During the halt that followed, the men, having fed and watered their horses, took what rest they might in patches of burning shadow within the wall. Though the sun-saturated masonry breathed fire, it served to shelter them from the withering wind that scours the Border at this fiery time of year.

Desmond, who had breakfasted five hours earlier on stale bread and a few sardines, lunched, with small appetite, on biscuits and a slab of chocolate, and moistened his parched throat with tepid whisky-and-water. Quenching his thirst was an achievement past hoping for till Kohat itself should be reached.

He had left the station with his detachment early on the previous day; had relieved four outposts between dawn and dusk, covering eighty miles of desert road, with four brief halts for rest; and had spent a night of suffocating wakefulness in a sun-baked windowless room, built out from the base of the last post relieved. It was all in the day's work—as Frontier men understand work. The exposure and long hours in the saddle had little effect upon his whipcord and iron frame: but a sharp attack of fever—unrecorded in his letter to his wife—had slackened his alertness of body and spirit; and it was with an unusual sense of relief that he faced the last twenty-mile stretch of road, leaving behind him six fresh men to take up the task of watching the blank, unchanging face of the hills.

Three hours later, the little party turned their horses' heads towards Kohat. The sun still smote the uncomplaining earth, and many miles of riding lay before them. But at least it was the beginning of the end; a fact which the two stout-hearted chargers seemed to recognise as clearly as their riders. The Ressaldar, who had not failed to note his Captain's slight change of bearing, proposed a short cut across country well known to himself.

"Hazur," he urged, "there runs a long deep nullah, straight as a lance, across the plain; and as the sun falls lower, it would give some measure of shade."

"Well spoken, Ressaldar Sahib! I have had my fill of the road. I'm for the nullah. Come on, men."

And, striking out across country, they vanished from the earth's surface, entering one of those giant clefts in the clay soil formed by the early downrush of torrents from the hills.

Suddenly, in the midst of a swinging canter, the Ressaldar reined in his horse, and the rest followed suit. The old Sikh threw up his head, as a stag will do at the first whisper of danger. In the strong light his chiselled face, with its grey beard scrupulously parted and drawn up under his turban, showed lifeless as a statue; and his eyes had the far-off intentness of one who listens with every fibre of his being.

Desmond watched him in a growing bewilderment that verged on impatience.

"What's up now?" he demanded sharply.

But no flicker disturbed the rigid face: the keen eyes gave no sign. The old man raised a hand as if enjoining silence, dismounted hastily, and, kneeling down, pressed his ear close against the ground.

Desmond's suspense was short-lived but keen.

In less than ten seconds the Ressaldar was beside him, one hand on his bridle, a consuming anxiety in his eyes.

"Hazur, it is a spate from the hills," he said between quick breaths. "It is coming with the speed of ten thousand devils and there are five miles to go before we can leave the nullah."

"Mount, then," the Englishman replied with cool decision. "We can but ride."

And swiftly, as tired horses could lay legs to ground, they rode.

Desmond could catch no sound as yet of the oncoming danger; but the practised ears of the native detected its increase, even through the rattle of hoofs that beat upon the brain like panic terror made audible.

"Faster,—faster!" he panted. His Captain's danger was the one coherent thought in his mind. Desmond merely nodded reassurance; and shifting a little in his saddle, eased matters as far as possible for Badshah Pasand.[20]

[20] Beloved of kings.

The ground raced beneath their horses' hoofs. The serene strip of sky raced above their heads. The imprisoning walls fell apart before their eyes, seeming to divide like a cleft stick as they drew near, and reeling away on either hand as they passed on. All things in earth and heaven seemed fleeing in mortal haste save only themselves.

Theo Desmond heard the voice of the enemy at last:—an ominous roar, growing inexorably louder every minute. At the sound his head took a more assured lift; his mouth a firmer line; and the fire of determination deepened in his eyes.

By a movement of the rein he urged Badshah Pasand to renewed effort. But the devoted animal was nearing the end of his tether, and his rider knew it. Thick spume flakes blew backward from his lips, and the sawing motion of his head told its own tale.

Sher Dil, who was still going lustily, gained upon him by a neck, and the Ressaldar turned in his saddle.

"The spurs, Hazur—the spurs!" he entreated, knowing well his Captain's abstemiousness in this regard.

But Desmond shook his head. Badshah Pasand was doing his utmost; and neither man nor beast can do more. He merely rose in the stirrups, pressed his heels lightly against the quivering flanks and, leaning forward, spoke a few words of encouragement almost in the charger's ear.

The sensitive animal sprang forward with a last desperate output of strength; and in the same instant a hoarse shout broke from Rajinder Singh.

"An opening—an opening, Captain Sahib! By the mercy of God we are saved!"

Five minutes later the whole party drew rein on the upper levels of earth, and their sometime pursuer swept tumultuously onward fifteen feet below.

Desmond's eyes had an odd light in them as he turned from the swirling waters to the impassive face of the man who had saved their lives.

"I do—not—forget," he said with quiet emphasis.

The old Sikh shook his head with a rather uncertain smile.

"True talk, Hazur. I had known it without assurance. Yet was mine own help no great matter. It was written that my Captain Sahib should not die thus!"

"That may be," Desmond answered gravely, for he had been strangely upheld by the same conviction. "Yet there be also—these others. In my thinking it is no small matter that, except for your quickness of mind and hearing, forty-four good men and horses would now be at the mercy of that torrent. But this is no time for words. It still remains to reach Kohat before sundown."

The sun was slipping behind the hills, with the broad smile of a tyrant who fully enjoys the joke, when Desmond drew up before his own verandah and slid to the ground.

"Thank God that's over!" he muttered audibly. But he did not at once enter the house. His first care, as always, was for the horse he rode; and with him it was no mere case of the "merciful man," but of sheer love for that unfailing servant of the human race.

He accompanied Badshah Pasand to the stable, superintended the removal of his saddle, and looked him carefully all over. That done, he issued explicit orders for his treatment and feeding: the great charger—as though fully aware of his master's solicitude,—nuzzling a mouse-coloured nose against his shoulder the while.

Arrived in the comparative coolness of the hall, he shouted for a drink, and a bath. Then, turning towards the drawing-room, promised himself a few minutes blessed relaxation in the depths of his favourite chair.

But passing between the gold-coloured curtains he saw that which checked his advance, and banished all thought of relaxation from his brain.

Harry Denvil—whose buoyancy and simplicity of heart had led Desmond to christen him the Boy—sat alone at Evelyn's bureau, his head between his hands, despair in every line of his figure.

Desmond regarded him thoughtfully, marvelling that the sounds of his own arrival should have passed unheard. Then he went forward, and laid his hand on the Boy's shoulder.

"Harry! I don't seem to recognise you in that attitude. Anything seriously wrong?"

Denvil started, and revealed a face of dogged dejection.

"You here?" he said listlessly. "Never heard you come in."

"That's obvious. But—about yourself?"

The Boy choked down a sigh.

"Why the deuce should I bore you with myself, when you're hot and tired? I've been a confounded fool; if not worse, and the devil's in the luck wherever I turn."

But Desmond waited in expectant silence for the Boy's trouble to overflow. While he waited, the coveted "drink" arrived, and he emptied the long tumbler almost at a gulp. The station had run out of ice—a cheerful habit of Frontier stations; but at least the liquid was cool and stinging.

"Well?" he said at length, Denvil having returned to his former attitude. "I want something more explicit. How am I to help you, if you slam the door in my face?"

"Don't see how you can help me. I've only been ... a great many kinds of a fool: and you——"

"Well, what of me? I've been plenty of kinds of fool in my time, I assure you. Money's the backbone of your trouble, no doubt. Nothing worse, I hope?"

Denvil's honest eyes met his own without flinching.

"No, on my honour—nothing worse. The money's bad enough." And the trouble came out in a quick rush of words—explanatory, contrite, despairing—all in one breath. For the Boy had Irish blood in his veins; and the initial difficulty over, he found it an unspeakable relief to disburden his soul to the man who had "brothered" him ever since he joined the Force.

Desmond, perceiving that the overflow, once started, was likely to be exhaustive and complete, took out pipe and tobacco, balanced himself on the arm of a chair, and listened gravely to the Boy's disjointed story.

It was a long story, and a commonplace one, if even the most trivial record of human effort and failure can be so styled. It was the story of half the subalterns in our Imperial Army—of small pay, engulfed by heavy expenses, avoidable and unavoidable; the upkeep of much needless uniform; too big a wine bill at Mess; polo ponies, and other luxurious necessities of Indian life, bought on credit; the inevitable appeal to the "shroff,"[21] involving interest upon interest; the final desperate attempt to mend matters by high stakes at cards, and fitful, injudicious backing of horses, most often with disastrous results.

[21] Native money-lender.

"Have you the smallest idea what the total damage amounts to?" asked Desmond, when all was said. "I'm bound to know everything now."

Denvil nodded.

"Close on fifteen hundred, I think," he answered, truthfully.

"Why, in Heaven's name, didn't you tell me all this sooner?"

