The Great Amulet Part 17

Lenox searched his face.

"Ever been through the fire yourself?"

Desmond nodded.

"I suppose moat of us have to go through h.e.l.l once or twice," he said quietly. "And I know how it feels to wish that some one would lock up my revolver."

For answer Lenox got up and paced the room, head down; hands plunged deep into trouser-pockets; lost, by now, to all sense of his incongruous appearance.

The other watched him thoughtfully. Then his hand went to his breast-pocket, and drew out a leather case. A man proffers tobacco to a friend in trouble as instinctively as a woman proffers a caress.

"Have a cheroot?" he said, holding them out: and Lenox checked his pacing.

"Thanks,--no. I've no taste for 'em. Never had."

"Better cultivate it, then. These are A1 Havannahs. A pa.s.sing extravagance. Good to begin upon. I'd drop pipes for a time, if I were you. When it comes to breaking a habit, a.s.sociation is the devil.

And whatever happens, don't let this heredity bogey get the upper hand of you. The taint you speak of is no more, as yet, than inherited tendency: and this accident--if you believe in accident, I don't--gives you the chance of killing the snake in the egg. Now light up, there's a good chap; just to keep me company."

Lenox helped himself with a wry face; lit the cigar, and continued his walk. The iron had bitten into his soul: and, at the moment, he was incapable of grat.i.tude. Bit by bit brain and body were adjusting themselves to the new outlook, the new demands enforced upon them; and the process was not a pleasant one.

Suddenly he drew up, and faced his companion.

"You can leave me out of the reckoning now for Chumba and Kajiar," he said abruptly. "I'm in no mood for that sort of foolery. I'll stay here and grind at this book of mine instead. You must excuse me to Mrs Desmond; and tell her just as much of the truth as you think fit."

But before he had finished speaking, Desmond was on his feet, decision in every line of him.

"Not if I know it, my dear fellow! You won't get a stroke of work done just at present; and 'that sort of foolery,' as you call it, will do you all the good in the world. Your best chance is to get right outside yourself; and we'll make it our business to keep you there--Honor and I."

At that Lenox turned huskily away; and his broken attempt at a laugh was not good to hear.

"d.a.m.n it all, man, why don't you leave me alone, to go to the devil in my own way? What can it matter to you, or to any one, whether I break myself in pieces, or am merely broken on the wheel?"

Desmond's quick ear detected emotion beneath the ungraciousness of speech and tone; and following him, he laid a hand on his shoulder, a friendly liberty to which Lenox was little accustomed.

"Come along home with me," he said quietly. "Stay for tiffin, and talk it all out with my wife. She'll be able to answer you far better than I can. Nothing like a woman's sympathy to put a dash of conceit back into a man. Will you follow on? Or shall I wait while you change?"

For an instant Lenox stood silent; then, greatly to his own surprise, he held out his hand.

"I'll be ready in ten minutes," was all he said.

An hour later, Desmond rode away from Terah Cottage, leaving Lenox and his wife alone together. He had promised to give her what help he could in the delicate task she had set her heart upon: and he belonged to the satisfactory type of man who may be counted upon for good measure, pressed down, and running over.

[1] Has come.

BOOK II.-JUST IMPEDIMENT.

CHAPTER IX.

"So many men; so many loves."

--M. O. Willc.o.c.ks.

A dinner of native dishes served on leaves--to each guest his own portion on his own leaf--eaten picnic-fas.h.i.+on on a Kashmir carpet in the presence of twelve regally reproachful chairs, is a form of entertainment only to be met with in India; and when, to these incongruities, is added the crowning one that the host may not defile himself by sharing the meal with his guests, you have a situation typical of the land where all things are possible.

Prompted by Colonel Mayhew, the Chumba Rajah, a shy taciturn boy of sixteen, had despatched a formal invitation, hoping that the Residency party would honour him with their company at the Palace on the evening of their arrival from Dalhousie; though in truth he wished them anywhere else in the world; and Colonel Mayhew, who was by no means too old to enjoy a spasmodic daylight flirtation with a woman of Quita's intelligence, had devised the native menu mainly for her delectation.

A large sheet, promoted to the rank of tablecloth, covered the carpet, while ten cus.h.i.+ons apologised for the absence of chairs. A bowl of roses, rigidly arranged in alternate lines of flower and fern, filled the room with fragrance. In front of each guest a snowy dome of rice, ringed about with a strange a.s.sortment of curries, gleamed on a silver salver. A quaint array of flat baskets held fragments of roast chicken and kid; unleavened cakes of a peculiarly greasy nature did duty for bread; and the only concessions to civilisation were knives and forks, table-napkins, and champagne.

