The Elephant God Part 29

"With pleasure. Is that enough?"

"I'll be greedy. After all, the men up here have had dances from you all the Season, and I have never danced with you yet. I'll take these, too, if you can spare them."

She looked at him earnestly.

"I owe you more than a few dances can pay," she said simply.

"Thank you, little friend," he said, and a happy feeling thrilled her at his words. He had not forgotten her, then. He used to call her that sometimes in Ranga Duar. She was still his little friend. What a delightful place the world was after all!

As he pencilled his initials on her programme a horde of dance-hungry men swooped down on Noreen and almost pushed him aside. He bowed and strolled away to watch the dancing. He had no desire to obtain other partners and was content to watch his little friend of the forest, who seemed to have suddenly become a very lovely woman. She seemed very gay and happy, he thought. He noticed that she danced oftenest with Melville and a tall, fair man whom he did not know.

Never had the early part of a ball seemed to Noreen to drag so much as this one did. She felt that her partners must find her very stupid indeed, for she paid no attention to what they said and answered at random.

At last almost in a trance of happiness she found herself gliding round the room with Dermot's arm about her. The band was playing a dreamy waltz, and her partner danced perfectly. Neither of them spoke. Noreen could not; she felt that all she wanted was to float, on air it seemed, held close to Dermot's breast. She gave a sigh when the dance ended. In the interval she did not want to talk; it was enough to look at his face, to hear his voice.

She hated her next partner when he came to claim her.

But she had two more dances with Dermot before the band struck up "The Roast Beef of Old England," and the ballroom emptied. At supper he contrived to secure a small table at which they were alone; so they were able to talk without constraint. She began to wonder how she had ever thought him grave and stern or felt in awe of him. For in the gay atmosphere his Irish nature was uppermost; he was as light-hearted as a boy, and his conversation was almost frivolous.

During supper Noreen saw Ida watching her across the room, and later on, when the dancing began again, her friend cornered her.

"I say, darling, who is the new man you've been dancing with such a lot tonight? You had supper with him, too. I've never seen him before. He's awfully good-looking."

"Oh, that is--I suppose you mean Major Dermot," replied the girl, feeling suddenly shy.

"Major Dermot? Who's he? What is--Oh, is it the wonderful hero from the Terai, the man you told me so much about when you came up?"

"Yes; he is the same."

"Really? How interesting! He's so distinguished-looking. When did he come up? Why didn't you tell me he was coming?"

"I didn't know it myself."

"I should love to meet him. Introduce him to me. Now, at once."

With a hurried apology to her own partner and Noreen's she dragged the girl off in search of the fresh man who had taken her fancy, and did not give up the chase until, with Melville's aid, Dermot was run to earth in the cardroom and introduced to her. Ida did not wait for him to ask her to dance but calmly ran her pencil through three names on the programme and bestowed the vacancies thus created on him in such a way that he could not refuse them. Dermot, however, did not grumble. She was Noreen's friend; if not the rose, she was near the rose.

Ida was not the only one who noticed how frequently the girl had danced with him. Charlesworth, disappointed at finding vacancies on her programme, for which he had hoped, already filled, commented on it and asked who the stranger was in a supercilious tone that made her furious and gained for him a well-merited snubbing.

Indifferent to criticism, kind or otherwise, Noreen gave herself up for the evening to the happiness of Dermot's presence, trying to trick herself into the belief that he was still only a dear friend to whom she owed an immense debt of grat.i.tude for saving her life and her honour. Never had a ball seemed so enjoyable--not even her first. Never had she had a partner who suited her so well. Certainly he danced to perfection, but she knew that if he had been the worst dancer in the room she still would have preferred him to all others. And never had she hated the ending of an entertainment so much. But Dermot walked beside her _dandy_ to the gate of her hotel, calmly displacing Charlesworth, much to the fury of the Rifleman, who had begun to consider this his prerogative.

Ida and she sat up for hours in her room discussing the ball and all its happenings, but the older woman's most constant topic was Dermot. It was a subject of which Noreen felt that she could never weary; and she drew her friend on to talk of him, if the conversation threatened to stray to anything less interesting. The girl was used to Ida's sudden fancies for men, for the married woman was both susceptible and fickle, and Noreen judged that this sudden predilection for Dermot would die as quickly as a hundred others before it. But this time she was wrong.

The Major was not to remain many days in Darjeeling, but Noreen hoped that he would give her much of his spare time while there. She was disappointed, however, to find that although he was frequently in her and Ida's company at the Amus.e.m.e.nt Club or elsewhere, he made no effort to compete with Charlesworth or Melville or any other man who sought to monopolise her, but drew back and allowed him to have a clear field while he himself seemed content to talk to Mrs. Smith. At first she was hurt. He was her friend, not Ida's. But he never sought to be alone with her, never asked her to ride with him, or do anything that would take her away from the others.

