire upon the treacherous rock, without eliciting response; and quick as lightning he sprang to his feet, mad with rage and pain. A single glance showed him that his charger's wounds were mortal. Two well-directed bullets had entered the chest; and the great soft eyes were glazing fast.
With a swift contraction of the heart, Desmond turned away, and issued hurried orders for a hundred men to dismount and take the hill at full speed. Half a dozen of Denvil's Pathans – left in charge of the discarded horses – gave information that the Sahib had taken his sowars up some time before, commanding them to await his return.
Distracted by anxiety, Desmond awaited the dismounting of his troopers, revolver in hand. The instant they were ready he bounded over the broken ground, his trumpeter dogging him like a shadow, and a self-imposed bodyguard of six sowars following close upon his heel. Behind these again the mountain-side was alive with clambering men; and the small party left below enviously watched their ascent.
Only by the impetus of his spirit did Desmond manage to keep ahead of his men; for in general the native outstrips the Englishman in this form of mountaineering. One thought hammering at his brain goaded him to superhuman exertion: "Those devils shall not murder Harry before I reach him."
Breathless and resolute, he hurried on, stumbling now and again from sheer excess of haste, clenching his teeth to keep the curses back. A dull stain spread slowly across his left shoulder, where the blood was soaking through his khaki coat.
The slope ended in a twenty-foot wall of rocks, massed so as to form huge irregular steps, that led to an abrupt bit of level, whereon the fighting appeared to be taking place. Sounds came to him now that lashed him to a frenzy; the clash of knives and sabres, the thud of many feet; the fierce shouts without which it is impossible for primitive man to slay or be slain.
Desmond never quite knew how he climbed those formidable steps; and as he vaulted up the last of them, the whole dread scene sprang abruptly into view.
Denvil and his fifteen Pathans had been ambuscaded and outnumbered; and in the cramped space a sharp hand-to-hand encounter was in progress. A small party of Sikhs had already come up with him; but even so the odds were heavily on the wrong side. It was simply a case of "dying game"; – of adding one more to the list of "regrettable incidents" which figure too frequently in the record of Border warfare.