"Oh, I kept hoping to get square somehow—without that. I wanted to stay in your good books; and I saw you were rather down on chaps who are casual about money. But I seem to be made that way, and——"

"So are most of us, my dear chap. But it's up to you to make yourself some other way, if you don't want to come a cropper and leave the Service. I hope I am no Pharisee, but I've been reared to believe that living in debt is an aristocratic, and rather mean form of theft. My notion of you doesn't square with that; and I know a good man when I see one. You'll never mend matters, I assure you, by playing the fool over horses and cards. How about your mother?"

Denvil looked down at the blank sheet of foreign note-paper before him, and answered nothing. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.

"Can't you see that the fact of your having no father to pull you up sharp puts you on your honour to keep straight in every way, on her account? Does she know anything about all this?"

"How could I tell her?" the Boy murmured, without looking up. "She thinks me no end of a fine chap; and—and—I'm hanged if I know how to answer her letters since—things have got so bad——"

"When did you write last?"

"About six weeks ago."

Desmond flung out an oath.

"Confound you!" he cried hotly. "What do you think she's imagining by now? All manner of hideous impossibilities. I suppose you never gave that a thought——"

The Boy looked up quickly, pain and pleading in his blue eyes. "I say, Desmond, don't hit so straight. I know I've been a brute to her; and I feel bad enough about it, without being slanged—by you."

Theo Desmond's face softened, and he took the Boy's shoulders between his hands.

"My dear lad," he said gently. "I'm sorry if I hit too hard. But I feel rather strongly on that subject. I've no wish to slang you. I only want to set you on your feet, and keep you there. So we may as well get to business at once."

"Set me on my feet! How the devil's that to be done?"

Desmond smiled.

"It's simply a question of making up one's mind to things. In the first place we must sell Roland. He's the best pony you have."

Harry straightened himself sharply, but Desmond's gesture commanded silence.

"It's a cruel wrench, I know," he said gently. "Few men understand that better than myself. But it's all you can do. And you're bound to do it. You can advertise him as trained by me. He's safe to fetch seven hundred that way."

Denvil bent his head in desperate resignation.

"You are down on a fellow, Desmond. How about the other eight?"

"That will be—my affair."

Again the Boy was startled into protest.

"Look here! That's impossible. I couldn't pay you back within the next three years."

"Did I say anything about paying me back?"

"Desmond—you don't mean——?"

Their eyes met, and Denvil was answered. He brought his fist down on the bureau with such force that Evelyn's knick-knacks danced again.

"By God, I won't have it!" he protested passionately. "I'll not take such a sum of money from you."

Desmond's smile showed both approval and amusement.

"No call for violence, Boy! I told you my mind was made up; and it's folly wasting powder and shot against a stone wall."

"Look here, though—can you manage it—easily?"

"Yes, I can manage it." And in the rush of relief Harry failed to note the significant omission of the adverb. "But it's to be a square bargain between us. No more shroffs; no more betting, or I come down on you like a ton of coals for my eight hundred. Stick to whist and polo in playtime. Polish up your Pushtoo, and get into closer touch with your Pathans. Start Persian with me, if you like, and replace Roland with the money you get for passing. But first of all write to your mother, and tell her the chief part of the truth. Not my share in it, please. That remains between ourselves and—my wife. She'll understand, never fear. Now—shake hands on that, and stick to it, will you?"

"Desmond, you are a trump!"

"No need for compliments between you and me, Harry. Shut up and get on with your letter."

Then, because his mind was freed from anxiety, he realised that the Boy's hand felt like hot parchment, and that his eyes were unusually bright.

"You've got fever on you," he said brusquely. "Feel bad?"

"Pretty average. My head's been going like an engine these two days. Couldn't eat anything yesterday or get a wink of sleep last night. That's what set my conscience stirring perhaps."

Desmond laughed.

"Likely as not! I'm off for Mackay all the same. Get into my chair and stay there till further orders. Don't bother your head about that letter. It shan't miss the mail. I'll write it myself to-night."

An invisible reminder from the doorway that the Heaven-born's bath had long been waiting, elicited a peremptory order for the Demon; and Amar Singh departed, mystified but obedient. The Sahib he worshipped, with the implicit worship of his race, was a very perplexing person at times.

James Mackay's verdict—given well out of the patient's hearing—was immediate and to the point.

"Typhoid, of course—104 deg. Fool of a boy not to have sent for me sooner. Ought to have been in bed two days ago. Get him there sharp, and do what you can with wet sheets and compresses. I'll wire for a nurse, but we shan't get one. Never do. Not a ounce of ice in the place, and won't be for three days. That's always the way. He'll keep you on the go all night by the looks of him. May as well let the Major do most of it. You'd be none the worse for a few hours in bed yourself."

A certain lift of Desmond's head signified tacit denial, and the astute Scotsman knew better than to insist. Meeting Wyndham at the gate, he counselled a policy of non-resistance.

"The fellow's overdone without knowing it," he said. "Take my advice, man, and let him gang his ain gait. Fever or no, he's hard as nails, and he'll be glad enough to knock under in twenty-four hours' time."

Throughout that night of anxious battling with the fire of fever the two Englishmen seemed translated into mechanical contrivances for the administering of milk, brandy, and chicken-broth; for the incessant changing of soaked sheets, that were none too cool at best; and for allaying, as far as might be, a thirst that no water on earth can quench.

Nothing draws men into closer union than a common danger, or a common anxiety; and in the past twelve years these two had stood shoulder to shoulder through both many times over. But their zeal produced no manifest results. Denvil's temperature rose steadily, and his stress of mind broke out in a semi-coherent babble of remorse and self-justification, of argument and appeal, of desperate reckonings in regard to ways and means. Desmond left his station by the bed and crossed over to his friend, who was noiselessly washing a cup and saucer.

"Don't hear any more of that than you can help. Fact, you might as well take your chance of a short rest till he's quieter. I'll come and tell you, no fear."

Paul glanced up with his slow smile from the saucer he was polishing with elaborate care.

"On your word, Theo?"

"On my word."

And he retired obediently to his own room—the room that in the cold weather had belonged to Honor Meredith; that, even now, empty casket though it was, awoke in him a subtle sense of her presence; of the strength and cheerfulness that crowned her beauty like a diadem, and transformed his outlook on life.

The letter to Mrs Denvil was written in the small hours. Harry never discovered its contents; but his mother, after reading it half a dozen times, locked it up with a hoard of sacred treasures pertaining to her boy. And soon after six, in the pitiless gold of dawn, the two men cantered leisurely down to early parade.

Here Desmond's attention was arrested by the absence of Rajinder Singh. Hailing a lesser native officer, he learnt that the Ressaldar had been ill with sun-fever all night, and was still quite unfit for work. Hindus are creatures of little or no stamina, and they go down like mown grass before the unhealthy heat of the Frontier.

Desmond despatched a message to the stricken man, adding that he himself would come to make inquiry before eleven o'clock. On his return he found Harry temporarily quieter, and fallen into a light sleep.

"I must see Frank about him," he reflected, "on my way back from the Lines." For Frank was the regimental standby in every emergency, and would claim the lion's share of the nursing as a matter of course.

True to his word, Desmond was back on the deserted parade-ground by half-past ten, his syce pursuing him closely, a flat paper parcel under his arm. It contained a full-length photo of himself in the silver frame that had held his mother's picture, because frames were not to be procured at an hour's notice in Kohat, and he had a great wish that his gift should be complete: a lasting memento—such as the old Sikh would keenly appreciate—of their stirring ride, and of the fact that he owed his life to the man's remarkable quickness of ear and brain.

Rajinder Singh lived alone; for the Sikh, when he enters Imperial service, leaves his wife behind in her own village. His one-roomed hut was saturated with heat, and almost devoid of light. It contained a chair, a strip of matting, and a low string-bed, with red cotton quilt and legs of scarlet lacquer. Mud walls and floor alike were scrupulously clean. Sacred vessels, for cooking and washing, were stowed away out of reach of defilement. Above his bed the simple-hearted soldier had nailed a crude coloured print of the Kaiser-i-Hind in robes and crown; and on the opposing wall hung a tawdry looking-glass, almost as dear to his heart.

The Sirdar was nominally in bed; that is to say, he lay on the bare strings, beneath his cotton quilt, fully dressed in loose white tunic and close-fitting trousers. His turban alone had been discarded, and stood ready-folded beside him, a miracle of elaborate precision.

At the sound of hoofs he sat up instantly, his uncut hair and beard flowing down to his waist. In less than twenty seconds both had been twisted to a deft knot high on the head, his turban adjusted at an irreproachable angle; and, as Desmond's figure darkened the doorway, he staggered to his feet and saluted with a trembling hand.

"Sit down, sit down!" his Captain commanded him; and he obeyed, rather suddenly, with a rueful smile.

"The years steal away my strength, Hazur. A little fever, and my bones become as water—yea, though I had once the might of ten in this dried-up arm."

Desmond smiled and shook his head.

"No reason to speak evil of the years, after yesterday, and the fever hath the power of seven devils over any man. I have been all night beside Denvil Sahib, who lieth without sense and strength this morning, young as he is."

"Denvil Sahib! I had not known. Is it fever also?"

"Yes,—the great fever. A matter of many weeks, and sore trouble of mind; for disease takes strong hold upon the strong. And what will come to the squadron, with both my troop commanders laid in their beds?"

