Devil's Wind (23 page)

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW THE WIND FELL

Dream-shod I wandered forth,

Where all ways meet, But, oh, the ways of the world,

They bruise my feet. The dream wherewith I was shod

Forsakes my need, Barefoot I wander now,

And my feet bleed.

Helen Wilmot was sent down to Allahabad on the first opportunity that offered and there she spent the winter months. In mid-September Delhi fell, and on the 25th, Outram and Havelock entered Lucknow, but that cold weather was one of incessant campaigning.

Lucknow was relieved a second time by Colin Campbell, but he was unable to hold the position, and fell back upon Cawnpore, bringing with him the remnant of the heroic garrison.

It was not until the end of March that the campaigns in Oude came to an end with the final fall of Lucknow. The great wind was failing, slackening, dying. Only here and there it eddied back upon its course, and blew the leaves about. They rustled from the trees, and were crushed into silence beneath the feet of many marching men. Slower, colder, fainter came the breath of the conflict. Then it ceased upon the still air, and there was a great calm. Men fell to counting up the missing and the lost. In the roll of the regiments, how many regiments gone! In the ranks, what gaps! At mess how many missed and seen no more, how many remembered but called no more familiarly by name! In the homes of the English, what desolation of mother, husband, wife, who often did not know what grave, if any, held their dead!

And up and down the villages of Oude—vacant places everywhere—sons, fathers, and husbands, who were wept and prayed for by the dark, patient women, who neither knew nor cared who ruled them, but cared sorely, with grieving loving hearts, because they must miss their men-folk.

The wind had left much desolation behind it.

Captain Morton remained with Havelock's force. Occasionally Helen had a short note from him. He wrote once that he had been wounded in the arm, but that it was nothing. It was from the newspapers that she learned that he had been recommended for the V. C.

Once he inquired whether she wished to go to England, and when she replied that she was teaching the children of a Mrs. Montgomery, and did not wish to make any change for the present, he offered no comment. About a month later, however, Helen received a letter from Floss Monteith, who wrote from Mian Mir:

“Dick says you don't want to go home, and that you are teaching that horrid Montgomery woman's children. If you don't come and join me as soon as ever you can, I will never speak to you again—never! Don't tell me you can possibly like those children, or want to stay with them, snub-nosed creatures with freckles and pigtails—dreadful. And I can offer you Jack with his beautiful Roman nose (it really is, Helen) and Megsie Lizzie. Did I tell you that I was keeping her? There are very few relations, and none of them absolutely yearn to have the darling, so I told John it was the most delightfully easy way of acquiring a daughter that I had ever heard of, and after he had said ‘Now, Floss!' about seven hundred times, he gave in, and we are going to adopt her properly. So there, Miss Helen, there's a bait for you. I know you don't want to see me, I do wish all this muddling sort of fighting would stop. I'm so deadly sick of it all.”

Helen wrote a grateful acceptance, but it was not until the end of April that she was able to join Mrs. Monteith, and proceed with her and the children to Simla.

Megsie Lizzie was very much pleased to see her.

“My papa and my mamma went to Heaven,” she informed Helen. “I went to Simla. I like Simla, and I love Mamsie. I am to live with Mamsie now, and be her little girl. When I am quite grown up, I shall marry Jack, because I do hate sums. Jack does sums as easy as easy. When I marry him, he shall do them all, and my children sha'n't learn any 'rithmetic, except only the boys, because they have to, and they can take after Jack, so as it won't be any trouble to them.”

One day in July, Helen was sitting with the children in a room that looked across a wide valley to a brown and stony hill that was sometimes just brown and covered with stones, and sometimes put on a blue garment of mystery.

The children were supposed to be doing lessons, and Megsie Lizzie's air of detached good temper contrasted strongly with the cross but determined attention with which Jack was attacking a column of figures.

“Megsie Lizzie, you are really not attending at all,” said Helen for the twentieth time.

“No,” said Megsie Lizzie with an indulgent smile.

Mrs. Monteith, sitting in a corner with some needlework, giggled audibly, and Helen looked preternaturally grave.

“But why don't you attend, Meg?” she asked, and Megsie Lizzie nodded wisely.

“Because I've got something much, much more int'resting to think about. Much, much more int'resting, Helen, darling. I am thinking about my dear Captain Dick. Don't you think he is much, much more interesting than sums? Don't you ever think about him, Helen, darling?”

Mrs. Monteith stopped with her needle in the air, and looked wickedly at Helen.

“He is a very interesting person, isn't he, Meg?” she said in a charitable voice that made Helen long to shake her.

“Oh, yes, he is” said Megsie Lizzie with conviction. “When is he coming to see us, darling, darling Helen?”

“You had better ask Mamsie,” said Helen with composure.

“Oh, I expect Helen knows more about it than I do,” said Mrs. Monteith, who had no sense of responsibility—no sense of decency, her husband told her afterwards, when she was relating what had passed. Then she caught up her work and fled, leaving Helen very angry indeed. Even Megsie Lizzie recognised that she had better stop thinking about Captain Dick and attend to her sum for a time. About a week later, Richard Morton, who was back at Urzeepore, setting his district to rights, received a letter from his “affectionate cousin, Floss Monteith.”

