Kitabı oku: «The Squaw Man», sayfa 2
She loosened her long, brown hair, and kneeling before the glowing fire held the wet coils to its warmth. On her bed lay a gown to be worn that night, and the light from the fire cast a delicate sheen over its folds. It flickered and blazed with merry bursts of flame, lighting up the old-fashioned chintz draperies of the quaintly furnished room. Through the closed window she could hear the faint splutter of the rain on the casement. As she leaned against the tall chair close to the fireplace, a soft, warm languor stole over her and the tension of her mind relaxed. The beauty of her present life stretched out innumerable magic wands that lulled into insensibility the frightened thoughts of the afternoon. Soothed by the warmth and comfort of the room after the fatigue of her walk against the gale in the park, she abandoned herself to pleasant, intangible dreams. A knock at the door aroused her.
It was her aunt's maid, who carried a large box of flowers. Diana opened them; they were from Henry. Again they reiterated his apologies for the afternoon's disappointment. The perfume of the gardenias filled the room as she sank into a chair before her dressing-table and buried her face in the masses of delicate blossoms. The quiet servant gathered up the tangled hair.
"Her ladyship would like you to come to her room before you leave for the opera," she said, as she drew the brush across the soft brown locks.
Diana did not reply.
Yes, she was admitting to herself she had been unreasonable, as her father said. Life was beautiful and wonderful, and she meant to gather all its sweetness and bloom.
CHAPTER III
The rain that battered down the glory of color into the soaked earth of the park had slashed and beaten black, struggling lines against the gray stone-wall of the buildings in Lincoln's Inn. The radiance of the sun never wholly penetrated the court, but to-day the old place seemed like a tomb. In one of the forbidding-looking dwellings, in his solicitor's chambers, sat Lord Kerhill. He glanced around the silent room, and aimlessly took in the array of large tin boxes, with their painted family names, piled high on the shelves encircling the walls. Conspicuous among them was his own. With the exception of a few unattractive pieces of solid mahogany and some large leather chairs, the room was almost empty. Its ugliness jarred him. As he sat there, his face in repose showed that the years had given an added touch of bitterness to his expression. He still retained his well-cut features, and their beauty of line was only a little marred by a certain heaviness that had recently developed. His dark mustache hid the weak mouth with its suggestion of sensuality; indeed, the whole man showed a strong tendency towards grossness as yet only noticeable to the careful observer.
He still had the ineffable quality of charm, when he willed to exert it, which made his selfishness seem to many only the outcome of impulsive youthfulness. In a shamefaced way he admitted to himself now that he was in the wrong and that he had stupidly involved his affairs, but he comforted himself in the same moment, with the fatuousness of self-indulgence, that everything would work out all right. To tide over this difficulty or adjust and evade for a time the demand of the hour had been his policy for so long that he could not realize that an end was possible to the long tether he so often abused.
He had come in response to an urgent summons. Opposite him, deeply absorbed in some papers, sat Johnston Petrie, the trusted solicitor of the Kerhill family since Henry's father came into the title. He was a large, powerfully built man of fifty-five, with a massive head, piercing black eyes under shaggy eyebrows, and close-cropped iron-gray curls above the shrewd face. Henry rose impatiently to go.
As he did so, Petrie lifted his glasses on their black ribbon to his eyes, and said, "I'm exceedingly sorry, your Lordship, but you must give me time to look more closely into that affair before I can venture a final opinion as to the condition of the estate. Besides, I have several other matters of the gravest importance to question you about; they pertain to some business transactions you made recently without my knowledge, while you were abroad."
He motioned his lordship to a chair as though to pursue deeper the conversation, and drew several documents from a drawer. Henry Kerhill fidgeted.
"It's impossible, Petrie. Next week, after the wedding, or after we return from Scotland, I'll have leisure then to discuss these things with you, and I really mean this time to have you adjust everything and set me quite straight."
Johnston Petrie shook his head.