"Na,—na, Hazur. I will arise, even as I am——"

"That you will not, Sirdar Sahib," Desmond interposed with kindly decision; "we will rather give Bishan Singh a chance to prove that he is fit for promotion. I have had the assurance from him many times in words. Now I will have it in deeds—the fittest language for a soldier."

The deep-set eyes gleamed approval.

"Great is the wisdom of the Captain Sahib, understanding the deceitfulness of man's heart. Bishan Singh's tongue is as a horse without bit or bridle. If head and hand carry him as far, he will do well."

"True talk," Desmond answered, smiling. Then with the incurable diffidence of the Englishman when he is moved to do a gracious action, he held out his parcel. "See here, Rajinder Singh. This is a small matter enough for your acceptance. A token merely that—I do not forget."

"Hazur!"

The eagerness of a child transfigured the man's weatherbeaten face, and his fingers plucked unsteadily at the string.

Desmond took out a knife and slit it without a word.

For a long moment Rajinder Singh gazed upon the miracle before him in silent wonder. To the unsophisticated native—and there are happily many left in India—a photograph remains an abiding miracle; a fact to be accepted and reverenced without explanation, like the inconsistencies of the gods.

"In very truth, it is the Captain Sahib himself!" he muttered with the air of one who makes an amazing discovery. Then, grasping his possession in both hands, he held it out at arm's length, examining every detail with loving care; glancing from the counterfeit to the original as if to satisfy himself that the artist had omitted nothing; for Desmond was wearing the undress uniform of the picture.

"Bahut, bahut salaam,[22] Sahib!" he broke out in a tremulous fervour of gratitude. "It is your Honour's self, as I said, lacking only speech. Feature for feature—cord for cord. All things are faithfully set down. Behold, even these marks upon the scabbard,—the very scar upon your Honour's hand! Now, indeed, hath God favoured me beyond deserving; for my Captain Sahib abideth under this my roof until I die."

[22] Many, many thanks.

Rising unsteadily, in defiance of Desmond's mute protest, he removed the cherished looking-glass, hung the photo in its place, and, drawing himself up to his full six-feet-two of height, gravely saluted it.

"Salaam, hamara,[23] Captain Sahib Bahadur!"

[23] Salaam, my Captain Sahib.

Then he turned to find Desmond, who had risen also, watching him intently, his full heart in his eyes.

"I thought it would give you pleasure," he said, in a tone of restrained feeling, "but I had no knowledge that it would please you as much as that. I am very glad I thought of it. But now," he added more briskly, "enough of talk. There waiteth more work to be done than a man can accomplish before dark. Get you back to bed, Ressaldar Sahib, and stay there until I order otherwise."

Once outside, he sprang to the saddle, and set off at a canter through the withering, stupefying sunlight towards Captain Olliver's bungalow.



CHAPTER XI.

YOU DON'T KNOW DESMOND.

"Suffer with men, and like a man be strong."—MYERS.

Frank Olliver, looking remarkably fresh and cool in a holland gown of severe simplicity, greeted him from the verandah with a flour-covered hand. At the sound of hoofs, her ready brain had sprung to the right conclusion, and she hurried out to save him the necessity of dismounting. She had learned to know the value of minutes to a hard-worked man.

"Geoff told me," she said, a rare seriousness veiling the laughter of her eyes. "It's cruel bad news, but you mustn't dream of being anxious yet awhile, Theo, man. I'll be round by half-past eleven sharp; stay till you two are through with your work; rest this afternoon and come on again at seven, till morning. You'll just take one clear night in bed before I let you go shares in that part o' the work. You can trust him to me, can't you, though I am a mad Irishwoman? I'll promise not to be waking up the patient to take his sleeping draught, or any such cleverness!"

Her nonsense dispelled Desmond's gravity. "I can trust you as far as that, I think!" he answered with a laugh; "but I won't have you knocking yourself up again over this. The lad's my subaltern, and it's my business. You shall take to-night, though, if you've a mind to, and my best thanks into the bargain. God alone knows where we should all be without you."

"Just precisely where you are at present, no doubt!" But the softened tone betrayed her appreciation of his honest praise. "It's just a bad habit you've got into, that's the truth, and I've not the heart to break you of it either. But 'tis no time now for playing ball with compliments. I'm busy over a cake. My cook has a pain, an' swears 'tis cholera. An' what with dosing him, an' trying to convince him he's a fool, and seeing after Geoff's tiffin, I'll be melted to one tear-drop presently; but the good man'll have to dine at Mess to-night."

Desmond gathered up his reins, and she waved to him as he rode away.

Punctually at the half-hour she entered the sick-room—cool, practised, business-like, and took over her case as composedly as any trained nurse. For in those early days nursing was as persistent a feature of the hot weather as the punkah itself, and her skill had been acquired in a hard school.

The Boy had been installed, for greater comfort, in Desmond's own bed; and he greeted her with a faint smile of recognition.

"Poor, dear old fellow," she murmured tenderly, pushing the damp hair from his brow; "wait only till the ice comes, an' we'll pull you round finely, never fear."

His lids fell under her soothing touch, and sprinkling her fingers with lavender water she passed them across and across his forehead; a look in her eyes the while that none save her "brother officers" had ever seen there; a look such as her children might have seen, had she been so blest.

Among acquaintances Mrs Olliver passed for a masculine woman, boisterous and good-humoured, though somewhat lacking in the lesser proprieties and affectations which passed for delicacy of feeling. But with all her angularity and mannish ways, she was a fine mother wasted: and in her heart she knew it. There are too many such among us. A mystery of pain and unfulfilled hope which there seems no justifying, save that at times the world is the gainer by their individual loss; and Frank Olliver, being denied the blessedness of children, mothered all the men of her regiment, the formidable Colonel not excepted.

Having charmed her patient into a light sleep, she made a noiseless tour of the room, smiling at the revelation of Paul Wyndham's hand in the exquisite neatness wherewith all things had been set in order. A towel pinned to the punkah frill brought the faint relief of moving air nearer to Denvil's face. In the hasty manner of its pinning Theo's workmanship stood revealed, and the smile deepened in her eyes. She knew each least characteristic of these her grown children; knew, and loved them, with a strong unspoken love.

Her next move brought her to the thermometer. It registered 95 deg. A long while after sundown the mercury might drop three degrees, certainly not more. She cast an anxious glance at the sleeper, and her quick eye caught the lagging of the punkah, broken by fitful jerks, which denotes that the coolie—squatting on his heels in the verandah—is pulling the inexorable rope in his dreams.

Opening the outer door and letting in a blast as from the mouth of hell, she reasoned with that much-enduring human machine in a forcible Irish whisper, that set the towel flapping and billowing like a flag in a wind. The room was none the cooler for his exertions, but in such intensity of heat mere movement of the air serves to prevent suffocation.

Mrs Olliver sat down beside her patient and her mind reverted to her own domestic calamity. She wondered with a simple practical wonderment, devoid of fear, whether or no she had a case of cholera in her compound. To-morrow it would be well to ascertain the truth; and in the meantime she dismissed the matter from her mind.

Before tiffin was over at the station Mess, Wyndham made his appearance, and with a friendly nod of welcome took the reins out of her hands. But by seven o'clock she was back at her post; and one look at Harry's flushed face and unseeing eyes convinced her that the next twelve hours would make a high demand upon her energies, and her resolute hopefulness of heart.

Desmond came in before Mess. His eyes were grave and anxious, and for many minutes he stood looking down upon the boy in silence; the slim uprightness of his figure emphasised by the close-fitting white uniform, with its wide splash of scarlet at the waist. Then he crossed to the table and studied the chart, that strange hieroglyph, like a negative print of forked lightning, so full of dread meaning to those who can read it aright. The latest entry was 106 deg.

"You saw Mackay?" he asked, under his breath.

"I did."

"You're in for a hard night of it. I'd better stay up and help."

"I'll not have you at any price," she answered bluntly.

He frowned. But the fact that he did not insist spoke volumes to her understanding heart.

"Swear you'll send Amar Singh to wake me if it seems necessary."

"I will—no fear."

"He'll sit handy, just outside, all night and help you in any possible way. He's a jewel at times like this. I'll look in again when I get home."

"Come back early," she commanded with a sudden smile, "and have a solid night of sleep. It's plain your needing it badly."

"Thanks. I believe I am. I'll make a fresh start afterwards and take my fair share of the work. Jove! It's a furnace of a night. There goes the trumpet; I'll be back before long."

His words were truer than he knew.

Shortly after nine o'clock, while Mrs Olliver was persuading her semi-delirious patient to swallow two tablespoonfuls of chicken-broth, quick footsteps and the clink of spurs made her sit suddenly upright, with a listening look in her eyes. She knew the country of her service well enough to be prepared for anything at any hour of the day or night—and she was barely surprised when, two minutes later, Desmond stood before her in his forage cap, his sword buckled on over his mess-jacket and held high to prevent it from clanking.

"What is it?" she asked in a hurried whisper. "A beacon fire alight?"

He nodded, and passed a handkerchief across his forehead, for he had come at lightning speed.

"A raid of sorts—out Hangu way. Can't tell if it'll be a big thing or not. The whole garrison's ordered out."

It was a matter of seconds, and he spoke in a breathless rush.

