by Maud Diver
CHAPTER XIX.
"And methought that beauty and terror were only one, not two; And the world has room for love and death, and thunder and dew; And all the sinews of Hell slumber in summer air; And the face of God is a rock; but the face of the rock is fair." --R.L.S.
That same evening after sunset, a hospital doolie was set down in theverandah, and from it emerged Paul Wyndham--a long lean figure of aman, whose most notable features were deep steadfast eyes, neither bluenor grey; a mouth of extraordinary gentleness and capacity forendurance; and the grave quietness of movement and speech, that maymean power in perfect equilibrium or mere dulness.
Desmond and Honor welcomed him with unconcealed affection; and forhimself, his descent into the Valley of the Shadow seemed a small priceto pay for a convalescence cheered by the ministrations of these two,than whom there were none dearer to him on earth. Of the unalterablenature of his feeling for Honor, both husband and wife were well aware;though no word of it ever passed their lips. They were aware, also,that the love of a man like Paul Wyndham was a thing apart; implyingneither disloyalty to his friend, nor the remotest danger to any of thethree concerned. Conditions inconceivable to the pedestrian order ofmind.
Too weak to fret against enforced inaction at a time of stress, Wyndhampassed his days between sleeping and waking and eating; between raretalks with Lenox and Desmond, and the restfulness diffused throughheart and brain and body by Honor's constant presence at his bedside.She had amply fulfilled the promise given him more than four years agoof close and privileged friendship; and he counted himself more blestin its possession than many a man who wins the entire woman, to findher no more than a plaster goddess after all.
Honor herself, apart from the natural woman's pleasure in nursing anappreciative patient, was thankful for a definite demand upon her time.For Theo was seldom available now, except for an occasionalafter-dinner drive, through darkness two degrees cooler than high noon;and beneath her surface serenity she suffered keenly from the ache ofempty arms; from the completeness of separation involved in leaving achild too young to span distance even by hieroglyphs, profuselydecorated with 'kisses,' such as she had seen women treasure in thedays of her young ignorance. Mrs Rivers wrote constantly andcopiously. But can the most unwearied pen set down all that a mothercraves to know about her child?
At the end of a week, Lenox was with them still. To his solesuggestion of departure, Desmond had merely replied: "My dear man,don't talk nonsense. When we've had enough of you, we'll let you knowit, without ceremony!" And Lenox, strangely loth to return to hisbachelor quarters, took him at his word, and stayed on.
Yet the two men saw little enough of one another. For on the Frontierwork means work: and when cholera hovers over the station like a birdof prey, it is carried on with redoubled vigour. Only by constantoccupation can fear and fatalism be held at arm's-length. Only theinfectious mettle of the British officer can infuse into all ranks thatcheerful alertness which, at a time of epidemic, is the finestsafeguard in the world. There is much virtue, also, in mere routine,one of the wingless good angels of earth; and only those who haveproved its power to drag broken heart or broken body through the thingsthat must be done, estimate it at its true value.
In Lenox's case, it helped to deaden the prick of anxiety as to thefuture and the physical ache of longing; for as Commandant with two outof four subalterns on the 'sick list,' he had his hands full; andDesmond, the Colonel's chosen friend and ally in all regimentalmatters, was in the same enviable condition. The more so, since he andMeredith between them had anticipated the modern theory that the spreadof cholera or fever can be partially checked by a determined assault onflies and mosquitoes, the great disease-breeders of the East; asuggestion received at that time with a mild amusement, bordering onscorn. But the two men, zealous for the credit and welfare of theregiment--the Great Fetish 'that claims the lives of all and lives forever'--determined to give the new notion a fair trial in their ownLines; and Desmond, as may be supposed, flung himself heart and soulinto the organisation of this very novel form of campaign! Plungedneck-deep again in the work he loved, there seemed no limit to histireless energy; and from the Colonel downward, all were heartily gladto get him back.