"Oh, I know," Henry continued, "I've been careless, but I mean to pull up. I'll start fair from next week."
Johnston Petrie looked up sharply. He knew more of his client's career than Henry cared to remember. He had known him from boyhood, and his shrewd summing up of human nature could see only pitfalls ahead for Lady Elizabeth's son. He had tried in every way to stop the reckless living of his client. From the incessant demands made on the estate for large sums of ready money he knew that Henry Wynnegate, irritated by the conservative principles of his firm, had used outside help to prevent his family adviser from obtaining knowledge of some recent speculations.
Long ago Johnston Petrie would have asked to be released from the responsibilities of the Kerhill affairs, out for a loyal devotion to his dead client, the late Earl, and a desire to protect Lady Elizabeth's fast diminishing rights. He was not in the least deceived by Henry's machinations, but wilfully allowed himself to seem blind to certain matters. He wished to be able to keep his hand at the lever, and argued with his brother that the end justified the means.
Lady Elizabeth in a recent interview had assured him that the coming marriage would be the turning-point in Henry's career. Nevertheless, he feared her judgment. Something in Henry's attitude to-day had made him more apprehensive; it had been impossible to pin him down to a serious consideration of his affairs. Petrie determined to venture a final effort, by enrolling his brother's services to strengthen his admonitions.
"Lord Kerhill," he said. "My brother is also most anxious to see you regarding some stocks you asked his advice about." He touched a bell; a clerk answered from an adjoining room.
"Ask Mr. Malcolm Petrie to come to us. Say that the Earl of Kerhill is here."
Henry chafed under the calm firmness of his solicitor. He had come in answer to an imperative note, and the discussion of his complicated affairs was extremely disagreeable. He was in no mood to continue it further. He moved to the door as Malcolm Petrie entered; a smaller counterpart of his brother, and a silent member of the firm, he took the same personal interest in the Kerhill affairs that his brother did. As he started to speak he was stopped by Henry.
"It's no use. I can wait no longer. A most important engagement demands my leaving at once. Advise me by letter – it will reach me to-morrow." And before either of the men could urge upon him the necessity of being allowed to advise him on certain negotiations, he had reached the outer door of the chambers, mounted the few steps leading to the court, and was in the square where his cab was waiting. He cursed the dreariness of the day as the rain splashed him. For a moment he hesitated. They had detained him far too long, these croaking fogies in their stuffy office. His hand fumbled in his pocket where lay a letter with a message not to be disregarded. On its arrival at his club early in the afternoon the note to Diana had been despatched.
The fury of haste that had made him so eager to escape from his business interview now deserted him. The rain drenched him in warm torrents. The driver on the box was a running stream, and from the horse came clouds of heavy steam.
Then the momentary irresolution passed as he gave his orders to the impassive cabman. He leaned back in his cab, tearing into shreds the mauve letter with its gold monogram as he muttered, "It's for the last time, by God." The hansom started with a jerk. It rattled down an alley. To Henry the damp, dismal court looked more than ever like a graveyard. He was glad when they turned into the vortex of the Strand.
That night at the opera, a new singer was to make her début in "Carmen." In Paris and America this sloe-eyed Italian had made the sensation of the half-century in her creation of the gypsy wanton. The brilliant throng in Covent Garden was alive with anticipation. The royalties were expected; indeed, the queen herself had especially commanded this reception for the gifted woman whom she had honored as her guest on the Riviera, where this singing Rachel had entranced her with the folk-songs and lullabies of her beloved country.
All that the London season could assemble of wit, beauty, and distinction was gathered in the Opera-House. The tiers of boxes were filling unusually early. Near the stage sat the Prime-Minister, a man of strong artistic perceptions and a writer of extraordinary talent. His face, with the marked cleft in the square chin, looked less dreamy than usual to-night, and the large, pale-blue eyes, amusedly surveyed the house. He seemed to have slipped off the yoke of tangled politics as he turned to his secretary, who was pointing out to him the celebrities in the stalls.