Then she grew piqued. If he did not value her society he should see that others did, and she suddenly grew more gracious to Charlesworth, who seemed to sense in Dermot a more dangerous rival than was Melville or any of the others and began to be more openly devoted and to put more meaning into his intentions.

One hateful night when she had been with Charlesworth to a private dance to which Ida had refused to go, dining instead with Dermot, who had no invitation to the affair, the blow fell. After her return to the hotel her treacherous friend had crept into her room, weeping and imploring her sympathy. Too late, she sobbed on Noreen's shoulder, she had found her soul-mate, the man destined for her through the past aeons, the one man who could make her happy and whose existence she alone could complete. Why had she met Dermot too late? Why was she tied to a clod, mated to a clown? Why were two lives to be wrecked?

As Noreen listened amazed an icy hand seemed to clutch her shrinking heart.

Was this true? Did Dermot really care for Ida? Could the man whom she had revered as a white-souled knight be base enough to make love to another man's wife?

Then the demon of jealousy poisoned her soul. She got the weeping Ida back to her bed, and sat in her own dark room until the dawn came, her brain in a whirl, her heart filled with a fierce hatred of Dermot. And when next day, his business finished, he had to leave Darjeeling, she made a point of absenting herself with Charlesworth from the hotel at the time when Dermot had arranged to come to say good-bye.

But long before the train in which he travelled down to the Plains was half-way to Siliguri, the girl lay on her bed, her face buried in her pillow, her body shaken with silent but convulsive sobs.

And Dermot stared out into the thick mist that shrouded the mountains and enfolded his downward-slipping train and wondered if his one-time little friend of the forest would be happy in the new life that, according to her bosom-friend and confidant, Mrs. Smith, would open to her as Charlesworth's wife as soon as she spoke the word that was trembling on her lips.

And he sighed unconsciously. Then he frowned as the distasteful memory recurred to him of the previous night, when a wanton woman, misled by vanity and his courteous manner, had shamelessly offered him what she termed her love and forced him to play the Joseph to a modern Mrs.

Potiphar.

CHAPTER XV

THE FEAST OF THE G.o.dDESS KALI

The Rains were nearing their end, and with them the Darjeeling Season was drawing to a close. To Noreen Daleham it had lost its savour since Dermot's departure. Her feelings towards Ida had undergone a radical change; her admiration of and affection for her old schoolfellow had vanished. Her eyes were opened, and she now saw plainly the true character of the woman whom once she was proud to call her friend. The girl wondered that she could have ever been deceived, for she now understood the many innuendoes that had been made in her hearing against Mrs. Smith, as well as many things in that lady's own behaviour that had perplexed her at the time.

But towards the man her feelings were frankly anger and contempt. He had rudely awakened her from a beautiful dream; for that she could never forgive him. Her idol was shattered, never again to be made whole, so she vowed in the bitterness of her desolate soul. It was not friends.h.i.+p that she had felt for him--she realised that now. It was love. She had given him her whole heart in a girl's first, pure, ideal love. And he had despised the gift and trampled it in the mire of unholy pa.s.sion. She knew that it was the love of her life. Never could any man be to her what he had been.

But what did it matter to Dermot? she thought bitterly. She had pa.s.sed out of his life. She had never been anything in it. He had been amused for an idle moment by her simplicity, tool that she was. What he had done, had risked for her, he would have done and risked for any other woman. Why did he not write to her after his departure as he might have done? She almost hoped that he would, so that she could answer him and pour out on him, if only on paper, the scorn and disgust that filled her. But no; she would not do that. The more dignified course would be to ignore his letter altogether. If only she could hurt him she felt that she would accept any other man's offer of marriage. But even then he wouldn't care. He had always stood aside in Darjeeling and let others strive for her favour. And she was put to the test, for first Charlesworth and then Melville had proposed to her.

Though Noreen's heart was frozen towards her quondam friend, Ida never perceived the fact. For the elder woman was so thoroughly satisfied with herself that it never occurred to her that any one whom she honoured with her liking could do aught but be devoted to her in return. And against the granite of her self-sufficiency the iron of the girl's proud anger broke until at length, baffled by the other's conceit, Noreen drifted back into the semblance of her former friendliness. And Ida never remarked any difference.

A hundred miles away Dermot roamed the hills and forest again. The interdict of the Rains was lifted, and the game was afoot once more.

The portents of the coming storm were intensified. Much that the Divisional Commander, General Heyland, had revealed to him in their confidential interviews at Darjeeling was being corroborated by happenings in other parts of the Peninsula, in Afghanistan, in China, and elsewhere. Signs were not wanting on the border that Dermot had to guard. Messengers crossing and re-crossing the Bhutan frontier were increasing in numbers and frequency; and he had at length succeeded in tracking some of them to a destination that first gave him a clue to the seat and ident.i.ty of the organisers of the conspiracy in Bengal.