Even in an age given over to the marketable commodity, England canstill breed men of this calibre. Not perhaps in her cities, whereindividual aspiration and character are cramped, warped, deadened bythe brute force of money, the complex mechanism of modern life: but inunconsidered corners of her Empire, in the vast spaces and comparativeisolation, where old-fashioned patriotism takes the place of parochialparty politics, and where, alone, strong natures can grow up in theirown way.
It is to the Desmonds and Merediths of an earlier day that we areindebted for the sturdy loyalty of our Punjab and Frontier troops, forour hold upon the fighting races of the North. India may have been wonby the sword, but it has been held mainly by attributes of heart andspirit; by individual strength of purpose, capacity for sympathy anddevotion to the interests of those we govern. When we fail in these,and not till then, will power pass out of our hands.
That there was no such failure among the little band of Englishmenthroughout that inglorious campaign against an enemy one could neverhave the satisfaction of thrashing in the open, the attitude of theirNative officers and men bore ample witness. Light-heartedsubalterns--whisked away from half-fledged love affairs, or the moreserious business of sport--might curse their luck with blasphemousvigour; older men might grumble openly at extra parades, at the strainof additional vigilance and discipline; but for all that, the work wasdone,--thoroughly, and with a will; not within the station only, butout there on the open plain, rolling in vast undulations to the nakedspurs of the Saliman range, where the sun smote through the canvas asif it had been so much brown paper and the stricken regiment strove, byconstantly shifting ground, to shake off the pursuing horror thatsteadily thinned its ranks. Here Colonel Stanham Buckley waked eachmorning with the cold clutch of fear at his heart; fortified himselfwith incessant 'nips' throughout the day; and left the bulk of the workto a cheery little Adjutant, untroubled by the sorrowful great gift ofimagination. And here, as in the station, all officers were diligentin visits to the hospital; heartening the sufferers by their presence,and combating, as far as might be, the Oriental's fatalistic attitudetowards disease and death. Perhaps only those who have had closedealings with the British officer in time of action or emergencyrealise, to the full, the effective qualities hidden under a carelessor conventional exterior:--the vital force, the pluck, endurance, andirrepressible spirit of enterprise, which--it has been aptly said--makehim, at his best, the most romantic figure of our modern time.
And while indefatigable soldiers fought the enemy in camp and in theLines, Dudley Norton, O.S.I., Deputy Commissioner, and ruler-in-chiefof the station, fought him no less energetically in the bazaar andnative city; an even more heart-breaking task. For here was nodisciplined body of men, but a swarm of prejudiced individuals, caringnothing for infection, and everything for the sanctity of house andcaste. Precautions and sanitary measures had to be carried at thepoint of the bayonet; and they were so carried. For Dudley Norton, nonovice at Frontier work, had long since made himself wholesomely fearedand respected throughout the Derajat; while, among the Maliks of hisdistrict, his hawk-like eyes gleaming under heavy brows were accreditedwith the power of watching a man's thoughts at their birth. Areputation too useful to be discouraged!
Like all detached frontier civilians, he practically lived at thestation mess; except on fugitive occasions, when a placidly handsomewoman, bearing his name, vouchsafed him a flying visit from home; forno other reason--said the evil-minded--than to establish a right-of-wayover her property. At these times Norton welcomed, and entertained hiswife with a scrupulous politeness and concern for her physicalwell-being that was a tragedy in itself; and eventually 'saw her off'at the nearest railway station with a sigh of relief. For, once--in aformer life, it seemed--h
e had been in love with her; and the ghost ofa dead passion is an ill companion at bed and board. At the presentmoment, he had seen neither her nor his only son for more than fiveyears; and of the small daughter, whose coming had transfigured hislife, there remained only a cross in Kohat cemetery, and a faded photoof the flagrantly unnatural type that prevailed in the late 'seventies.But the man who gives his heart to the Indian Borderland must steelhimself to forgo much that, in the arrogance of youth, he has deemedindispensable to happiness, or even to living at all.
