Devil's Wind (24 page)

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SHADOW

My Love, he took me by the hand, and kissed my soul away,

We two will love past Death and Fate, past Life and Time, he swore.

I gave him all I had to give for ever and a day;

We did not hear the foot of Change that halted at the door,

We did not see the shadows fall across the shining floor.

We had sweet laughter in our ears, sweet music on our tongue,

How should we hear the footfall, or see the shadow rise?

We could not hear the foot of Change with half our songs unsung,

We could not see the shadow for the sunlight in our eyes,

We were too strong to be afraid, too merry to be wise.

One day in December Helen Morton was reading her English mail which had just come in. She sat on the arm of her husband's office-chair to do so, and strewed odd sheets of paper here and there upon his office-table. The long, full skirt of her dark green riding-habit swept the floor, and a wide dark green hat hung from the corner of the bookcase against the wall.

Richard was trying to write. Every now and then he observed patiently:

“My dear child, how can I work?”

“I don't want you to work,” said Helen in reply.

“Women have no conscience—absolutely none—about a man's work. It's queer too, for they allow it to become a perfect disease over other much less important things. Helen, do be quiet. I do not want to hear what your Aunt Harriet says.”

“It's all about Hetty's new baby,” said Helen, gurgling with laughter. “It is very improving indeed, Dick, and I think it will be so good for you. Aunt Harriet is a most improving person, and so is Hetty, and so is Hetty's boy, and so is Hetty's baby. They simply overflow with moral instruction. This new baby is a pattern for infants. So is little Alfred a model for all children of eighteen months. Aunt Harriet says so much about their virtues that I am sure they must be distressingly plain. Dick, you shall listen. I always have to read Aunt Harriet's letters right through in case a crumb of real news should have got in by accident amongst the moral maxims, and I simply won't suffer alone—you have got to attend. Listen to this. ‘If all Mothers' (with a capital M) ‘were as wise as Hetty, we should hear less about wakeful nights with teething infants. Hetty has always' (underlined)—where was I? Oh!—‘Hetty has always made a point of—' Dick, you are not listening.”

“No, darling,” said Richard, grinning.

Helen rumpled his hair.

“Alfred has six teeth,” she said, bubbling over. “He grows more like his father every day, and he has hair that inclines to be auburn. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I think I will save up the other two sheets until bedtime. I shall make you attend then, and there are some perfectly thrilling pieces about Hetty's management of the baby.”

“Really,” murmured Richard.

Helen laid Mrs. Middleton's letter down on the top of an official blue-book, and opened another.

“The lamb,” she exclaimed, after a moment, in a tender, laughing voice, and Richard groaned, put his arm about her waist, and kissed her with the air of a martyr.

“Are you calling me these nice names, wretch,” he inquired.

“Not this time, darling. Oh, Dick, don't be so foolish. You are much, much more like a bear than a lamb. It is Megsie Lizzie who is a lamb. Just listen to her letter. She is so proud of being able to write better than Jack, though he does beat her at sums. Now listen.

“‘Darlingest, Belovedest, Angelest, and most Beautifulest, And most Precious Helen Lady, —

“‘I love you so that I can hardly bare to lose sight of you, And you are so ‘Precious,' And you are so ‘Tender' that even a ‘Fly' I will not allow settle itself down on you. And all the toys, And all the ‘Dollies' even down to the books send their love.

“From “‘Megsie Lizzie.'”

“Good heavens!” said Dick, laughing. “How on earth am I to compete with remarks of this impassioned nature?”

“Isn't she sweet?”

Helen gave a little sigh.

“You dear,” said Richard. He leaned his head against her, and looked up half-mischievously.

“What was that sigh for? Do you covet Megsie Lizzie? I believe you do? I believe I should be jealous. Don't use up all your love upon other people's children, Helen lady. Keep a little for—ours. Shall we call her Meg, if she is a girl. I believe you want a girl.”

Helen put her hand quickly over her eyes. It was the instinctive action of one who sees so bright a light that it is almost unbearable.