"I dashed on ahead to give you a few instructions. Olliver is ordering Griselda to be saddled and brought across at once. If the affair looks serious we'll send an orderly back to fetch a doolie from the hospital, come on here for you and the Boy, and see you safely to the Fort, where you must stay till further orders. Get all possible necessaries together, and be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

"If we move him to-night, Theo, 'twill be—the end of it all."

A spasm of pain crossed his face.

"I hope to God it mayn't be necessary. But we must take our chance of that. It won't be safe for you to have a light in the house, with every door open, and the city full of budmashes.[24] Can you manage with just a night-light carefully screened?"

[24] Bad characters.

"Sure I can. I'll manage to see with me fingers well enough!"

"Right! Amar Singh'll sit outside the door. He'll not sleep a wink, I promise you."

The suspicion of a tremor in her brave smile caught at his heart. He pressed her shoulder with a reassuring hand.

"Sorry Olliver couldn't see you before leaving," he said gently. "Hullo, there's Paul; I must be off. God bless you for a plucky woman, Frank. We'll all get back—sometime, never fear." And in an instant she was alone.

Nothing remained but to blow out the lamp and set the screened night-light on a table farthest from the outer doors. Its uncertain flicker served to make darkness visible and through the darkness she crept back to her station by the bed.

Denvil, who had fallen into an unrefreshing sleep, stirred and tossed with broken mutterings that threatened every moment to break out into the babble of delirium; and for a while she sat beside him in a stunned quietness, her ears strained to catch the sounds that came up from below—the hasty gathering of men and horses and mules; the jingle of harness; brisk words of command; the tramping of many feet. Comforting sounds, since they spoke of the protective presence of Englishmen.

But those that followed were less reassuring, for they were sounds of massed movement, of an organised body under way: the muffled tread of infantry, the cheerful clatter of cavalry at the trot. She knew the order of their going, to the minutest detail. A vision of it all was photographed upon her brain as she had witnessed it these many times within the past ten years; and perhaps owing to the mental vividness of her race, custom had not yet ground the edge off the poignant moment of departure.

Rapidly, inexorably, the sounds retreated toward the hills; and as they drew farther away she listened the more intently. It was as if her spirit, freed from her body, followed the men she loved, till the unheeding night absorbed them—till hearing, stretched to its utmost limit, could catch no lightest echo of sound.

Then silence, intensified by stifling darkness, enveloped her, pressing in upon heart and brain like an invisible force that held her prisoner against her will.

The practical side of her fought squarely against this obsession of the intangible; but it persisted and prevailed. The mocking shadows crowded about her, compelled her to a discomfortable realisation of her solitude in a station needing the perpetual alertness of armed men to ensure peace and safety. For Kohat city boasted a creditable average of bad characters and murder cases—a corpse more or less on the Border being of no more consequence than the fall of a sparrow; and the Waziris had of late been unusually daring in regard to Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station itself; and for all her courage, Frank Olliver was by no means fearless. The two are a contradiction in terms. Only the unimaginative are fearless, and only the keenly imaginative, capable of feeling fear in every fibre, ever scale the heights of true courage.

Save for the wakeful vigilance of sentries, the huddled bungalows of the cantonment lay below her empty as a handful of shells on a lone shore; and in the overpowering stillness each least sound stood out crisp and clear-cut as twigs against a winter sunset; the fitful rustle of bedclothes; Rob breathing peacefully in a distant corner; the whisper of the punkah; the querulous creaking of the rope answered by a whine from the back verandah, where a resigned coolie swayed a basket of damp straw, packed with bottles of milk and soda-water for Denvil's consumption during the night.

The reiteration of these still small voices grew distracting as the whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing thought, and compelling her to note every change in their pitiless regularity.

Resolved to break the spell by the only definite action available, she decided to prepare for the emergency which her brain refused to face. But on rising she was arrested by a voice from the bed—a voice not of speech but of song, a snatch from a burlesque the Boy had played in during the winter:

"My name it is Abanazar If you want me you needn't go far; I'm sure to be found, if you'll only look round, Number Seventy, Suddar Bazaar."

Denvil's deep baritone, distorted to a guttural travesty of itself, rose to a shout on the ascending notes of the last line. Then, without pause for breath, came the voice of speech—hurried, expressionless, heartrending to hear.

"Safe for an encore, that—what? Should ha' been Desmond, though. See him in tights you'd think he could slip through a wedding-ring. Done it too, by Jove! Better than horses that, in the long-run.—How about Grey Dawn?—Confound your luck! Always a dead cert till I lay anything on. Hold hard, though.... I'm done with all that now.... Wouldn't go back on Desmond—not for a mine of gold. You don't know Desmond;—wait till you're in a hole! Eight hundred rupees, I tell you—more than his month's pay! Said I was to keep quiet about it too. Not mail-day to-morrow, is it? Where's the use of writing to her? She'd never understand. Look out—some one's coming,—there by the door. Great Scott! It's—it's mother!"

The voice broke into an unnatural sound between a laugh and a sob, and Frank, who was already praying for the lesser evil of silence, bent over the Boy, soothing him with tender words and tone, as though she were his mother in very deed.

The delusion was strong upon him. He clung to her fiercely when she would have risen to fetch milk, overwhelming her with a rush of disjointed questions varied by snatches of enthusiasm for Desmond, till exhaustion reduced him to incoherent mutterings; and she was free at last to grope for milk and brandy and a fresh packing of wet sheets.

He grew quieter after a space, and sank into a more restful sleep, leaving Frank Olliver to face another spell of whispering silence; her ears strained now to catch the dread sound of a single horseman returning from the hills.

The first white streak of dawn found her still at her post, with hands quietly folded and unclosed eyes; found Amar Singh wide-eyed also, his lean face and figure rigid as a stone image, a bared sword lying like a flash of light across his knees.

And with the dawn came also the far-off mutter of the footsteps that night had stolen from her; an inverted repetition of the same sounds in a steady crescendo that rang like music in her ears—a sound to lift the heart.

The massed tramping of men and horses broke up at length, scattered in all directions, and within five minutes she looked up to find her husband in the doorway—a thickset man, with more of force than perception in his blunt features and heavily-browed eyes.

She rose and went to him straightway, her face alight with satisfaction, and he took a friendly hold of her arm by way of greeting. They had always been more like good comrades than man and wife, these two.

"Well, old girl," he said, "there was no show after all, you see. It seems that the raid didn't quite come off; and we had our scamper for nothing, worse luck! The Boy going on all right?"

"'Tis hard to tell. He's in a quiet sleep just now, anyway."

"You may as well come out of this, then, and give us some breakfast. I'm going to the Major's room to tidy up."

As his wife stepped back into the sick-room, Theo Desmond came quickly towards her.

"Well done," he said heartily; "you didn't expect us quite so soon, did you? Not a shot fired, and I should have been swearing all the way home—but for the Boy. Looks peaceful enough now, doesn't he? Temperature any lower?"

"Just a little, these last few hours. But he's been talking a deal of madness, poor fellow."

"What about?" he asked sharply. "Money?"

She smiled, with an odd mixture of pride and tenderness in her eyes.

"Faith, I can see what's been happening, Theo, clear as daylight. But I'll say no word to a soul, not even Geoff; you know that sure enough."

"Yes, I know it. But I'll feel grateful when he stops airing the subject."

Her low laugh had a break in it, and he scanned her face keenly.

"You're played out, Frank. I was afraid you were hardly fit for this sort of thing yet. You don't do a stroke more till to-morrow morning. Come along now and have five grains of quinine and some food. Amar Singh can mount guard in case the Boy wakes up."

Paul Wyndham greeted her with his nod and smile, which were apt to convey more friendliness than other people's words. Desmond set her ceremoniously in the place of honour; and the 6.30 breakfast, prepared at ten minutes' notice, and eaten in Mess uniform, proved a remarkably cheerful affair; one of those simple, commonplace events which, for all their simplicity, go far to cement friendship and form refreshing cases along the dusty path of life.

The morning post-bag contained an envelope in Evelyn's handwriting; and, the Ollivers being gone, Theo retired to the study to enjoy it at his leisure. It proved to be short, and contained little beyond querulous upbraiding. Her husband could almost catch the tone of her voice as he read; and the light of satisfaction left his face. Evelyn had an insatiable appetite for long and detailed letters, though she by no means returned them in kind; and it appeared that Theo had not written for a week. In the fulness of his days he had not realised the fact which was now brought forcibly to his notice.

"It's just laziness and selfishness," she wrote in her sweeping fashion, "when you know how I look out for your letters, to leave me a whole week without a line. If it was me, there might be some excuse, because there's always something or another going on, and I never seem to get a minute to sit down and write. But you must have hours and hours of spare time in the long days down there. I expect you play chess with Major Wyndham all the while, and quite forget about writing to me. I suppose if you were ill some one would have the decency to write and tell me. But if you don't write yourself directly you get this, I shall think something dreadful has happened; and it's such a nuisance not to know if you are all right. I can't enjoy things properly a bit."

And so on, ad lib., da capo, until the end.