"There is the delightful American whom I met last week at Lord Blight's." As he spoke, he bowed to the new American favorite, Mrs. Hobart Chichester Chichester Jones, a radiant figure in scarlet, who found many glasses levelled at her.
"Only an American would dress so originally," the minister replied.
The American wore a gown of clinging scarlet fabric, the decidedly low-cut corsage showing the perfection of the white shoulders and arms. Around her throat she had twisted one long rope of uncut pearls and diamonds that reached below her waist, and in the soft, waving, red-gold hair she had arranged some daring scarlet geraniums. With her pale skin and great green eyes she enchanted London by her unusual type. Near her was the famous story-book Duchess, as the most popular of the younger beauties was called. "Too good to be true," Truth declared her, and indeed she seemed to have been especially created to confirm the mode of the old-fashioned romances extolling the grace and loveliness of an English Duchess. The crowd noticed the famous rubies that shone like tiny flames against the white gown.
Here and there a Dowager gleamed like a shelf in a Bond Street jeweller's shop, so promiscuous was her array of gems. The younger school of beauties with more wisdom employed their jewels differently, using them as an added tone of color or a touch of brilliance to a costume. In the stalls the art world was well represented. Painters and writers with a sprinkling of actors and actresses, who were not playing, were on hand to-night to greet the new-comer. From the gallery rail a crowd of eager, swarthy faces peered, impatiently gesticulating to one another, because of the failure of the curtain to ascend at the given time. It was known that the prima-donna was a capricious creature, often swayed by a mere whim from making her appearance. Once the death of a mocking-bird had postponed her début as Marguerite. Would she really appear?
As the royalties entered the box, the excitement was at fever-heat. Henry with his mother impatiently awaited Diana's arrival.
The overture began its sensuous, stirring appeal, and before the cigarette-girl crossed the bridge in the street scene, every seat and box was occupied.
The singer made the ill-starred Carmen a bewitching and compelling wanton. Who that saw her will ever forget her delicious cajolery as she urged the bewitched Don José to loosen the ropes that bound her? With her Habanera she eclipsed all predecessors and made the role irrevocably hers. The first act ended with a storm of bravas from the gallery and vociferous applause from the rest of the house.
It was not until the tumultuous ovation over the first act had ceased that Diana's presence was noticed by the audience. Accompanied by her father, she had arrived at the close of the overture, and had only time to slip into her place before the curtain arose. The walk in the rain had given her delicate skin a touch of color and heightened the beauty of her tender eyes, "so deeply blue that they were black," as Lord Patrick Illington described them on his first meeting at her presentation at Court. Her bands of straight hair were wound around her head; pale-green draperies encircled her lithesome body, and the gardenia blossoms in her hair gave her a fleeting likeness to the water-sprite Undine. In the horseshoe of fashionable mondaines the fragrance of her beauty was like that of a dew-sprayed rose.
Mrs. Hobart Chichester Chichester Jones, with her usual common-sense of seeing things as they were, leaned towards the man beside her.
"That is a beauty – the real thing; no chic, no gowning, no Paris wisdom of make-up, but a beauty. I'm glad I've seen it." She sank back as though philosophically preparing for a Waterloo.
From his box the Prince noticed the daughter of Sir Charles Marjoribanks whose services in diplomacy in his youth were not forgotten. Forthwith an equerry was sent to Sir Charles and Diana inviting them to visit the royal presence.
Diana was the social novelty of the season. The Prime-Minister remembered his classics as he dreamily gazed at her and murmured, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?"
From the back of the box, Henry watched Diana's impression on the house. His eyebrows were drawn into horns of suppressed temper and there was an air of brutal determination in his bearing. Gradually his expression cleared. Diana's beauty that night stirred the best in him. He tried to dismiss the events of the afternoon; he would be worthy of this child-woman. He set his shoulders square as though preparing to fight unseen forces.