Frontier service begets closer contact between soldier and civilian,both in work and play, than cantonment life down country; most often tothe uprooting of prejudice on both sides; and Norton was one of the fewmen in the station who had achieved comparative intimacy with Lenox.Those formidable eyes of his had been quick to detect in the taciturnGunner, who had done so much, and had so little to say about it, acoming 'political' of no mean quality, a man of ideas and ambitions,for whom the great country of his service was something more than avast playground, or shooting-box; in effect, a man after his own heart.
Thus, finding Lenox established at the Desmonds, Norton called uponthem soon after Honor's arrival. He was rewarded by a standinginvitation to 'drop in' any afternoon, or evening that he happened tobe free, an invitation which Honor extended to most of the men who cameto bid her welcome; and tea at the Desmonds--with iced coffee or pegsas alternatives, and smoking a matter of course--soon became a dailyinstitution; a respite, if only for an hour or two, from the monotonyof mess, parade-ground, and hospital.
"Awfully sporting of Mrs Desmond," was the verdict of gratefulsubalterns, who found these tea-drinkings a vast improvement on stalehome papers, and half-hearted gambling at the Club. There was alwaysmusic. Honor, besides playing magnificently, could be safely reliedupon for impromptu accompaniments. The Chicken, and an irrepressibleIrishman of the Sikhs, who gloried in the name of O'Flanagan, wereindefatigable on the banjo, and in the construction of topical versesto vary the programme. Hot-weather audiences are not hypercritical;and in the red-hot circle of days and nights the mildest innovation iswelcome as a sail on a blank horizon.
Desmond himself was delighted with his wife's spontaneous contributionto the good spirits of the station; and if the two had little quiettime together, they had at least a satisfying sense of comradeship inwork; the strongest link that can be added to the strong chain ofmarriage.
Frank Olliver, with her big smile, and infectious gaiety, looked inmost days, as a matter of course; till one of the two fever cases shehad managed to lay hands on took a serious turn, and an hour off dutycould only be secured when Honor insisted on relieving guard, andsending Frank over to play hostess in her stead.
There was also little Mrs Peters, the only other wife in the station; asquare, shapeless cushion of a woman, who would rush in for abreathless half-hour to pour tales of native cunning, and Eurasianapathy into Desmond's sympathetic ears. Being both plump andenergetic, she suffered cruelly in the heat; mopped her face withoutshame between her sentences; and, according to Frank Olliver, livedchiefly on lime-squash, and a limitless admiration for her missionaryhusband,--a large, ungainly man, with the manners of a shy schoolboy,and the wrapt gaze of a seer; a man who, in an age of fanaticism, wouldhave walked smiling to the rack. As it was, he walked with no lessequanimity through the pestilential mazes of the city and bazaar. Foralthough in this age of tolerance run to seed, a man is not called uponto die for his beliefs, he is occasionally called upon to live forthem; which is not necessarily the easier of the two. But up to hislights Henry Peters achieved it. At all possible and impossible hours,his unwieldy white umbrella, pith hat, and badly-cut drill suitpervaded the dwellings of his scattered converts; while his wife, tornbetween pride in him and mortal dread of infection, grieved in secretover inadequate meals snatched at odd hours; and supplemented tremulousprayers for his safety with lumps of camphor, screwed up in paper, andslipped surreptitiously into the pockets of his coats.
Once or twice she dragged him in triumph to the Desmonds,--a reluctantdishevelled hero,--and 'showed him off' to that little company ofwell-groomed, kindly-natured soldiers, with a naive simplicity thatwent to Honor's heart.
"Why is it that some of us have a special licence to be so exquisitelynatural?" she wondered, as she stood beside the tea-table, dispensingiced coffee, and surveying, with satisfaction, a room full oftobacco-smoke and contented men. "That's just how I feel tempted to'show off' Theo, sometimes. And wouldn't the dear man crush me topowder if I tried!"