Having read it through twice, with a flicker of amusement in his tired eyes, he sat down straightway, wrote for a quarter of an hour at the top of his speed, and left the letter ready for the afternoon post. It contained a polite apology for remissness, followed by an account in bare outline of his doings during the past five days; a few details in regard to Harry's illness; and an intimation that if letters were short, she must remember that, for the present, every hour of spare time would be taken up with nursing the Boy or writing detailed accounts to his mother. And, in truth, before that wearisome illness was over Mrs[.] Denvil and her boy's Captain had struck up a lasting friendship across six thousand miles of sea.

* * * * *

On her return from a tennis party the following afternoon Evelyn Desmond found the letter awaiting her; and her face took such rueful lines as she read it, that Honor's anxiety was roused.

"Evelyn—what is it?" she asked, a slight catch in her breath.

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders in meek resignation.

"Oh, it's only rather more Kohatish than usual! Mr. Denvil seems to be quite bad with typhoid, and Theo has been galloping over half the Frontier after outposts—such rubbishy work for a man like that! And—oh, you'd better read it all for yourself. You needn't bother about it having been written for me. It might just as well be a paragraph out of a newspaper!"

With a childish grimace she tossed the letter across the table. But hid in her heart lay the rankling knowledge that she had been both hasty and unjust to her husband, who had emphasised the fact by ignoring it,—a method peculiarly his own.

Honor read every line of the closely-written pages with eager interest, read also the much that had not been written, that Evelyn had failed to discern; and a great thankfulness overwhelmed her that she had refrained from adding her own passing vexation to the burden of work and anxiety already resting on her friend's shoulders.

Her spoken comment was brief and characteristic.

"Oh, how I envy Mrs Olliver! We're just playing at life up here, you and I, like two dolls, while she is living the real thing down there."

Evelyn Desmond, in utter astonishment, flung annoyance to the winds.

"Really and truly, Honor," she declared, with conviction, "you are the most amazing person I've ever known!"



CHAPTER XII.

NOW IT'S DIFFERENT.

"A word! how it severeth! O Power of Life and Death, In the tongue, as the preacher saith." —BROWNING.

The great monsoon—a majestic onrush of cloud hurtling across the heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder—had long since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and valley and water-courses innumerable with the voice of melody.

On the cedar-crowned heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred fairy falls.

Theo Desmond drank in the cool green wonder of it all with a keenly perceptive enjoyment; drew into his lungs deep draughts of the strong, clean mountain air; watched the frail curtain of mist swaying, lifting, spreading to a pearl-white film, till, through a sudden rent, the red gold of sunset burned, deepening to a mass of velvet shadow the inexpressible blue of rain-washed hills.

His post of observation on this August evening was the saturated verandah of "The Deodars," where he had flung himself full length in Honor's canvas chair, a pipe between his teeth; hands locked behind his head; lavishly muddied boots and gaiters outstretched; the whole supple length of him eloquent of well-earned relaxation and repose.

Three days earlier he had ridden up through a world of driving mist and rain in the wake of Harry Denvil's doolie; having secured a blessed month of respite for himself and two months for the Boy, who, by the efforts of three tireless nurses and a redoubtable Scotch doctor, had been dragged back from death; and was but just beginning to take hold on life and health again.

From outset to close he had clung to the support of Desmond's presence with the tenacity of an exhausted body and a fevered brain;—a tenacity which could not fail to touch the older man's heart, and which had made it difficult for others to take their due share in the nursing. Thus the slow weeks of dependence on one side, and unwearied service on the other, together with the underlying bond between them, had wrought a closeness of friendship to which the Boy had long aspired; and which promised to add depth and stability to the warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after the wordless manner of men, gave him full assurance of both. It is just this power to draw out the best and strongest by the simple habit of taking it for granted that marks the true leader; the man who compels because he never insists; whose influence is less a force than a subtle radiation.

And now, as Theo Desmond sat alone fronting a world compact of mist and fire, and the fragrance of moist earth, his mind was mainly concerned with the Boy's future, and with certain retrenchments of his own expenditure, whereby alone he could hope to cancel the debts that remained after the disposal of Roland. His sole trouble in respect of these retrenchments lay in the fact that they must, to some extent, affect his wife. If only she could be persuaded to see the necessity as clearly as he did himself, all would be well. She and Harry had been good friends from the outset. He hoped—he believed—she would understand.

Light footsteps on the boards behind him brought a smile to his lips; but he neither turned nor stirred. An instant later, hands cool and imponderable as snowflakes rested on his forehead, and silken strands of hair brushed it softly as his wife leaned over him, nestling her head against his own.

"Are you very happy sitting there?" she whispered.

"Supremely happy."

"Why? Because you're so nice and wet, and messy?"

"Yes; and a few other reasons as well."

"What other reasons? Me?"

"Naturally, you dear little goose! Come round and let me get a sight of you, instead of perching behind me like a bird."

She came round obediently, standing a little away from him,—a slim strip of colour that reflected the uncertain sea-tint of her eyes,—and looked down upon his disordered appearance with a small grimace.

"I'm not sure that I love you properly, Theo, when you're quite as muddy as that."

"Oh yes, you do; come on!"

And putting out an arm, he drew her down till she knelt beside him, her hands resting on his knee. He covered them quietly with one of his own.

"Ladybird, it's turning out a glorious evening! Come for a walk."

"Oh, Theo, don't be so uncomfortably energetic! I hate going out in the wet. You only came in half an hour ago, and you've been walking all day."

He laughed—the glad laugh of a truant schoolboy—and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I'm capable of walking all night too! Only then you might imagine the hot weather had turned my brain. But indeed, little woman, if you had been sickened with sunlight and scorched earth as I have been for the last three months, you'd understand how a man may feel a bit lightheaded in the first few days that he's quit of it all."

"And was I very horrid to be playing up here in the cool all the time?" she asked, pricked by the memory of Honor's words to one of her rare touches of compunction.

"My dear, what nonsense! It would have been double as bad if you had been there too."

Sincerity rang in his tone, and she noted the fact with a sigh of relief. She was not altogether heartless, this fragile slip of womanhood. She merely desired, like many of us, the comfort of being selfish without the unbecomingness of appearing so.

"We'll sit out here together and talk till it gets dark," she announced with a pretty air of decision, lest the invitation to walk should be renewed. "Stay where you are, and I'll fetch a stool. It's quite a treat to see you looking lazy for once in a way."

She brought a stool and established herself close to him. He acknowledged her presence without removing his eyes from the storm-tossed glory of the sky.

"Look, Ladybird—look!" he urged in a low tone. "We can talk afterwards."

But her attention was caught and riveted by the reflection of the glory in her husband's face.

"Does it please you so tremendously?" she asked in honest bewilderment. "Just a sunset! You've seen hundreds of them before."

He smiled and answered nothing. Speech and emotion inhabit different hemispheres of a man's brain; woman alone is rash enough to force them into unwilling union.

The clinging garment of mist, driven and dispersed by day's last flash of self-assertion, lay heaped and tumbled in the valleys, and the mountains stood knee-deep in an opalescent sea of foam. It was as though Nature, in a mood of capricious kindliness, had rent the veil, that mortals might share in the triumphal passing of the sun, whose supremacy had been in eclipse these many days.

Above the deep-toned quiet of earth, blurred and ragged clouds showed every conceivable tone of umber and grey, from purest pearl-white to darkest depths of indigo. Only low down, where a blue-black mass ended with level abruptness, a flaming strip of day was splashed along the west—one broad brush-stroke, as it were, by some Titanic artist whose palette held liquid fire. Snows and mist alike caught and flung back the radiance in a maze of rainbow hues; while beyond the bank of cloud a vast pale fan of light shot outward and upward to the very zenith of heaven. Each passing minute wrought some imperceptible change of grouping, form, or colour; blurred masses melted to flakes and strata on a groundwork of frail blue; orange deepened to crimson; and anon earth and sky were on fire with tints of garnet and rose. Each several snow-peak blushed like an angel surprised in a good deed. Splashes of colour sprang from cloud-tip to cloud-tip with invisible speed, till even the chill east glowed with a faint hue of life.

And in the midst of the transient splendour, enveloped by the isolation of the falling day, husband and wife sat silent, absorbed in strangely opposite reflections. Verily they dwelt in different planets, these two who had willed to be one, but whom forces more potent held it inexorably apart.

Desmond had long since passed beyond the border-line of definite thought; while Evelyn's mind rapidly reverted to the more congenial atmosphere of things terrestrial. An unknown force was urging her to speak openly to her husband, to rid herself of the shadow that had begun to tarnish the bright surface of life. It would be easier to speak in dusk than in bald daylight—easier also before the bloom of reunion had been rubbed off by the prosaic trivialities of life. In her present position, too, it would be possible to avoid his gaze; and she found a singular difficulty in tampering with facts when Theo's eyes were on her face.

She watched him speculatively for a few moments, and wondered what change would come over him when her tale was told. Anger frightened and repelled her; and for all his hastiness she had seldom seen more than a mere spark of his inner fire.

He seemed to have forgotten her existence; and by way of gentle reminder she shifted her position.

"Theo," she said under her breath.

He felt the movement without catching the sound of his name, and turned to her quickly, impulsive speech upon his lips.

"By the way, Ladybird, there's something I want to tell you, and this is a good opportunity."

The coincidence so startled her that her own half-fledged impulse scurried back to its nest. Nor was she certain whether the sigh that escaped her expressed disappointment or relief.