"Lucky fellow, Kerhill," one man confided to another as they watched the crowd's sweeping glasses pause constantly at Diana Marjoribanks's box and saw the triumphant look on Henry's face.
The sinuous, commanding Carmen had reached her triumphant entry with the toreador when the mad Don José's dagger drew the purple stain on the gold-embroidered gown. Over the house a spell-bound silence reigned. As from an animal wounded to the death, low sounds of agonized pain came from the great actress – she forgot to sing, and the house forgot that she was a singer in an opera comique. For the moment it faced the realistic truth of a grim tragedy.
Excited and intoxicated by the sensuous music, Diana was hardly conscious that the opera was over. She was like a child with the world for a great, colored balloon. As she came down the winding staircase she was almost happy, and turned to smile at Henry, who was by her side. As she did so she saw him frown. They reached the foot of the staircase, and found their way half-barred by a dark, foreign-looking woman robed in a spun-gold gown. Diana noticed the insolent, amused expression on her handsome face, but at that moment her attention was diverted by some one who spoke to her, and she only vaguely noticed Henry's constrained bow, and the sudden brutal flame in his eyes.
Only later, as she sleepily looked over at the park in the dim light, did she remember that the woman in cloth of gold at the bottom of the staircase was strangely like the vivid, foreign-looking woman who had flashed past her in the park as the storm broke.
The wedding took place at St. George's, Hanover Square. It was the first brilliant wedding of the season and royalty honored it, not by sending a deputy, but by its personal presence. Diana passed through the gay pageant and heard the conventional words of well-wishers like one in a dream. She remembered being changed into a going-away frock – the curious street crowd gathering around her as she left the reception at the Park Lane house. Then as she entered the brougham she was conscious of Henry's face drawn close to hers, and the old frightened instincts that her father only a week ago had soothed and quelled again took possession of her. A great wall of fear closed in about her.
At last the carriage reached the station.
Diana leaned back in their compartment in the train northbound for Scotland. The bustle of the outgoing crowds was holding Henry's attention as she glanced over the afternoon paper, which gave a prominent position to the brilliant wedding that had taken place at St. George's only a few hours ago.
Suddenly she espied a name that made her heart leap. A brief paragraph told of the reward to be conferred on Captain James Wynnegate, but a longer account followed, giving details of his gallant work in the Northwestern Hills.
A great longing to see the friend of her childhood came over her. She was ashamed that she had forgotten him so long.
Henry entered the compartment, the guard closed the door, and the train started on its journey. Her husband spoke to her and she answered him in an absent manner. The sudden remembrance of her old playmate grew vividly and seemed to blot out all else, as, following on her self-reproach for forgetting him, came the thought, growing more poignant; "Did Jim remember her?"
CHAPTER IV
Jim lay in the hospital ward convalescing. Of the march back to the nearest hospital post, after the fight which has taken place three months before in the Northwestern Hills, when his name had been flashed over Europe in praise of his magnificent service to his flag, his mind held no memory.
Night after night in his delirium he lived again through the scenes of the fight that had brought glory to his name. Now it was the evening before the battle, when, acting upon information brought by the spy Rham-shi, he and his men kept their long vigil, sitting silently in their saddles the entire night awaiting the onslaught of the fanatical natives across the hill. Again it was early dawn, and in his fever-tossed dreams he heard the roar of the voices as the assault began; again he climbed to the summit of the hill and saw the dreaded gun of the enemy that was riddling his men. On – on he mounted. He felt the warm blood ooze down his body, the mists swim before his eyes, and the stinging pain pierce his side. In despair that he might not reach the monster in time to prevent it from completing its deadly work, his cry of agony often rang out in the silent room.
"Oh, God, God, my men – my splendid men – give me courage!"