She glanced approvingly at him where he sat astride on a reversedchair, in dusty polo kit, reporting progress of the great 'flycampaign' to Wyndham, who had been newly promoted to a deck-lounge inthe drawing-room at tea-time.
It was a larger gathering than usual; and, in spite of the fact thatfor three days the thermometer had recorded a hundred and twenty in theshade, spirits ran high. The subalterns--for whose exuberant foolingHonor had a very tender tolerance--had 'chorussed' themselves hoarseand thirsty; and were receiving the reward of the public-spirited outof long misty tumblers, that fizzed and bubbled. Peters had forgottenhis shyness in a discussion with Norton on the vexed question ofcholera infection, and the probable futility of quarantine; while MrsPeters, listening anxiously, made inconsequent darts into the argument,to her husband's obvious discomfiture, and Norton's equally obviousamusement.
A group of men near Honor were talking of England, tormentingthemselves gratuitously by bare imagination of a feast. Captain Unwinof the Sikhs was casually unfolding a plan to elude superfluouscreditors, and spend next summer 'at home.' His debts were phenomenal;and it was six years since he had sighted the funnel of a steamer. Heexpatiated yearningly on prospective delights. Cup Day at Ascot; aJuly evening on the upper reaches of the Thames; a punt in a backwater;a pipe and a cushion; just enough breeze to stir the willows; and, withany luck, a pretty woman in the bows.
"Just a shade better than a sandbank on the Indus, eh?" he wound upwith a chuckle of enjoyment. "And I'll pull it through this time orperish in the attempt! Lord . . . think of jingling down Piccadilly ina hansom once again . . ."
"To dinner at the Savoy," suggested a thick-set Major on a note ofrelish. "Devilish good one they gave me there three years ago. Nightbefore I sailed."
Sympathetic murmurs encouraged him to enlarge on the cherished memory!but before he had reached the _entree_--an elaborate item--Honor wasout of hearing; having crossed the room to where Lenox sat balancing acoffee-cup on one knee, watching the faces round him with keen, kindlyeyes, and taking little active part in the proceedings. He still worehis arm in a sling; and his teeth held the inevitable pipe, filled froma tin of tobacco that Desmond had induced him to accept on the night oftheir talk. Only three times in the past week had he succumbed to theforbidden mixture. But the glow of satisfaction, which those who havenever resisted unto blood, complacently couple with self-conquest, wasdenied him. Restlessness, lack of sleep, constant recurrence of theconcussion headache,--these had been his reward; with the result that arising temperature had forced him to put his name on the 'sick-list'and take a few days off duty. But at Honor's approach his whole facelit up. The intimacy of everyday life had drawn them very near to eachother; for Honor had all the magnetism of a woman made for tenderness;a magnetism few men can resist, and few women condone.
"You look so tired, and aloof from it all," she said gently. "I'mafraid the boys' nonsense and noisiness worries your head."
"Not a bit of it. It's good to see them enjoying themselves. You're apublic benefactor, Mrs Desmond."
She laughed, and blushed.
"Nonsense. It's only so nice of them to come, when one can do solittle to amuse them. Do have some more coffee."
"Thanks. It's capital stuff. Dick's very late," he added anxiously."I'm wondering what's come to him."
He rose, and followed her to the tea-table, where Bobby Nixon salutedwith his most expansive smile; and announced that O'Flanaga
n,reinforced by refreshment, was once more 'willing to oblige.'
An assurance that the rest were unanimously willing to listen broughtthe Irishman to his feet, banjo in hand; a lank, clean-shavenindividual, who secreted a well-spring of humour beneath thetragi-comic solemnity of the born-low comedian. He was greeted withcries of "Fire away, old Flannel Jacket!" "Phil the Fluter's Ball!""An' give ut in shtyle!" He gave it in style accordingly, and in abrogue as broad as his own shoulders; the whole room spontaneouslytaking up the chorus.