"What is it?" she asked—"something nice?"

The characteristic question set him smiling.

"You must judge for yourself. It chiefly concerns the Boy. You're fond of him, aren't you?"

"Yes; he's nice enough. But why?"

"You wouldn't mind if we put ourselves out a little to get him out of a difficulty?"

"Well, that would rather depend on what we had to do." Her tone, though still pleasant, was guarded. "What kind of difficulty?"

"Money."

She turned her face away something suddenly, and felt very thankful that day was fading from the sky.

"Do you mean—lending him money?" she asked blankly.

"No—giving it. I prefer it that way. There's no need to tell you his troubles in detail; it would hardly be fair to him. They, are of a kind you can't know anything about; and I hope you never will."

In the fewest possible words he gave her an outline of Harry's story; of the parting with Roland, and the promise he had exacted in return for his help. He spoke throughout with such unfailing kindness that vexation pricked and stung her, like thorns under the skin. She might have told him after all. He would not have been angry. Now she had been forestalled. She failed to perceive that the backslidings of his wife must of necessity touch him more nearly than those of his subaltern, and that to her own extravagance was added a host of petty evasions and deceits such as a man of his type would be little able to condone or understand.

"You see," he was saying when her mind harked back from the excursion into her own point of view, "the poor fellow has done all he can towards putting matters straight, and I am thankful I can manage the rest myself, so as to give him a fair start for the future."

"But how much is—your share?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"Rather more than eight hundred rupees."

"And you have actually—done it, Theo?"

"Yes. You surely couldn't have wished otherwise?"

For a moment she hesitated, then her repressed bitterness brimmed over.

"Oh, I don't know. Only I think you might have considered me a little first. I've more right to your money than he has; and if you can afford to throw away eight hundred rupees on a careless, extravagant subaltern, you could quite well let me go to Simla; or at least add something to my dress allowance. It's not so very easy to manage on the little you give me."

She spoke with averted face in a tone of clear hardness, and each word smote her husband like a small sharp stone.

"I am sorry you see it that way," he said, a new restraint in his voice, "and that you don't find your allowance sufficient. I give you all I can, and you seem to have pretty frocks enough, anyhow. If I had eight hundred rupees to throw away,—as you choose to express it,—I should hardly have spoken of putting ourselves out; in fact, I shouldn't have spoken at all. But you have been such good friends with the Boy all along that I hoped you would be ready to help give him a hand up. I can only manage such a sum by knocking two hundred off my pay for the next four months. This means cutting down expenses a little; but we can easily do it, Ladybird—if we pull together."

At any other time such an appeal from Theo would have proved irresistible, would have drawn them into a closer union of thought and purpose than they had ever attained as yet. But the appeal came at the wrong moment, and Evelyn Desmond sat silent, her hands so fast interlocked that her rings bruised their delicate surface.

"I am thinking of the Boy's mother as well as himself, you see," her husband urged with increasing gentleness; "he is her only son, and she is wrapped up in him; and I know from experience what that means."

She lifted her head and faced him.

"You think a great deal too much about—those sort of stray people, Theo, and it's rather hard on me. Why am I to be made uncomfortable on account of Mrs Denvil, when I've never even met her in my life?"

"If you can't see that for yourself, Ladybird, I'm afraid I can't tell you. I've no taste for preaching sermons."

"It would be rather a mercy if you had no taste for acting them either," she retorted, with a little laugh that failed to take the edge off her words. "I don't much like them in any form. How are you going to cut down expenses?"

"Chiefly in ways that need not concern you. But to start with, I'm afraid I must take you and Honor down with me on the third of next month. I can do nothing while I am crippled by a double establishment. You'll barely miss four weeks up here, and the heat is over earlier in Kohat than in the Punjab. Paul gets his leave when mine is up, and he will spend it here with the Boy, so as to take the last month of rent off my hands."

"So you've settled it all without saying a word to me?"

"Yes. I had to fix things up before I left. It's a pity the difficulty includes Honor, but I don't think she'll mind when I tell her why."

"Oh dear, no; Honor won't mind. I believe she's happier in Kohat,—but——"

"But you are not?" he broke out abruptly, leaning forward and searching her face with anxious eyes.

The vehement question startled her.

"I never said that, Theo—and it isn't true. Only—I do hate the ugliness and the heat, and September's the loveliest month of all up here."

"Doesn't it make things any easier to feel you are helping the Boy by giving up these few weeks of enjoyment?"

"No—it doesn't. Not a bit."

Desmond frowned.

"Try and fancy yourself in a strait like that, Evelyn, and the thundering relief it would be to get out of it."

His words stabbed her unwittingly.

"I'm not good at fancying things, and I'm not good at cutting down expenses either—I was never taught. I hope you don't do these uncomfortable sort of things often, Theo. It seems to me you're too much inclined to rush in and help people without stopping to think of—of other people at all! It would have been much better for the Boy if you'd left him to get clear of his muddle, instead of upsetting every one by spending money on him that you can't really spare."

Her husband leaned farther back into the shadow, his mouth hardened to a rigid line. All that he chose to say on the subject had been said.

Emboldened by his silence, and the fact that his face was hidden from her, she continued her small flow of remonstrance, undermining herself more completely with each fresh word.

"It was all very well while you were a bachelor for you to go throwing your life and your money about so foolishly. But now it's different; and I don't think you have a right to do it any more. Where's the good of us trying so hard to live on our pay, if it's only to be flung about to help subalterns who don't try at all? You can't cure Mr Denvil of being casual; and for all your generosity, you'll probably find him in just as bad a hole again by this time next year."

The words stung him to sharp retort.

"I never asked for your opinion of the Boy, Evelyn; and you seem to forget that he has given me his word."

"Oh, no doubt he has! It's easy enough to make promises when one's unhappy; but it isn't so easy to keep them when things get smooth again." And she nodded her head wisely, for her conviction sprang from the depths of personal experience.

Her husband rose and walked to the verandah's edge. Here he remained standing, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his Norfolk coat, his eyes fixed absently on the last gleam of light in the west, where all that now remained of the sunset's stormy splendour was a handful of filmy fragments, like rose petals dropped from some Olympian rose-bush, and the sickle of a young moon, outrivalled by the mellow radiance of the evening star. The snows lay dead and cold, awaiting the resurrection of dawn. Their chill pallor struck at his heart in a manner new to him.

Evelyn studied his eloquent outline with a mild surprise. She was not a little proud of her valiant protest against his mistaken ideas; and he was surely not foolish enough to be annoyed because she had talked practical common-sense.

She went to him at last, and lightly touched his arm.

"You look as solemn as a funeral, Theo! Why don't you speak?"

"Because I have no more to say. Too much has been said already. I am sorry I mentioned the matter at all."

With that he turned from her and entered the house.

Honor met him on the threshold, and her eyes were quick to catch the lurking shadow in his. But she merely said what she had come to say.

"Mr Denvil is longing for you. I have done my small best to amuse him; only there comes a stage when nothing will satisfy him but you. Where's Evelyn?"

"Outside there. It's time she came in."

Honor found her by the verandah rails, standing like a pensive ghost in the dying light.

"Studying the sunset, Evelyn?" she remarked cheerfully. "That's a new departure for you!"

Whereat Evelyn flung out both hands—a pretty appealing gesture all her own.

"Oh, Honor, Theo's been so troublesome! And he wants to take us down on the third of next month. He will explain to you the why of it all; perhaps you'll understand better than I could. Such high-flown notions don't appeal to me a bit. I think Theo is rather like that silly man in the Middle Ages who was always trying to fight windmills, or sheep, or something; and there really ought to be a law to prevent people who want to go about being unselfish to everybody from ever having wives at all!"



CHAPTER XIII.

IT ISN'T FAIR.

"Though thou repent, yet have I still the loss; The offender's sorrow yields but weak relief To him who bears the strong offence's cross." —SHAKESPEARE.

The measure of a man's worth is not to be found in a heroic impulse or a fine idea, but in the steadfast working out of either through weeks and months—when the glow has faded from the heights, when the inspiration of an illumined moment has passed into the unrecognised chivalry of daily life; and the three months following upon that crucial August evening put no light tax upon Desmond's staying power,—the power that is the corner-stone of all achievement.

Border life is, in every respect, more costly than life in "down country" cantonments. To keep within the narrow bounds of his pay was already a difficult matter; and such minor retrenchments as could be achieved were inadequate to meet his present need. He saw that he would be called upon to part with one or two cherished possessions, acquired in days of young extravagance; and possibly to break into the few hundred rupees laid aside for emergencies shortly after his marriage.

Wine, cigars, and cigarettes must be banished outright; and he limited himself to one pipe and one "peg" a-day. Stores of all kinds were ruthlessly cut down; and only the Anglo-Indian housewife knows what it means to be flung almost entirely upon the tender mercies of the Bazaar. Informal dinner-parties, for which the Desmonds were famous, became rare events; and nights at Mess—a favourite and justifiable luxury—were reduced in number as far as might be without eliciting remonstrance from his brother officers. For in India, and more especially in the Army of India, it is profoundly true that "no man liveth unto himself." In the Land of the Open Door the second of the two great commandments is apt to be set before the first; and nowhere, perhaps, is the bond of union stronger, more compelling, than in the isolated regiments of the Frontier Force. But, with due regard for this unwritten law, Desmond accomplished much in those few months of unremitting self-denial; and if his friends noted certain changes in his way of life, they accepted these in the true spirit of comradeship, without question or comment.