“Don't, Dick,” she said in a very shaky voice. “It is too much—too much—happiness. I am afraid of it. We are too happy.”

He put his arms round her and held her tight.

“Dear goose,” he said, “shall I beat you, or make love to some one else? Would that make you more comfortable in your darling, foolish mind? This is the ‘happy ever after' part of the story. What are you afraid of?”

“I don't know,” said Helen, laughing. “Oh, Dick, my hair—I shall have to do it again. Captain Carlton is such a perfectly neat and proper person, that I couldn't possibly go out riding with him unless I were perfectly neat and proper too, and the horses will be round in a minute. Are you ready?”

“Have you given me a chance?” said Richard. “No, seriously, you will have to go without me to-day, I can't spare the time. Look at this pile of papers. The people at headquarters are possessed by a positively indecent spirit of curiosity at present. They want to know everything that has happened in the Urzeepore district, from the Flood downwards, and by the time I have collected information as to the grandfathers and grandmothers of all my villagers, I shall get back an official request for the names, ages, sexes, and pedigrees of the grandmothers' cats. And if I don't answer all the questions very nicely, they won't make me a Commissioner.”

“Oh, Dick, have you heard anything?”

“A line from Hazelton—private, of course. He says they will give me the next district that is going. Shall you like to be Mrs. Commissioner and Lady Morton by and by?”

“I'd like you to be Sir Richard,” said Helen, and her eyes shone. Then she put one arm round his neck and whispered:

“Don't be too ambitious, Dick.” “Why not, child? It is all for you.” “And I don't care—not a bit, except for you. I should be just as happy, and just as proud of you, if you were a stone-breaker, and I had to bring you your dinner in a red-spotted cotton handkerchief every day at twelve o'clock, and you beat me on Saturday nights when you brought the wages home.”

“Or you beat me, when I didn't bring' em—eh? Undiscriminating young female. I'd much rather not break stones if you don't mind. Do go away, Helen. I shall never get done.”

“You are sure you can't come out?”

“Quite sure, my child. Run away, and tidy yourself and have a nice ride!”

“Really, Dick, I'm not ten years old!”

“Then you shouldn't have your hair hanging down. It misleads people. Give me a kiss and fly.”

She bent over to kiss him, and her eye was caught by a line in the letter he had been writing.

“Dick, I couldn't help seeing,” she said in a startled voice.

“What?”

“Your letter. Why do you say—‘I have received no reliable intelligence of the presence of any white woman in this district'?”

Richard hesitated.

“I am sorry you saw it, dear,” he said. “They have got an idea. There have been rumours—you know they have never stopped trying to trace Miss Wheeler.”

“Dick, I thought she was dead. I thought they were sure of it now.”

Helen's voice was low and horrified.

“No, they are not sure,” said Richard Morton.

“Oh, Dick—how—how dreadful!”

He put his arm round her.

“All this time,” said Helen faintly.

Then after a pause she asked:

“Have they heard of her, of any one, near here?”

“There have been continual rumours, first from one part of Oude, then from another. Child, don't look like that. I don't believe in the tales myself, and—even if they were true, in the present state of the country, no one would dare to keep her against her will.”

Helen exclaimed sharply:

“She couldn't! Oh, Dick!”

Richard Morton spoke in a hard, unwilling voice.

“Helen, you must realise there was only one condition under which any woman could have saved herself from the Cawnpore Massacre. If she had accepted a native husband—if there were a child—what would she, what could she ask, but to be left alone, to be thought dead? What could be more horribly cruel than to drag her back to publicity—gossip—all the newspapers ringing with her story?”

He broke off in strong distaste, and Helen shuddered.

“If it had been I—” she whispered against his cheek, and felt his grasp tighten until it hurt her.

“Don't talk nonsense,” he commanded roughly. “It could never have been you. There was always a choice—always death.” After a moment he got up, and pulled her to her feet.

“Helen, you are a morbid goose,” he said resolutely. “Go and tidy yourself. Freddy wouldn't be seen with you as you are. Be off, and please don't come back until I have got through with this pile of papers. There. Are you good?”