For one or two Bhutanese had been traced to the capital of the Native State of Lalpuri, and others, having got into Indian territory, had been met by Hindus who were subsequently followed to the same ill-famed town. But once inside the maze of its bazaars their trail was hopelessly lost. It was useless to appeal to the authorities of the State. Their reputation and the character of their ruler were so bad that it was highly probable that the Rajah and all his counsellors were implicated in the plot. But how to bring it home to them Dermot did not know. By his secret instructions several of the messengers to and from Bhutan were the victims of apparent highway robbery in the hills. But no search of them revealed anything compromising, no treasonable correspondence between enemies within and without. The men would not speak, and he could not sanction the proposals made to him by which they should be induced so to do.

The planters began to report to him a marked increase in the mutinous spirit exhibited by their coolies; arms were found in the possession of these men, and there was reason to fear a combined rising of the labourers on all the estates of the Duars. Dermot advised Rice to send his wife to England, but the lady showed no desire to return to her loudly-regretted London suburb.

Every time that the Major met Daleham he expected to be told of Noreen's engagement, perhaps even her wedding. But he heard nothing. When he found that Fred was beginning to arrange for her return to Malpura and that--instigated by Chunerb.u.t.ty--he refused to consider the advisability of her remaining away until conditions were better in the Terai, Dermot persuaded him to replace his untrustworthy Bengali house-servants by reliable Mussulman domestics, warlike Punjaubis, whom the soldier procured. They were men not unused to firearms, and capable of defending the bungalow if necessary.

He and Badshah, who was happy to have his man with him again, kept indefatigable watch and ward along the frontier. Sometimes Dermot a.s.sembled the herd, which had learned to obey him almost like a pack of hounds, and, concealed among them, penetrated across the border into Bhutan and explored hidden spots where hostile troops might be concentrated. Only rarely a wandering Bhuttia chanced to see him, and then the terrified man would veil his eyes, fearing to behold the doings of the terrible Elephant G.o.d.

The constant work and preoccupation kept Dermot from dwelling much on Noreen. Nevertheless, he thought often of the girl and hoped that she would be happy when she married the man she was said to have chosen. He felt no jealousy of Charlesworth; on the contrary, he admired him as a good sportsman and a manly fellow, as well as he could judge from the little that he had seen of him. The very fact that the girl who was his friend had chosen the Rifleman as her husband, according to Mrs. Smith, made him ready to like the man. He was not in love with the girl and had no desire to marry, for he was wedded to his profession and had always held that a soldier married was a soldier marred.

Thus while Dermot thought far seldomer of Noreen, whom he acknowledged to himself he liked more than any other woman he had ever met, she, who a.s.sured herself every day that she hated and despised him, could not keep him out of her mind. And all the more so as she began to have doubts of the truth of Ida's story. For the girl, who could not resist watching her friend's post every day, much as she despised herself for doing it, observed that no letter ever came to Mrs. Smith in Dermot's handwriting.

And, although Ida had talked much and sentimentally of him for days after his departure, she appeared to forget him soon, and before long was engrossed in a good-looking young civilian from Calcutta. Bain had long since left Darjeeling.

Could it all have been a figment of the woman's imagination and vanity?--for Noreen now realised how colossally vain she was. Had she misunderstood or, worse still, misrepresented him? But that thought was almost more painful to the girl than the certainty of his guilt. For if it were true, how cruelly, how vilely unjust she had been to the man who had saved her at the peril of his life, the man who had called her his friend, who had trusted in her loyalty! No, no; better that he were proved worthless, dishonourable. That thought were easier to bear.

Sometimes the girl almost wished that she could see him again so that she might ask him the truth. She could learn nothing now from Ida, who calmly ignored all attempts to extract information from her. Yet how could she question him, Noreen asked herself. She could not even hint to him that she had any knowledge of the affair, for her friend had divulged it to her in confidence. If only she were back at Malpura! He might come to her again there and perhaps of his own free will tell her what to believe of him. But when in a letter she broached the subject of her return to her brother, Fred bade her wait, for he hoped that he might be able to join her in Darjeeling for a few days during the Puja holidays.

During the great festival of Durga-Puja, or the Dussera, as it is variously called, no Hindu works if he can help it, especially in Bengal. As all Government and private offices in Calcutta are closed for it, every European there, who can, escapes to Darjeeling, twenty-four hours away by rail, and the Season in that hill-station dies in a final blaze of splendour and gaiety in the mad rush of revelry of the Puja holidays. And Fred hoped that he might he there to see its ending, if Parry would keep sober long enough to let his a.s.sistant get away for a few days. When he returned, Daleham wrote, he would bring Noreen back with him.