Then his thoughts would wander to the hours when he lay on the ground with the blood dripping from his wound, and with the loaded carbine snatched from a fallen trooper he brought down a tribesman at the enemy's gun. As he fell, another sprang forward – there was another shot and still another as the tribesmen went down before his sure aim. There was but one thought in his brain – to prevent the firing of the gun, the devastation of his men. Difficult and more difficult it grew to lift the weakening arm. He could feel as he tossed on his couch the gurgle of the blood that glued him to the ground. He made an effort to rise to his knees. Another devil was about to load the gun. He must catch this one again – he must. It was his last cartridge. He stretched out his stiffening arm feebly; he tried to pull the trigger, but his strength failed him. Then – one supreme effort, and a report flashed through the air. The rest was a blank, but he had carried the day.
These delirious hours passed and there followed a vague mid-air suspension of existence. Of tangible things he was no part. The years of fighting were forgotten. He was back in the Fairies' Corner with Diana, he saw the giant trees bending and whispering in the starlight. The smell of the damp earth from the sun-hidden enclosure filled the sick-room, and the vibrant, strong, compelling cry of the night-jar echoed in his dreams. Again, he and Diana listened for the flutter of the fairies' wings in the tree-tops. Gradually, even these mists cleared from his brain, and to-day he waited with impatience the surgeon, who was to decide whether he might obtain his leave.
The doctor found him sitting up in bed, his lean hands idly resting on the coverlet.
"Well, doctor," he asked, "what is the verdict? Am I to be allowed to join my regiment?"
The surgeon looked into the brave eyes. Jim was a wraith of the man who had gone into battle. The drawn cheek-bones were like high lights in the sunken face, the gauntness of the body could be discerned under the bedclothes, but the unflinching eyes held the same expression of everlasting courage. The doctor took Jim's long, meagre hand.
"We are done with you, Wynnegate. You fought a bigger battle here on this cot than you did yon day on the Hills, but you've won."
Jim only smiled.
"Your regiment is ordered home within a month, and you must go to your station to join it. Fighting will be a little out of your line for a while. I think you'll find you need England – a summer of sunshine in the open fields. Then come back later to us again." A suspicious moisture clouded his glasses. He was a man many years older than Jim, and he had seen his own boy go down at the head of his troops. Still, with the instinctive loyalty of the Englishman to his country, he concluded, "We need such men as you, my son."
The surgeon moved away. Jim closed his eyes. Presently he looked up.
He saw the long line of wounded men with here and there a wasted, propped-up figure – the quiet nurses passing and repassing. He began to feel the pulsating call of life again. For him the sick-room existence was ended; soon he would be back in the Fairies' Corner; he could hear the flutter of their wings.
The men were in the mess. Dunlap and Singleton were stretched out in long, wicker-basket chairs. Tomlinson was talking in an excited voice with several officers of the Tenth Hussars. "It means that Jim will receive a mention and a damn fine one," Tomlinson was saying, as he leaned back in his chair and gulped down his gin-and-seltzer. Singleton called to the orderly to bring a whiskey-and-soda. Dunlap leaned forward to Tomlinson as he asked:
"Is that absolutely sure? We all know that Jim has done fine work in his seven years here, but are the powers above really going to commend his last bit of pluck?"
"The powers above," thundered Tomlinson, who loathed being doubted, "not only mean to commend him, but they mean to decorate him with the bronze cross itself. I had it from Watkins."
A long whistle greeted this bit of news. Watkins was not apt to talk without positive information.
Tomlinson was fairly bursting with enthusiasm and importance. For him station life in India meant gossip – good or bad news – so long as it was news. He could work himself into a fever of enthusiasm, get all the glory out of another man's receiving a decoration, and rejoice as though it had been given to himself. He only asked that it should occur in his station. "Tommy," as he was called, had been known to incite blackballing from his club against a man whom he had never seen, because no opposition was made. It meant news, and the passing of the word from one mess to another. When the man was blackballed, Tomlinson, in a high fever of indignation, sought the downed man and became so incensed with sympathy that he threatened to resign from a club that could offer such indignities: by that time he had forgotten that he had caused it. At the moment he was basking in the glory of Jim's coming honors. He took another gin-and-seltzer.
