Banked Fires, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  MAINLY RETROSPECTIVE

  Dinner that evening was neglected as neither could eat.

  Tired and hungry though Meredith had been, his appetite for foodvanished under the lash of his wife's resentment. She once said: "If mybaby is taken from me, I shall cut this country forever. I shall hate itwith an undying hatred. Nothing will induce me to live in it again andrisk a repetition of tonight. It is not fit for Europeans--and yet, thetragedy of it is, we can only know it by experience!"

  "That is to say, if you had foreseen this, you would never have marriedme?" he put in sulkily.

  Silence gave consent.

  "Why shouldn't you give up, and find something to do at home?" she askedunreasonably.

  "You don't know what you are talking about," he returned shortly. Giveup the "Indian Civil" and his splendid prospects, liberal futurepension, and the life of sport men loved? For what? A desk in a cityoffice; most likely a mercantile job on a third of the pay, and a lifeto which he was as much suited as a square peg to a round hole. Allthis, that the babe might be spared the illnesses that mortal flesh, ininfancy, is prone to, particularly in the East. It was utter nonsense!For the first five years there would be need for special care andintervals spent in a hill climate. In due time would come the change toEngland and English environment necessary for the proper physical andmental training of his child. This was the course usually followed byEnglish families in India of any social standing, and one which involvedsubmission on the part of the husband to short periods of separationfrom the wife in the interests of the absent children. Thousands ofmarried couples faced these conditions; why not they?

  He felt rebellious.

  What was the matter with his luck that it threatened not to work? He hadno fortune on which to retire, only a modest return from savingsjudiciously invested, while his wife would have nothing more than atrifle till the death of her parents; and they were still young. To giveup the Service would, under the circumstances, be madness and folly.

  Moreover, he loved the East. The climate had no grudge against hisEnglish constitution, and had been kind to him. He enjoyed the freedomof the life, India's great spaces; and the lurking risks made existencea great and continued adventure. In England it would be monotonous andflat. Though he loved the Motherland and was proud of her traditions, hewas of the stuff that made empires, and his tact and understanding ofthe natives under his rule, made him an officer of exceptional abilityand service to the Executive Government. Then there was big gameshooting which he enjoyed, and all the happy freedom from narrowconventions. Give up, indeed!

  Time enough to think of retiring when past middle age with shaken nervesand a growing appreciation of golf. Not while he could ride abuck-jumper, handle a hog spear or a polo stick, and shoot straight. Thethrill of tracking a wild beast to its lair was something to live for,and the hazards of his life made up its charm.

  The greatest of all hazards, had he realised it, had been his marriagewith Joyce Wynthrop of Eagleton, Surrey.

  She had put up her hair to attend the hunt ball the year he was home onfurlough and staying with his widowed sister, Lady Chayne, a neighbourof the Wynthrops, and it was love at first sight, with him. He had beenforced to attend the ball against his will, only to meet his fate, itwould seem.

  Thereafter, he had been obsessed with one ambition, and that was to winJoyce for his wife, in spite of the fact that he was fifteen years hersenior and held an appointment in the East.

  Touched by his devotion and influenced by the opinion of others, she hadyielded, feeling that Destiny was calling to her to fulfill herobligations to Life. Marriage with a good man of irreproachableantecedents, and children to rear in godliness and wisdom, was thereligion of her upbringing. It had been impressed upon her as thenatural vocation of woman so that the race might continue. She hadplayed with dolls as the proper playthings of her childhood, and wasprepared to exchange them for the children God should send her in somemysterious way to which marriage was the true gateway. Raymond Meredith,good-looking, kind, eligible, and full of love for herself was obviouslythe "Mr. Right" of schoolgirl tradition; the man to whom it would becorrect to give herself in the bonds of holy matrimony, even as hermother had long ago given herself to her father--an example ofunemotional attachment and tranquil orthodoxy.

  At first it had been wofully embarrassing to be made love to; and shewondered if her mother had been kissed so often and called all thosesilly love-names by her father before they were married?

  She also resisted the strange effect on herself of those ardent kisses,and was afraid to encourage feelings she had never before experienced,believing them immodest to indulge, and something she had to subdue witha determined effort. She would die sooner than confess to them. Passionmight be all right for men with whom every initiative of life lay, butunbecoming for women to acknowledge, even to themselves. In fact, JoyceWynthrop was a product of Early Victorian views on the subject of agirl's training, and an anachronism in modern times. She had been rearedin rigid ignorance of life, her reading having been heavily restricted,her associates selected, so that when the time came to hand her over toa husband, he should find her beautifully unconscious and unique.

  To Meredith, her shy submission to his caresses, and her passionlessresponse were the surest guarantee of her virginal past, and he was inno hurry to awaken the sleeping beauty to a deeper knowledge of herself.

  Joyce eventually decided for her peace of mind, that love-makingbelonged mainly to the period of Engagement, when everything was so new.Once having attained the object of his desire--that is, the possessionof a wife--her lover would settle down to normal life, and no longerregard her eyelashes with wondering admiration, or exact kisses becauseher mouth was shaped like Cupid's bow. Men were so disturbing, if theywere all like Ray Meredith!--delightfully disturbing,--only they mustnot know it, or peace and tranquillity would be impossible! Aftermarriage there would be other things to think about, such as having ahome, and, if the Lord willed it, a baby all their own, presented tothem in some extraordinary and mysterious fashion.

  She had always adored babies and could rarely pass one in a perambulatorwithout wanting to kiss it and know all its little history. To have ababy of her very own was a prospect so full of allurement, that sheoffered no coy objections when Meredith wanted the marriage fixed at theearliest possible date. Indeed, her calm was the despair of her girlfriends who envied her openly. Wasn't she "terribly" in love with him?Wasn't she just "thrilled to death" with excitement at the prospect ofhaving a husband and going all the way out to India?