"Wid the toot of the flute, an' the twiddle of the fiddle, Dancin' in the middle, like a herring on a griddle! Up an' down, hands come round, cross into the wall-- Faith, hadn't we the gaietee . . ."
But at this point the door opened to admit Max Richardson. He wasstill in uniform; and there was that in his face which checked theirhilarity, and made O'Flanagan instantly put down his banjo.
Honor went quickly towards him, holding out her hand.
"What is it?" she asked in a low tone.
"It's young Hodson. He died . . . half an hour ago."
"Not cholera?"
Dick nodded.
An inarticulate murmur went round the room; and for several seconds noone spoke. The first white man down seemed to bring the enemy withinstriking distance of each one of them.
Then Lenox came forward. "You'll excuse us, Mrs Desmond?" he saidquietly. And the two men went out, leaving a strangely silent roombehind them.
They passed through the hall into the dining-room before Lenox took thepipe from his lips, and spoke.
"Bad business," he remarked laconically. "And, God forgive me, when he'went sick' this morning I half thought he was malingering. Poorchap . . . he's quit of the Frontier sooner than he thought for,without any help from me. You were with him, I suppose, . . . at thelast?"
"Yes; for the best part of two hours," Dick answered, absently helpinghimself to a cheroot. "Never saw a man take it harder. No getting himto make a fight for it. Kept on begging me to tell him if this showwas fellow's only chance; and . . . I couldn't."
Lenox looked intently at his friend.
"That so?"
The other nodded; and there was a short silence. Richardson took up aphotograph of old Sir John Meredith, and examined it with criticalinterest.
"You might have sent for Peters," Lenox said at length,
"No earthly use. He swore like a trooper when I suggested it; and Ican't blame him. Professional platitudes are not the style of physicto ease a man when he's suffering hell's own torments in his mind andbody." He set down the picture abruptly, and swung round on his heel."I'll be going on now, for a tub, and a change of clothing. Idiotic ofme, no doubt; but I feel a bit off colour after all that. How aboutthe funeral? To-night?"
"No. First thing to-morrow. I'll arrange it with Peters before heleaves; and get Courtenay to let me off the sick-list, if I can." Thengrasping the younger man's shoulder with rough kindliness, he added:"Good old Dick. Pull yourself together, and come back here for dinner.It may be my turn . . . or yours, before we're through. And if itis . . . we don't go out like snuffed candles, remember. You may takemy word for it."
"Hope to God you're right," the other answered between his teeth, andwas gone.
Next morning, in a flaming dawn, all that remained of Tom Hodson wasconsigned, with military honours, to the dust of that Frontier he hadgrown to hate, because it demands so much of a man, and offers solittle in return; and every house within earshot of the cemeteryvibrated to the three parting volleys fired over the open grave.
Lenox was present at the service; and at the gun practice that followedshortly after it. Thirty grains of phenacetin and several forbiddenpipes, had ensured him six hours' sleep, and a cooler skin; with theresult that he had successfully induced an amused medical officer toreport him 'fit for duty.' But Nature is relentless; and Lenox,driving back from 'orderly room' through a white-hot glare, and a hazeof pungent dust, found himself speculating vaguely--as though thequestion concerned some unknown entity in another world--how he wasgoing to drag a protesting body and brain through the rest of the day'swork.
"Got to be done somehow, though. That's flat," was his final verdictas he passed into the twilight of the hall.
Every door in the house was shut against the furnace without; had beenshut since seven of the morning; and would so remain till after sunset.Yet, the mercury hovered between ninety-seven and a hundred all day,and most of the night. In India the thermometer supersedes thebarometer; and in the hot weather it becomes an obsession. There isalways a mild satisfaction in knowing exactly what one has endured.