"Why shouldn't we have the courage of our barbarism, and do without knives and forks as well?" Quita had suggested airily, at the outset; and a faint look of horror convulsed Mrs Mayhew's bird-like face.

Her husband saw it, and came promptly to her aid.

"No forks, no champagne!" he retorted, laughing; and Quita picked up her fork straightway.

"Hobson's choice!" she said, in a tone of mock resignation. "It would be sheer brutality to deprive six men of champagne!"

She was sitting now on a cus.h.i.+on, at the Resident's right hand, feet tucked away under her skirts, and a napkin laid across her knee. On this she had set a leaf piled with saffron-tinted rice, which she was exploring eagerly for incidental sultanas and yellow lumps of sugar, exchanging bulletins, from time to time, with Desmond, who had taken her in to dinner, and in whom she speedily recognised a morning quality of mind that matched her own.

Lenox, sitting opposite between Honor and Elsie, acutely aware that his legs were too long for the occasion, almost forgot the torment of the past week in looking and listening, and wondering how he had ever attained even a pa.s.sing hold upon a spirit so lightly poised, so compact of volatile essences, that he shrank, almost with awe, from the bare thought of subjecting her uncaptured loveliness to the pains and penalties of marriage. He sat for the most part in silence; content to let the ripple of her voice and laughter play over him like water over parched earth. Her voice had drawn him irresistibly from the first.

It was a thing of exquisite modulations. It thrilled like a caress.

Its clear, cool tones, pure from pa.s.sion, intoxicated him like the rarefied atmosphere of the heights. Once or twice she flung him a question or a remark, as if compelling him to be aware of her existence. He answered her with grave politeness, and an occasional direct look, before which her eyes fell, as if dazzled by a helio-flash from the man's inner fire.

All these things Honor Desmond noted; and, by the searchlight of her womanhood, discerned more than Quita herself had yet realised.

Garth, from his uncoveted post of honour at Mrs Mayhew's left hand, noted them also; but with less of understanding. Stung to irritation by a sense of vague happenings in which he counted for nothing, and by the fact that Quita was evidently enjoying herself far more than the occasion seemed to warrant, he was in no mood to do justice to the supreme event of the day--his dinner. Strange foods, too, were an abomination to his clockwork order of mind; and when, in addition, he found himself condemned to eat them sitting cross-legged on the ground, a leaf balanced precariously on one knee, he began to entertain grave doubts as to the comparative values of the game and the candle.

He quite resented the manifest contentment of Elsie Mayhew and her partner, who sat facing him, absorbed in the low-toned talk of incipient lovers, blind and deaf to the insignificant doings around them. Nor was he greatly blest in his left-hand partner, Bathurst, the Rajah's tutor--a clean-limbed athlete of the two-adjective genus, who discoursed complacently of "bags," "mounts," and handicaps; the staple topics of his kind. And while the stream of words flowed on, unchecked by his flagrant inattention, Garth's ears were tantalised by s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk from the lively end of the table, where Desmond and Quita were behaving like two children; by the silver quality of her laughter that whipped his senses, while it lulled his conscience like a narcotic, and set him devising a moonlight stroll with her later on, in the Palace courtyard, by way of compensation for present martyrdom endured on her account. For since the night of the dance she had been so uniformly gracious, that he was beginning to regard his rebuff on Dynkund as little more than a delicate prelude to surrender after all.

Such absorbing reflections made him so neglectful of his hostess, that the little lady's spasmodic efforts to enliven him with spiced snippets of gossip--more than one item of which had emanated from himself--fizzled out dismally, long before the meal was over; and it was with an audible sigh of relief that she glanced across at Mrs Desmond, and got upon her feet with as much dignity as a cus.h.i.+on, a plump figure, and cramped limbs would allow.

"What? You do not desert us?" Quita asked, as Desmond offered her his arm.

"No--I do not desert you!" He spoke lightly, but significance lurked in his tone. "The Rajah and his suite are waiting to receive us in the Durbar Hall, and unless you object to my cigar, or send me to the right-about, I claim you as my prisoner of war for the evening!"

"_a la bonheur_! Smoke as much as you please. You will not need to tie a thread round my ankle, I promise you. Why didn't I get to know you sooner?"

"Perhaps because you discovered metal more attractive?"

The light thrust drew blood. She flushed, and laughed uneasily.

"A palpable hit! I might retaliate with a coal of fire in the shape of a compliment. But you don't deserve it. Anyway, let's make up for lost time now. I have a feeling that we shall be good friends, only . . . ."