Even Wyndham kept silence, though he had fuller knowledge of his friend's abstemiousness, and was disturbed by a great longing to remove the hidden cause. But intimate speech played a minor part in the friendship of these two men. The very depth and strength of their feeling for each other constrained them to a particular reticence in the matter of self-expression.

On the first occasion of Paul's dining at the blue bungalow, after his return from Murree, Desmond spoke a few words of apology for the absence of wine and cigars.

"Sorry to treat you shabbily, old man," he said, when they were alone. "Just a little necessary economy. It won't last long."

Paul nodded, smiling, and quietly proffered his own cigar-case.

"At least you'll not refuse one of mine, Theo," he said; and their talk drifted into the fertile channel of "shop," and the prospect of serious collision with Russia, which at that time loomed on the political horizon.

Paul was thus left to draw his own conclusions, which were not complimentary to his friend's wife. For reserve has its drawbacks, like every other virtue; and those who practise it often, forget that if there is a time for silence, there is also a time for speech.

Evelyn clung tenaciously to her disapproval of the whole proceeding. The scarcity of stores, and of pleasant little dinners, were the only retrenchments that directly disturbed her comfort, and she made the most of them, though the problems of housekeeping fell mainly upon Honor's shoulders. The girl's readiness to accept Evelyn's burden, as a matter of course, could not fail to rouse Desmond's admiration: and these three months of friction and stress, of working bravely together for one end, went far to strengthen the bond of their friendship.

Evelyn contented herself with a thinly veiled air of martyrdom, and with raising objections whenever opportunity offered. Only after Denvil's first dinner did she venture a direct attack. For on this occasion economy was not. Wine and cigars appeared with the dessert; and the two men sat an inordinately long while over both. But the inner significance of her husband's acts being a sealed book to Evelyn Desmond, she spent the evening in a state of suppressed irritation, which, on the Boy's departure, overflowed in petulant reproof.

"Why did you have everything different to-night just because of Mr Denvil?" she demanded in a note of challenge.

"Because I preferred it so."

Desmond's tone was polite, but final. He sat down and opened a book in self-defence. But Evelyn was not to be baulked by a policy of masterly inactivity. She remained standing before him.

"Is it going to be like that every time he comes?"

"Yes."

"Theo—it's perfectly ridiculous the way you put yourself out for that boy!" she protested with unusual heat, kindled by a hidden spark of jealousy. "It's bad enough to have you giving up everything, and making Honor and me thoroughly uncomfortable, without this sort of nonsense on the top of it all."

Honor glanced up in quick remonstrance; but Desmond caught the look in her eyes, and it was enough. "Haven't you the sense to see that just because he is so fond of you he ought to be allowed to know how much trouble he has given you. It's the only way to make him more careful, now he's back again; and if you will go on in this way, I shall end in speaking to him myself."

She had overshot the mark.

Desmond shut the book with a snap; flung it on the table, and sprang up with such anger in his eyes that his wife shrank back instinctively. Her movement, slight as it was, checked the impetuous speech upon his lips.

"You will do nothing of the sort," he said in a restrained voice. "It is a matter entirely between him and me; and that's an end of the subject, once for all."

Evelyn, startled into silence, stood motionless till the study door closed behind her husband; then, with a sigh of exasperation, hurried out of the room, leaving Honor to her own disturbing thoughts.

* * * * *

Each month was forcing upon the girl a clearer revelation of the clash of temperament, which threatened to bring about serious disunion between these two, whose happiness had become a vital part of her life; and her spirit was troubled beyond measure. The strongest passion of Honor Meredith's heart was the true woman's passion—to protect and help. But worldly wisdom warned her that her hands were tied; that man and wife must work out their own salvation, or the reverse, without help or hindrance from her.

Since their return from Murree such flashes of dissension had become increasingly frequent between them. It is astonishing how quickly two people can fall into a habit of discord. Abstinence from tobacco was not without its effect upon Desmond's nerves and temper, tried as they were by Evelyn's pin-prick methods of warfare; while she herself was often strung into irritability by her own unacknowledged troubles.

The passing relief wrought by Miss Kresney's loan had evaporated with the realisation that she had only contracted a debt in another direction—a debt more embarrassing than all the rest put together; for she knew that she would never have the courage to speak of it to her husband. Miss Kresney had told her to take her time in the matter of repayment, and she had taken it in generous measure. Not a fraction of the three hundred rupees had been repaid as yet; and, by way of atonement, Evelyn felt constrained to a more decisive friendliness with both brother and sister—a fact which Owen Kresney noted with satisfaction; and which did not improve matters between herself and Theo.

As the weeks wore on he devoted his spare time more exclusively to polo and Persian; continuing his lessons to Honor; and rarely spending his evenings in the drawing-room, unless the girl's music held him spellbound, and ensured the avoidance of dangerous topics. Evelyn retorted by a renewed zest for tennis and tea-parties; an increasing tendency to follow the line of least resistance, regardless of results. Thus Honor found herself thrown more and more upon the companionship of Mrs Olliver, Mrs Conolly, and Paul Wyndham, whose anxiety for Theo she guessed at, even as they guessed her own, though never a word on the subject passed between them.

Evelyn's anxiety was reserved exclusively for herself. She had sense enough to perceive that nothing could defer the day of reckoning much longer; and on a certain afternoon in early December she exhumed her detested sheaf of bills and sat down at her bureau to a reconsideration of the hopelessness of things in general.

A panel of winter sunshine, flung across the room from the verandah door, enveloped her in a glow of light and warmth. The drowsiness of an Indian noon brooded over the compound. Honor was out riding with Paul Wyndham; Theo busy in the next room, and very unlikely to interrupt her, she reflected with a pang of regret. In an hour's time she was going over to tea and tennis with the Kresneys; and had decided that, after six months of silence, some mention must be made of a fixed scale of repayment, to begin with the New Year. But in that event, what hope of meeting any of those other demands, that were again being urgently brought to her notice? What possibility of ordering the two new gowns—bare necessities, in her esteem—to grace the coming Christmas week at Lahore?

This same "week" is the central social event of the Punjab cold weather, when most officers on the Border are certain of their fifteen days' leave; when from all corners of the Province men and women gravitate towards its dusty capital—women with dress baskets of formidable size; men armed with polo-sticks, and with ponies, beloved cricket-bats and saddles!

Through all the dismal coil of things, this one hour of festivity gleamed on Evelyn Desmond's horizon like a light in a dark room. For one brief blessed week she would be in her element, would escape from the galling restraint of economy; and, more than all, in the background of her mind there lurked a hope that by some means she might recapture that vigorous, self-poised husband of hers, whose love was, after all, the one real necessity of her life; and whom she now saw slipping slowly, surely out of reach. But to recapture she must recaptivate; and to that end faultless frocks were indispensable.

She leaned her head upon her hands, and fell to building extravagant air-castles that eclipsed all practical considerations whatsoever.

So complete was her abstraction, that she failed to hear the study door open, and was rudely startled back to reality by her husband's voice at her elbow, sharp and stern, as she had never heard it till now.

"What is the meaning of this, Evelyn?" he demanded, bringing his hand down on the desk beside her; and one glance at the half sheet lying beneath it was enough. That particular bill had grown painfully familiar during the last few months. It was from Lahore, and its total was no less than three hundred rupees. Her husband's waiting silence was more disconcerting than speech.

"It's mine," she murmured breathlessly; and snatched at the offending scrap of paper, tearing it in two.

"The bill is mine now," Desmond rebuked her with studied equanimity. "You can't cancel it by destroying it. No doubt you've got another copy. Will you let me have it and any others you happen to have by you?"

"Where's the use of that?... You can't pay off anything now."

"I can and will pay off every penny. But I must know exactly how you stand."

For all his coldness, the assurance fell on her heart like rain on thirsty soil. Where the money was to come from she could not guess. But she knew enough of the man to feel sure that his words would be fulfilled to the letter.

One consideration only withheld her from reply. How much did she dare confess to him even now? Not Miss Kresney's transaction; nor the need of new dresses for Lahore. But the rest!... What an unspeakable comfort it would be to fling all the rest on to his shoulders, that seemed broad and strong enough to carry her burdens and his own.

Her hesitancy pricked him to impatience.

"Well, Evelyn, I am waiting for your answer. Are there other bills besides that one?—Yes or No. I want the truth. Don't stop to embroider it."

At that the blood flew to her cheeks. She sprang up and faced him, tremulous, but defiant.

"If you say things like that to me, I won't tell you anything at all ... ever." And turning sharply away, to hide her tears, she went over to the mantelpiece and leaned upon it, keeping her back towards him.

Desmond followed her.

"I am sorry if I hurt you," he said, a touch of bitterness in his tone. "But the fact that I can speak so without doing you a gross injustice hurts me more than you are ever likely to understand."

"You make it all seem much worse—than it really is," she answered without looking round. "I haven't done anything dreadful, after all. Heaps of people get into debt. You weren't so angry with Mr Denvil; and—and—if you hadn't been in such a hurry to help him, you'd have found it easier to help me now."