Desmond was not yet back, and the study was empty; a friendly-lookingroom, its simple haphazard furniture unified by the rich colourharmonies of Indian carpets and curtains; while a liberal supply ofbooks, unusual for the country, proclaimed it the room of a soldier whofound time for study and thought.
Too weary to get out of uniform, Lenox laid aside his helmet andaccoutrements; shouted to the punkah coolie, sleeping in the verandah,chin on chest; sorted his geographical papers, and sat down to thetable. Then he took out his pipe, eyed it thoughtfully, and flung itaside with a curse. Each relapse resulted in a renewed access ofself-distrust; and this morning the cloud upon his spirit fell heavierthan ever, because he foresaw that if the work ahead of him were to bepulled through, in the teeth of the grinding headaches consequent onhis fall, last night's programme must be repeated, not once, but manytimes, And at that rate, what was to be the end of it? The degradationof submitting to the drug itself? A thousand times, no. The soldierin him sprang to arms at the mere suggestion. Like all men capable ofgreatness, he believed, not in the mastery of circumstance, but in themastery of will. Yet, unhappily, the will, like all spiritual forces,is ignominiously dependent on bodily conditions. Pain, sheer pitilesspain, will have its way with the bravest of us.
The man was ill without realising it. The nerves in his head throbbedto a devil's hornpipe of their own, and mental effort was beyond him.In vain he contracted his heavy brows, and tried to gather up thethreads of the chapter he had been working at. Black depressionoverpowered him, obliterating rational thought. The morning's servicehaunted him with unnatural persistence, and the half-hour he had spentwith Dick in the dead boy's bungalow, looking through his papers--achaos of bills, mostly unpaid; racing notes; old programmes; and half adozen envelopes addressed in a girl's unformed hand. On the openblotter, an unfinished letter to a friend in Simla had announced hishope of a speedy exchange down country! his determination not to spendanother hot weather 'on this God-forsaken Frontier . . .'
"Poor misguided chap," Lenox mused, not without a tinge of his oldcontempt. "Now if only _I_ could have gone in his place, it would havesimplified matters all round."
But he thrust away the thought as morbid and cowardly; and by way ofcurative drew Quita's last letter out of his breast-pocket. The factof her love for him still remained a miracle incompletely realised; andshe had been right in her belief that he had yet to discover itsintensity and depth.
The great noontide silence had already fallen upon house and compound.Outside, brazen earth and brazen sky glared at one another withmalignant intensity. Two bullocks lounged under the bananas by themill wheel flicking lazy tails when the flies presumed too shamelesslyupon their apathy; and crows, with beaks agape, hopped resignedly fromone burning patch of shade to another. Among the verandah roof-beams,three grey squirrels argued, with subdued chitterings, over a kipper'shead stolen from a breakfast plate; and at intervals a piteous wailingcame from the servants' quarters, where, as all knew, Nizam Din,kitmutgar, was beating his pretty wife, Miriam Bibi, for the third timethat week, because she had grown careless in the matter of covering herface, since the coming of Zyarulla, whose arrogant magnificence hadcreated a flutter in more than one respectable household.
But Quita's letter, written in her 'garden' on a boulder, beforebreakfast, had transported Lenox many hundred miles away from it
all.The cluttering of squirrels, and the cries of poor Miriam Bibi enteredhis ears; but the spirit of him was back among the mountains; the scentof warm pine-needles was is his nostrils, the spell of his wife's faceand voice upon his heart.
A sudden sense of suffocation dispelled the dream. He found himselfbreathless, in a bath of perspiration. The punkah had stopped dead.And one must have endured this trifling inconvenience to gauge thesignificance of those five words.
Lenox straightened himself with an oath. "_Kencho_.[1] . . . you sonof a jackal!" he thundered; at the same time jerking the punkah frill,an effective means of reanimating the long-suffering punkah coolie, whohas a trick of twisting the rope round his arm, that he may jerk it themore easily in his dreams.