“My dear Richard, when are you coming to see us?” she wrote. “I haven't asked you before, I know, but I never expected that to be any obstacle. Perhaps you thought Helen wouldn't be glad to see you! Now I am going to be frightfully indiscreet, and ask you point blank, are you going to marry Helen Wilmot, or are you not? Of course Helen has never said one word, and I don't insult you by imagining you would insult her—no, I've got that into a muddle, but I am sure you know what I mean.

“If you don't want to marry her, there's a delightful Mr. Humphreys up here whom I have been keeping at arm's length, for three months, simply and solely on your account. He's really much nicer than you, and he is in love with Helen. I am simply the most unselfish saint that ever breathed, for what I shall do without her, I can't imagine, but I am not going to have her spending her one and only life in teaching other people's children, even if they are such darlings as Jack and Meg. Did you ever see Helen with a child cuddled up in her arms? It always makes me want to cry.”

Of course there was a postscript—and an important one.

“P.S.—People have begun to talk. I always said they would when they had had a little time to forget the horrors, and really it's no use your being like John and swearing and saying things about people's indecent minds. That is the sort of minds they've got, so it is no good being angry about it that I can see. One can't live on a desert island, and personally I don't want to. A cat of a woman who came to tea yesterday began discoursing to Helen on what a delightfully romantic time she must have had, lost in the jungle with that fascinating Captain Morton. (When did you fascinate Bella Mowbray, Dick? Dreadful person.) Helen was quite equal to the occasion, of course. I saw her gaze earnestly at the viper, and then she said, i Oh, but it is so difficult to feel properly romantic when you are always hungry, and I am sure you wouldn't have thought Richard at all fascinating in a beard.' So you see, Dick, that people are talking. I must go and dress for dinner.

“P.P.S.—Helen may say what she likes about the beard, but I think I do agree with the viper in a way. Don't be angry.”

Richard Morton was very angry indeed. He wrote a letter full of polite fury to Mrs. Monteith, who laughed till she cried over it. Its general tenor may be deduced from her reply, which is short enough to be given in full.

“O Richard,
O mon roi!
What a
crushing
letter. I should be sorry to be a disappointment, but did you really expect me to be crushed? If you did, you must have forgotten what I am like quite dreadfully, and the sooner you take some of the leave they owe you, and come and stay with us, and revive your failing memory, the better. Yours, F. M.”

This time there were three postscripts.

“P.S.—Mr. Humphreys dined here last night. He is a dear.

“P.P.S.—I am writing to take Helen's passage with ours in October. Mr. H. is also taking furlough. He will probably sail on the same boat.

“N.B.—Megsie Lizzie sends her love, but if you want any one else's you will have to come and ask for it.”

Richard frowned, laughed in spite of himself, and frowned again. Then he opened a telegram which informed him that his application for short leave had been granted, and finally he called for Imam Bux, and told him to pack his clothes.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW RICHARD MORTON REPEATED A LESSON

Turn, and return again, return again.

Wind-hush and Sun-burst

Follow after rain.

Every drop on every leaf,

All along the lane,

Has a rainbow of its own

To make the promise plain.

O have done with weeping now,

O have done with pain,

Turn, and turn again, my Heart,

O return again.

At the end of the first week in August, Helen Wilmot was sitting in the small verandah that ran along the western side of the Monteiths' house in Simla. The cliff dropped very sharply, and the verandah was built out over its edge, and supported underneath by rough wooden posts, which were really the trunks of pine trees with the bark left on.

Helen was alone, for the children had gone out with the ayah and bearer, and the Monteiths to tea, a purely duty tea, and sure to be dreadfully dull, as Mrs. Floss had explained with a groan.

Sitting here alone in the afternoon stillness, Helen looked down upon the tops of the tall dark trees that rose below, and across a clear wide stretch of valley to the near and the far-off hills. It had rained until noon, but now there was sunshine everywhere, and the warm air was full of the scent of the pines. Two miles away a huge dark vulture hung motionless, with the sun on his open wings, floating upon the air, as a swimmer floats on the sea.

Helen's eyes had been fixed upon him for ten full minutes, before she saw him stir so much as a feather. Then he turned with an indescribable sliding movement that sent him drifting, without beat of wing, a mile and more down the invisible slopes of the air.

Helen had a book in her lap, but she did not look at it. The day was too beautiful, the book of the colours too radiantly open before her. And the uppermost colour was blue, a still, fine blue that was like an enfolding garment of peace.

The shadows between pine and pine were a very pure deep indigo; the hills were hyacinth-coloured with hollows in them that held a violet mist. Across the farthest, bluest hill of all, a wreath of vapour hung like an opal-tinted garland. Helen watched it rise and change, break into an exquisite wing-like shape, and warm slowly from white to ivory, from ivory to gold, and from gold to a deep and burning rose, as the sun sank, and every cloud and mist-wreath glowed in the slanting rays.

The warm light poured into the verandah. It fell full on Helen, and she lifted her head, and gazed with wide, delighted eyes upon the changing beauty of the hills.