  Joyce did not believe there was such a thing as being "terribly inlove," which was a phrase invented by cheap novelists, whose literatureshe had never been allowed to read. She admitted she was growing veryfond of her Mr. Meredith, and preferred him to any other man. Not thather experience of men was great--nevertheless, he was a "perfect dear."

  Her sister Kitty of the schoolroom, a young woman of rather decidedopinions, reproached her severely for lack of enthusiasm over her verypresentable lover. In her eyes, Ray Meredith was the ideal of a Cinemahero, with his clean-shaven, ascetic face, his muscular build, andadorable smile. "You should be flattered, my dear, that he condescendedto choose you out of the millions of girls in the world," she remarkedsagely. "You may be pretty, but hosts of girls are that. One has to beclever, and ... are _you_?... Why, you spelt vaccination with one 'c,'and vicinity with two only yesterday, and but for me, reading over yourshoulder, you would have been disgraced for ever. I am not sure that hewould not have broken it off! Then you know nothing whatever ofpolitics--or football. Men are crazy about both, so you really arerather stupid, darling, or cold-hearted. Surely you must feel allsquiggly down your back whenever Ray hugs and kisses you?"

  "What do you know about it?"

  "I'd be thrilled to my boots. Why, I feel like that every time they kissin the film--really I feel an intruder, and as if I shouldn't look."

  "Silly penny stories untrue to li
fe!" Joyce said as an echo of herfather's scorn, but blushing, nevertheless.

  "Well, if you don't appreciate your lover, tell him to wait for me. I'llput up my hair year after next and take him like a shot."

  "Of course I appreciate him, or I should not be going to marry him,"said Joyce with the dignity of eighteen. "But it's folly to make so muchfuss about marriage, seeing that it's the most ordinary thing in life,like being born, or dying."

  "The most incomprehensible thing in life, I should imagine," retortedKitty, wide-eyed with curiosity. "Especially when you come to think ofgoing away for good--or bad, maybe!--with a strange man you know next tonothing of; and all at a blow, having to share the same apartments withhim. Merciful Providence! I am sure the Queen never did!"

  "It's supposed to be the correct thing," said Joyce rather scared."Mother says, 'husbands and wives are one,' and 'to the pure, all thingsare pure'--whatever that has to do with it--so it would be illogical inthe face of that to object to such a trifle as sharing a room. 'One hasto tune one's mind to accept whatever comes, and to follow in thefootsteps of one's parents,'" she quoted.

  "How I wish you were not going right away with him, immediately," sighedKitty enviously. "You might so easily have told me all about it. Nobodytells one anything worth knowing, just as though there was anything tobe ashamed about!"

  Joyce made no response for the good reason that her mind was wrestlingwith disquietude. However, in spite of so much that was mysterious, evenalarming, she decided, as a prospective bride, to assume the dignity andreserve she had noticed in others and smile patronisingly on inquisitivesixteen.

  Shortly afterwards she was married, and she accompanied her "strangeman" on their journey to the Unknown, much as a confiding child trustsitself to the guardianship of a loving nurse; prepared to accept as aduty whatever path he might require her to tread.

  In matters pertaining to sex, Meredith found her little more than achild; the result of her narrow upbringing by which she had been rearedin ignorance of the primal facts of life and all that was commonknowledge to the flapper of the day. But to his fastidious nature herunsophisticated innocence was the most captivating of any of thequalities he had met with in girls, and it became his most earnestdesire to preserve it undefiled. The sweet simplicity of her mind heregarded as even more precious than her beauty. Having spent a decade inacquiring a disgust for a certain type of woman, he was inclined toover-estimate his surprising good fortune, and was content in the hopethat time was on his side. Like a flower unfolding to the sun, thetreasures of her womanhood would be all his one day, drawn forth by thewarmth of his steady devotion.

  The obstacles in his way, however, seemed to increase as circumstancescombined to fret and tantalise his hopes.

  * * * * *

  The night wore on--the Eastern night of cloudless moonlight with thescents of the earth rising from harvested fields to mingle with thepungency of smouldering fires. Somewhere an owl persistently hooted.

  Joyce recalled the superstition that the owl was a bird of ill omen andshould not be allowed to perch in the neighbourhood of a sick room.Immediately she was seized with foreboding and her husband wasdispatched to scare away the prophet of evil. On his return she wastrembling and hysterical.

  "You must let me give you something, darling," he pleaded. "You'llcollapse for want of food, and how then can you look after Baby?" It wasinspiration which suggested the child's need of her, for she patientlysubmitted and drank a glass of milk. She changed her gown for a silkenkimono, and sought rest among the pillows of her bed which adjoined thecrib. Then, in subdued tones, she reproached her husband for neverhaving studied the simple diseases of childhood,--so necessary in theircase, when for months together they were expected to live in camp, farfrom the Station, and the reach of medical aid.

  "It is criminal," she cried. "If it had been a dog you would have knownwhat to do. But your own child!" words failed her.

  "The next time we come out we shall bring 'Good-eve.' I believe it giveseverything you want to know and a lot besides."

  "There'll never be a 'next time,'" she moaned. "Please God, when my petis better he shall never again be taken so far from the doctor. This isthe end of all camping for him."

  "So I am to be deserted?"

  "You are a man and able to look after yourself. Baby needs me far morethan you do."

  Meredith refrained from any argument, feeling the futility of words inher distraught condition. In the darkened tent he brooded over hisdifficulties while his eyes strayed with jealous yearning to the slimform in the gaudy kimono. Instead of isolation in a canvas chair, hemight so easily have shared her pillows while comforting her lovingly inhis arms! but for the time being he was out of favour and unloved!

  Shortly before sunrise, Captain Dalton motored in.