But Lenox's vigorous pull merely brought a great length of rope throughthe wall; and his command was answered by the groans of a man intorment. Springing up, he wrenched open the glass door; and a blast asfrom a furnace struck him across the face. The coolie, a brown,distorted mass, writhed upon the hot stones in mortal agony. At theSahib's approach, he struggled to his knees with a rush of incoherentdetail; while Lenox shouted for Zyarulla, and the dogcart; flung a wordof encouragement to the stricken man, and went in again for his helmet.
Till the trap appeared Lenox paced the verandah; the punkah cooliegroaned; and Zyarulla protested as openly as he dared against his Sahibbeing put to personal inconvenience for a base-born--mere dust of theearth. None the less, at the Sahib's order he gingerly helped the dustof the earth into the trap, where Lenox put his one available arm roundthe writhing body; and the _sais_, who showed small relish for thesituation, was ordered to get up and drive from behind. The which hedid; leaning over the back seat, and keeping ostentatiously clear ofthe misbegotten son of a pig who had broken his midday sleep.
In this fashion they journeyed, awkwardly enough, to the temporarycholera hospital; a handful of tents and grass huts on the outskirts ofthe station. Betwixt the clutches of cramp, and the abject humility ofhis kind, the coolie slithered from the seat on to the mat; and Lenoxhad some ado to prevent his falling headlong from the cart. But in duetime he was handed over safely to a suave, coffee-coloured hospitalassistant, and carried shrieking into a tent crammed with sights unfitto be told; whence he emerged, two hours later, without protest ofvoice or limb, to swell the intermittent stream of fellow-corpses thatflowed from the hospital to the burning ghatt or the Mahommedalburial-ground outside the station.
When Lenox staggered back into the hall, dizzy with headache, andhalf-blinded with glare, he was met by Desmond, who, noticing a slightlurch as he entered, took hold of his arm.
"Zyarulla told me what happened," he said, a great gentleness in hisvoice. "Come on to your room, old man. Take a rousing dose ofphenacetin, and lie down till tiffin. I'll bring you a lime-squash."
"Thanks. You are a damned good sort, Desmond. The sun's touched meup, I fancy. I shall be all right in a couple at hours."
But before two hours were out, Desmond's orderly was speeding throughthe dust to the Doctor Sahib's house; and Desmond himself had gonehurriedly to his wife's room, where she too was lying down after hermorning's duties. She rose at his coming, holding out both hands. Forshe read disaster in his eyes.
"Darling, what has gone wrong?"
"It's Lenox. He's down with it. Not severe as yet. But there's nomistaking what it is."
Her faint colour--it had grown perceptibly fainter in the pastweek--left her face.
"Oh, his poor wife! We must send a wire at once."
"I've sent one already, by the orderly who went for Courtenay. Toldher she should have news every day, for the present."
"Oh, bless you, Theo! You think of everything!"
"Steady, Honor, steady," he rebuked her gently. "We've got to do afair share of thinking between us just now. Paul can safely stay on ifone isolates that side of the house; and Zyarulla and I can doeverything for Lenox between us. As for you, John must give you a bedtill we're through."
"But, Theo . . ."
"Be quiet!" he broke in almost roughly; adding on a changed note: "Foronce in a way, my dearest, you will obey orders without question--or goaltogether. Now give me the chlorodyne, and let me get back to poorLenox. Seems brutal to give him any form of opium after all he's beenthrough. Hullo, there's Richardson shouting outside. He'll beterribly cut up when he knows."
It transpired that Richardson had come over, post-haste, to reportthree cases among his men; and at sun-down the little mountain battery,with its three subalterns and full camp equipment, marched out into theopen desert, scornfully overlooked by that Pisgah height of theFrontier, the Takti Suliman, whose square-cut crags were printed insharp outline upon a stainless sky.
[1] Pull.