"By George! he was down and done for when he came here from the hospital," Dunlap said. "Never saw such a goner. But he's picked up tremendously during the past month."
Singleton took his whiskey-and-potash from the orderly.
"Strange," he continued, as he sat up, glass in hand. "Wynnegate is so eager to go back: never saw anything like it. Seems as though this illness had knocked soldiering out of him, and he was such a keen one before."
"Mighty fortunate the regiment's time was up and we're ordered home. Talk about Jim's being glad – Gad! it means something to see those kiddies of mine. Wonder if the little beggars will remember me," Dunlap mused.
After three gins-and-seltzers, it was time for Tomlinson to listen to Dunlap about his children. He had heard it all before. He had come from his own mess with the news about Jim. That was all that interested him, so he got up to go.
"Who'll play polo this evening?" he asked.
Singleton promised he would.
"I'll walk back with you," Tomlinson said.
They started to leave, but catching sight of an orderly with a mail-bag, Singleton let Tomlinson go on alone.
"See you at six for polo, Tommy; and I say, send any of our fellows in that you see. Tell them the post is in," he called as he saw Jim's long, loose-jointed stride across the road.
A blazing sun beat down on Jim as he crossed to the mess. The April weather was anticipating India's most wearing heat. But only vaguely he noted the ominous lead-colored sky, with its promise of dust storms. The green of England filled his vision. Since the days in the hospital, his thoughts had recurred incessantly to Diana. A picture in an illustrated paper, picked up in his ward, showed him Miss Diana Marjoribanks as a beautiful young girl – little Diana no longer. There was the same Madonna face, but more exquisitely fair than the child he had left had promised to be. He hardly cared to admit to himself how much the picture had stirred him.
When he entered the mess he found the men in groups, absorbed in their letters. Singleton and Dunlap both called to him.
"There are two for you, Jim."
Letters did not often come his way. When he first left England, several child's letters had come from Diana – these he had answered. He never heard from Henry, and his aunt wrote seldom.
"Dinningfold." He saw the familiar old postmark. It was from Lady Elizabeth, then. Boyishly, he fingered its ample thickness. It was good of her to write such a budget, he thought, as he tore it open. The chatter of voices about him fell unheeding on his ears as the men read their letters.
"God! Breese is dead – dropped down quite suddenly at the club," Singleton remarked as he turned a page of the letter he was reading.
His words were almost drowned by an eager, exulting cry. Half the fellows turned toward Dick Farninsby. He was usually so quiet. To-night his young, fair face was the color of a puppy.
"I've come into the money," he stammered.
Every one knew that Farninsby's uncle had been an old reprobate and that Dick had had a close pinch on his meagre allowance. They also knew that a pretty girl was waiting for him at home. A buzz of congratulations followed. But Tim took no part in them. He was reading his aunt's letter.
"… We are so sorry that you won't be home in time for the wedding. Diana and Henry are to be married. It will be a London wedding. Diana has grown into a beautiful girl and will make a worthy wife for Henry and a charming mistress of Maudsley Towers…"
As he read, the page became a dancing mass of hieroglyphics. The men were beginning to light their cigarettes and pipes as they called bits of news to one another from the English papers. He tried hard to make the strange letters shape themselves and form words. He reread them. "Diana and Henry are to be married." He turned the page. "On the 30th of April," it said. To-day was the 2d of May.
Several of the men started for the polo-fields. Some one called, "What's your news, Wynnegate?" He forgot to answer. He crushed the letter in his hand and left the mess. Mechanically he put the unopened letter from headquarters, with the news of his brilliant reward, in his pocket. Across the polo-fields he could see the heavy atmosphere gathering in great clouds. A dust-storm was nursing its imminent wrath.
It all seemed far away from the Fairies' Corner.