“Moderately,” said Helen with a shaky smile. Then she ran away to her room.

When she came out upon the verandah in five minutes' time, Freddy Carlton was waiting for her, very spick and span. He had not altered at all since he and Richard had talked together on the night of Hetty Lavington's ball. He had kept his air of cheerful irresponsibility, just as he had kept his freckles, his sandy hair, and his affection for Richard Morton. Now he found himself extending this affection to Richard's wife.

They rode away, and Helen exclaimed at the sharpness of the air. Urzeepore in December could be cold, and she was glad of her thick cloth habit. They cantered, to warm themselves, and presently, when they drew rein again, Freddy's talk was of Dick and the good times they had had together.

Helen found this very pleasant. Her heart warmed to dapper little Freddy, and she beamed on him in a sisterly manner which he thought highly agreeable.

After they had skirted the cantonment, they turned back, and followed the high-road which ran past the native city.

The road was bordered by dark tamarisk trees and straggling mimosa bushes, bloomless now. In another month or six weeks, the highways and the crossways would be full of the clinging scent of the clustered yellow blossoms.

To and fro in the dust went the country people, and Helen stopped talking to watch them as they passed—men with dark blankets over their heads, and women lightly veiled, with a barefoot child at their swinging skirts.

A group of very brightly-dressed women went by chattering. They were bold and handsome of face, and not too closely veiled for the fact to be evident. They wore tight bodices and embroidered jackets and gowns of red and green kharua cloth. One or two had a very high wooden horn on the head, over which the cloth veil fell down in heavy, graceful folds. All were festooned with innumerable beads, cowries, tassels, and brightly-coloured cords, and their arms were covered with bangles made of horn or brass. Every brown finger had its ring of silver, brass, or lead.

“Who are these?” asked Helen.

Freddy Carlton settled his glass into his eye, peered at them, and answered:

“Banjaras; sort of gipsies. Fine, big, upstanding women, aren't they, Mrs. Morton? They beat their husbands, I'm told. Regular amazons according to Smith-Bullton, who is my authority.”

Behind the Banjara women a palanquin was jogging along very slowly. There was a little wind abroad, and it stirred up the dust, and blew it about. Freddy Carlton contemplated it with disfavour.

“We can strike off here, and get out of the crowd,” he said, and turned his horse, Helen following him.

Just as she passed the palanquin, a sudden gust blew out the faded curtains and a hand came from between their folds and caught at them to pull them in. Helen rode on for about fifty yards. Then she turned to Captain Carlton, and said abruptly:

“I must go back.”

“But I think this is really our shortest way, Mrs. Morton.”

“No—I don't mean home. I want to go back. I must see where that janpan goes to.”

Freddy stared.

“What, that one we passed just now? What is it, Mrs. Morton?”

Helen was rather pale. Her eyes had a frightened look.

“Captain Carlton—you'll think me very foolish, I'm afraid, but just now when the wind blew the curtains of the palanquin—”

“Yes?”

“The woman inside put up her hand to hold them together. I only saw part of it—three fingers—but—they were white.”

They looked at each other. Then Freddy tried to laugh.

“Oh, come, Mrs. Morton,” he said, but Helen insisted.

“Didn't Dick tell you? They really do think that there is a white woman somewhere about here. Dick had a letter to-day—he was answering it when I came out. We must go back. I shall never forget it, if we don't.”

Freddy began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

“It was probably a Kashmiri woman. They are very fair. But if you feel disturbed, let us make for home, and you can tell Richard, and then let him see about it.”

“It wasn't a Kashmiri,” said Helen, with a shrinking look. “It wasn't really, I must go back. It will be too late if we wait, and I can't let you go alone either. I am coming. I must come.”

They rode back in silence.

There was no sign of the palanquin upon the road before them. They rode towards the city, and presently Freddy stopped a native and questioned him.

“It has gone down there, to the native serai,” he said. “Really, Mrs. Morton, you can't go there after it. I couldn't let you. It's not a fit place. Dick wouldn't like it Do go home, and let him make the proper inquiries.”