Richard Morton, coming quietly through the house, stood at the open door and looked at her with something of the same expression. It was more than a year since he had seen her, and then she had been worn and weary, and she had walked beside him in rags, with her hair in a rough braid, and a coarse, stained sheet about her tired body.

To-day she wore a dress of white muslin, delicately fresh and spotless. There was a forget-me-not coloured ribbon at her waist, and her black hair was plaited into a crown about her head. Richard remembered suddenly that he had never seen her in colours before; it had always been black or grey. Now he took the blue as a good omen, and he thought that it became her as it never becomes the fair women who invariably affect it.

He stepped out on to the verandah, and as the rough flooring creaked under his tread, Helen said in a startled tone:

“Is it you, Colonel Monteith?”

Richard watched to see if she would turn her head, but instead she leaned her arm upon the railing before her, and he saw it tremble a little as the wide muslin sleeve fell away.

“Did you think it was?” he asked at last in a quiet voice, and still without turning Helen whispered: “No.”

He came forward and sat down in the empty chair on her right. By the time he had settled himself, Helen had moved, and was looking at him. He had changed too. The beard was gone, and the firm lines of chin and lip were visible.

“You startled me so,” she explained. “Floss didn't say—”

“Floss didn't know. That is to say, she asked me to come whenever I could, and I happened to get some leave, and—well, I thought I would just come.”

There was a pause. One of those pauses that are so hard to fill—they occur when there is at once too much or too little to say. Helen began to feel as if she would give the world to be able to run away. She longed for an earthquake, or Floss and the children. Suddenly Richard Morton leaned forward and laid his right hand, palm uppermost, upon her knee.

“Well, Helen,” he said quietly.

Her startled glance went to his face, and found it set and earnest.

“Well, my dear,” he said again, and Helen took a little quick breath and put her hand in his.

He let it lie there, and felt it quiver, but he did not close his own.

“Have you thought it well over?” he asked. “Floss said there was some one else. That was why I came up. You might do better with a better fellow. I made a bad failure, Helen. If I had been a different sort of man—”

Helen lifted beseeching eyes. She could neither speak to accuse Adela, nor bear to listen whilst he accused himself.

Richard Morton smiled a little bitterly in answer to her look.

“I've got to say it—this once at least,” he said. “You must face it, Helen. I was a bad husband—jealous, impatient. I expected her always to think as I did, see things as I did. I forgot how young she was. I want you to realise it.”

Helen looked down at her hand lying in his.

“Please—please,” she said very low, “I can't say anything. You know I can't, but when you say those things to me, you break my heart—you do indeed.”

“Do I?”

His eyes dwelt on her.

“You know that you do.”

“You would do better to give the heart to some one who would not break it, Helen,” he said.

Helen flung up her head, and looked at him, an infinite pride behind the blinding tears.

“It is yours; you know that it is yours. If you want to break it. It is for you, not for any one else.”

His hand closed hard on hers.

“Do you love me like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And how do I love you?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't you?”

Helen's eyes fell, her lips trembled into a smile.

“You haven't said that you love me at all. You only said that you were going to break my heart. I don't quite know why, or whether you thought that was a sort of—of equivalent for the things that people generally say.”

Richard Morton leaned a little nearer.

She could see that his lips were not quite steady.

“What must I say? What do—people—generally say?”

“They say—‘I love you.'”

“That is not very hard, Helen. I love you.”

“Very—much—indeed.”

Her voice shook more and more.

Something was coming closer, something that she was afraid of.

“Yes—dear.”

“Dick!”

She threw him a misty, imploring look, and suddenly he let go her hand, and put both his arms about her.

“Helen—Helen—Helen.”

He was on his knees beside her, clasping her, and each time he said her name, it came with the sound of a sob. This was the tide whose rising they had dreaded. They had drawn back before it, but now the wave of feeling which came upon them was no more to be withstood. The rush of it took their breath. Life with its power, love with its passion, death that must come, the last hour whose shadow touches the first and every hour of love, the light of joy unbearable and the shadow of an inalienable regret. These things were mingled in a flood that submerged all conscious thought, leaving only the instinct to cling—to hold together. Of the two Helen was the calmer. Dick's tears upon her face, Dick's hard-drawn breaths, wrought her to a pure passion of comforting love. Her lips opened in soft words of tenderness and closed in kisses softer still. The words half breathed, half articulated, the kisses like those with which a mother comforts her hurt child. They were the dearest things that Richard Morton had ever known. He put his face down in her hands, and kissed them, over and over again. Then he looked up with only one word to say:

“Mine.”

“Yes,” said Helen tremulously, and then they were quite silent.

All the west was full of gold and the smoke of gold. Here it was still, but far away a wind, which they neither felt nor heard, drove the dark cloud-vapour hither and thither amongst the sunset fires. Black drifting spirals rose and fell, the dusk closed in, and suddenly, very suddenly, it was dark. The hills, monster shadows, the vast sweep of the horizon colourless, the night unlit, except where one star hung like a point of white-hot flame above the burned-out sunset.