"No need to fling that in my teeth, or drag the Boy into the discussion. The cases are not parallel, and you have only yourself to thank that my money went to him instead of you. In my anxiety to avoid anything of this sort, I have questioned you several times, and each time you have told me a lie. The whole pile of bills are nothing to me in comparison with that. I suppose I ought to have known that you could hardly dress as you do on the little I can spare. But I was fool enough to trust you implicitly." He paused, and added with greater gentleness: "What's more, I shall trust you again, unless you make that quite impossible. But I warn you—Ladybird, that if ever you do kill my trust in you, you will kill—everything else along with it."

"Theo!"

There was sharp pain in the cry, and she swung round, flinging out her hands with a pathetic gesture of entreaty. He did not take them as she half hoped he would; but stood looking at her in a thoughtful silence. Then, "If you care as much as that," he said slowly, "it lies with you not to fling away the thing you care for. Will you please let me see those bills."

"They are on the bureau. You can take them."

She turned again to the mantelpiece, for her lips were not quite steady.

"You were going to tell me about them, perhaps?"

"N—no. I wasn't."

He sighed; and taking up the papers, looked through them absently, too deeply troubled to grasp their contents.

"Are these all?" he asked quietly.

"Nearly all."

"Have you any idea of the total?"

"About six hundred rupees."

A short silence followed, during which she again heard the rustle of paper behind her, and longed for a sight of his face.

"I am afraid this knocks the Lahore week on the head," he said at length. "I am bound to run down for the Polo Tournament, of course; but I can come straight back, and we must do without the rest of it this year."

The incredible words roused Evelyn to open mutiny. Once more she faced him, her head flung backward, a ring of resolve in her voice.

"No, Theo, ... I won't do without the rest of it. You don't care, I daresay! So long as you can win the Punjab Cup, nothing else matters. But Christmas week is my only bit of real pleasure in all the cold weather, and I will go down for it, ... whatever you say."

Theo Desmond was completely taken aback; and when surprise gave place to speech, his tone suggested the iron hand under the velvet glove.

"My dear little woman, you are talking nonsense. If I find it impossible to manage Lahore, you will remain here. There can be no question about that."

But Evelyn persisted with the courage of despair.

"Then you mustn't find it impossible, ... that's all! There has been nothing but giving up ever since we came from Murree. I'm sick of it; and I won't give up Christmas week, too. It's quite hard enough for me as it is, being stranded in the most hopeless part of India because of you, without your grudging my few little pleasures as well." And sinking into a chair, she hid her face in her hands.

The victory is more often to the unscrupulous than to the strong. His wife's injustice cut Desmond to the quick. Impulsive renunciation sprang to his lips; and was only checked by the remembrance that he had given Honor his word.

"Evelyn—Evelyn," he pleaded with sudden vehemence, "for Heaven's sake have a little consideration for facts—if you have none for me. I grudge you nothing—I have never done so—and you know it. But—if you really find Frontier life intolerable, I can only give you free leave to go home, directly I scrape together the money for your passage."

"Go home——?" she echoed in blank bewilderment. "What do you mean?"

"What I say."

"But—wouldn't you come too?"

"No. I have no leave due now; and if I had, I couldn't afford to take it."

"You want me to go?" she flashed out in a tremor of apprehension. "I'm only a hindrance to you here. That's the real truth, I suppose?"

"I never said that, and I have given you no grounds for thinking it."

"But do you, Theo—do you?"

Her eyes searched his face for confirmation of her suspicion, and found none.

"What I want or don't want is beside the mark," he said. "I naturally wish to see you happy; and as that evidently can't be managed here, I am willing to let you go and be happy elsewhere."

Her eyes fell and her answer came almost in a whisper.

"But I couldn't be happy anywhere else—without you."

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

"You'd prefer to stay here—with me?"

"Yes."

He laid his hand for an instant on her bent head.

"Stay then, Ladybird, by all means. Only, for pity's sake, spare me any more of the sort of things you said just now."

"And you won't stop me from going to Lahore, Theo?—Promise."

A swift change of expression crossed his face.

"I can't promise that. I'll do my best not to disappoint you, but I must get all these cleared off before I think of anything else."

"How can you manage to clear them off—now?"

"Why trouble your head about side issues? They will all be paid before Christmas; that ought to be enough for you."

"But it's not enough. Tell me what you are going to do—tell me. I won't be pushed on one side like a child."

Desmond frowned.

"Well—if you insist on having it, I am going to sell Diamond."

She started and caught at his arm. For all his matter-of-fact coolness, she knew what those half-dozen words meant to her husband.

"No,—no Theo. Not Diamond! He's the best of them all."

"Exactly. He'll sell quicker and fetch a longer price than any of the others; that's why—he must go."

"But the tournament? Captain Olliver's mad about winning the Cup this year."

"I know that. So am I. I shall manage about a third pony, no fear. Time enough to think of that later. I must go and make out those advertisements."

He set his teeth upon the word and turned to leave her, but her voice arrested him half-way to the door.

"Theo!"

"Well?"

"Are you sure there's nothing else that can be done? It—it isn't fair for you to lose the pony you love best, just because of a few dressmakers' bills."

At that his pent-up bitterness slipped from leash.

"Upon my soul, Evelyn, you're right. But there's no other way out of the difficulty, so let's have no more words about it: they don't make things easier to bear."



CHAPTER XIV.

I SIMPLY INSIST.

"The fountains of my hidden life, Are, through thy friendship, fair." —EMERSON.

Not many days later Desmond's advertisements appeared simultaneously in the only two newspapers of Upper India; and he set his face like a flint in anticipation of the universal remonstrance in store for him, when the desperate step he had taken became known to the regiment.

He was captain of the finest polo team on the frontier; the one great tournament of the year—open to every Punjab regiment, horse and foot—would begin in less than a fortnight; and he, who had never parted with a polo pony in his life, was advertising the pick of his stable for sale. A proceeding so unprecedented, so perplexing to all who knew him, could not, in the nature of things, be passed over in silence. Desmond knew—none better—that victory or defeat may hang on the turn of a hair; that, skilled player though he was, the introduction of a borrowed pony, almost at the last moment, into a team trained for months to play in perfect accord was unwise, to say the least of it; knew also that he would be called upon to justify his own unwisdom at so critical a juncture, when all hearts were set on winning the coveted Punjab Cup.

And justification was out of the question,—there lay the sting.

Loyalty to Evelyn sealed his lips; and even the loss of his best-loved pony was less hard to bear than the possibility of being misjudged by his brother officers, whose faith in him had come to be an integral part of his life.

In his present cooler frame of mind he saw that his action had been over-hasty; but with men of vehement temperament, to think is to feel, to feel is to act,—reflection comes last, if it ever comes at all. The first heat of vexation, the discovery of his wife's untrustworthiness and the sacrifice it entailed, had blinded him to all minor considerations.

But these were details that could not be put into words. The thing was done. To put a brave face on it, and to shield Evelyn from the result of her own misdoing—there lay his simple duty in a nutshell. The risk must be accepted, and the Punjab Cup carried off in its despite. This man owed more than he knew to the "beholden face of victory"; to his life-long determination that, no matter what happened, he must conquer.

In the meanwhile immediate issues demanded his full attention.

Harry Denvil, as might be expected, sounded the first note of protest.

He invaded the sacred precincts of his senior's study with audacious lack of ceremony.

"Forgive me, Desmond: but there was no one in the verandah, and I couldn't wait. Of course you know what's in the wind. The Colonel came on that advertisement of yours in 'The Pioneer' just before tiffin, and you should have heard him swear! He showed it to Major Wyndham, and asked: 'Was it a practical joke?' But the Major seemed quite cut up; said he knew nothing about it, and you would probably have good reasons to give. The rest didn't take it so quietly; but of course I understood at once. For God's sake, old chap, cancel that confounded advertisement, and take back your eight hundred. I can borrow it again from the shroff, just for the present. Anything's better than letting you in for the loss of Diamond at a time like this."

He broke off more from lack of breath than lack of matter; and Desmond, who had risen to cope with the intruder, put both hands upon the Boy's shoulders, a great kindliness softening his eyes.

"My dear Harry, don't distress yourself," he said. "I appreciate your generosity a good deal more than I care to say. But you are not in any way to blame for the loss of Diamond."

"But, Desmond—I don't understand——"

"There are more things in heaven and earth...!" Desmond quoted, smiling. "It's like your impertinence to understand everything at four-and-twenty."

"Oh, shut up!" the other retorted, laughing in spite of himself. "Can't you see I'm in earnest? You don't mean to tell me——?"

"No, Harry, I don't mean to tell you anything about it. I'm not responsible to you for my actions. Stay and have a pipe with me to cool you down a bit. Not another word about my affairs, or I take you by the shoulders and put you outside the door."

Thus much for Denvil. But the rest could not be treated in this summary fashion.

Wyndham put in an appearance at polo that afternoon. He played fitfully; and at other times rode out to the ground, which lay a mile or so beyond the station. To-day it chanced—or possibly Paul so contrived it—that he and Desmond rode home together, a little behind the others.

A low sun stretched out all the hills; distorted the shadows of the riders; and flung a golden pollen of radiance over the barren land.