Captain Desmond, V.C. Part 18

For the s.p.a.ce of a week Honor held inflexibly aloof; and the effort it cost her seemed out of all proportion to the mildness of the punishment inflicted. It is an old story--the inevitable price paid by love that is strong enough to chastise. But this great paradox, the corner-stone of man's salvation, is a stumbling-block to lesser natures. In Evelyn's eyes Honor was merely cruel, and her own week of independence a nightmare of helpless irritation. She made one effort at remonstrance; and its futility crushed her to earth.

During the evening of their talk the matter had been tacitly avoided between them; but when, on the following morning, Honor laid books and bills upon the davenport where Evelyn sat writing, she caught desperately at the girl's hand.

"Honor, it isn't fair. How _can_ you be so unkind?"

Honor drew her hand decisively away.

"Please let the subject alone," she said coolly. "If you persist in talking of it, you will drive me to go and sit in my own room--that's all."

A week later, however, when she returned from a ride to find Evelyn again at the detested davenport, her head bowed upon her arms, like a flower broken with the wind, all the inherent motherhood in her rose up and overflowed. Hastily crossing the room she knelt down beside the small tragic figure and kissed a pearl-white fragment of forehead; the only spot available at the moment. "Poor darling!" she whispered. "Is it really as bad as all that?"

Caresses from Honor were so rare that for an instant Evelyn was taken aback; then she laid her head on the girl's shoulder with a sigh of pure content.

"Oh, Honor! the world seems all broken to pieces when _you_ are unkind to me!"

Honor kissed her again.

"I won't be unkind to you any more; and we'll just forget from this minute that it ever happened at all."

But to forget is not to undo; and during their brief estrangement Evelyn Desmond had added a link to the chain of Fate, whose strongest coils are most often wrought by our own unskilful fingers.

CHAPTER X.

A SQUARE BARGAIN.

"The faith of men that ha' brothered men, By more than easy breath; And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men, In the open books of death."

--KIPLING.

"Behold! Captain Sahib,--there where the sky touches earth. In the s.p.a.ce of half an hour we arrive."

Desmond lifted sun-weary eyes to the horizon, and nodded.

When a man is consumed with thirst, and scorched to the bone, by five hours of riding through a furnace seven times heated in the teeth of a blistering wind, he is chary of speech; and the two rode forward in silence--mere specks upon the emptiness of earth and sky--keeping their horses to the long-distance canter that kills neither man nor beast. A detachment of forty sabres followed in their wake; and the rhythmical clatter rang monotonously in their ears.

The speck on the horizon was an outpost--a boundary mark of empire,--where a little party of men watched, night and day, for the least sign of danger from the illusive quiet of the hills.

It is these handfuls of men, natives of India all, stationed in stone watch-towers twenty miles apart along the Border, who keep the gateway of India barred; and who will keep it barred against all intruders for all time. The un.o.btrusive strength of India's Frontier amazes the new-comer. But only those who have spent their best years in its service know the full price paid for the upkeep of that same strength in hards.h.i.+p, unremitting toil, and the lives of picked men.

As the riders neared the post its outline showed, stern and clear-cut, against the blue of the sky. A single circular room, loop-holed and battlemented, set upon an outward sloping base of immense solidity, and surrounded by a ma.s.sive stone wall:--a tower in which ten men could hold their own against five hundred. The look-out sentry, sighting the detachment afar off, gave the word to his companions, who lowered the ladder that served them for staircase; and when Desmond's party drew rein the door in the wall stood open to receive them.

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 appet.i.te, 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 rea.s.surance; and s.h.i.+fting 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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 l.u.s.tily, 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 hoa.r.s.e shout broke from Rajinder Singh.