Banked Fires Part 10

"It wouldn't be a bad plan to keep it in the refrigerator in bottles. I did that all the winter, last year, when I was on milk diet."

"It will turn me grey to keep in mind the many things I must not do out here!" sighed Joyce.

Mrs. Fox condoled with her out of fellow-feeling and congratulated her for having given up camping. "If it doesn't suit you or the kid, I don't see why you should be obliged to do it. Men have to learn not to be selfish."

Joyce fired up. "Ray is anything but selfish. Sometimes I think it is I who am selfish; but if it were only myself, I would never say a word. We have to do our duty by the child."

"Exactly so. I quite see the point of view. Here you have the doctor at hand. I am told he nursed you like a mother."

Joyce wondered how Mrs. Fox had come to hear of it as, since her return to the Station, she had seen no callers. "How _ever_ did you know?" she asked ingenuously.

"Oh, one hears things!" Mrs. Fox blew smoke through her nostrils and smiled knowingly. "And how do you like him on closer acquaintance?"

Joyce thought he improved on acquaintance. Mrs. Fox annoyed her by that smile.

"He is an enigma to most, but if I know his type, he is not a little dangerous. He can be exceedingly rude. I pa.s.sed him on my way here and common politeness should have made him pull up for a word or two. But he rushed by in a cloud of dust with two fingers just touching the brim of his hat!--considering I was on foot, you can imagine my feelings. I have never been treated so by a man in my life--unless it is by my own husband; but then, there's no love lost," Mrs. Fox remarked.

"Perhaps Captain Dalton was in a hurry," Joyce suggested.

"Don't excuse him. He can be very nice when he likes. Yesterday there was Honor Bright hanging over her fence to talk to him, and though it was his busiest time, he was there quite a long while,--you know their gardens join. I saw them through Mrs. Bray's field-gla.s.ses. The Brays'

verandah, as you know, looks on the Brights' grounds from beyond a paddock."

"He thinks a lot of Honor," said Joyce remembering their conversation in camp.

"Any one can see she is making up to him. But Mrs. Bright had better take care. No one knows anything of Captain Dalton's affairs. He might be married for all one knows. Honor Bright may be very popular in the District, but she'll get herself talked about and end all her chances of marrying well. Naturally it is the ambition of her parents to see her well settled, but she's far too unconventional. Did you hear of her escapade while you were in camp?"

Joyce had not heard, but was eager to know all about it. She knew Honor was careless of conventions out of a contempt for small minds and a love of independence. All who knew her allowed that she was as "straight as you make 'em," and admired her open nature and clear eye.

"Didn't she write and tell you?"

"We seldom write to each other."

"I thought you were bosom friends!--well, she was out alone looking for early snipe--someone had seen one in the fields beyond the bazaar--and while out, she was supposed to have been bitten by a snake----"

"--Why do you say 'supposed'?" Joyce interrupted ready to spring to arms for her friend.

"We'll say she was bitten, if you like; only, people bitten by snakes generally die, and she didn't. She tied a ligature and was limping home when she met Captain Dalton in his car on his way to a dispensary somewhere in the District. He took her up and home to his house where she stayed half the day alone with him. Her mother was week-ending in Calcutta, and Honor was in charge of her father's comforts and the home; but her father happened to have run out to Panipara for a rioting case which he and the police were bothered with; so Miss Honor stayed with the doctor till she thought fit to come home."

"Bitten by a snake!" gasped Joyce in consternation. "Poor Honor!--how terrified she must have been!"

"That's best known to herself and him. Since then, you'll observe that there is a sort of understanding between them."

"How do you mean?"

"They seem to be on far better terms than he is with any one else in the Station, and Honor is falling in love with him. I am anything but blind to the symptoms!" and Mrs. Fox struck a match and lighted another cigarette.

"I suppose they grew friendly over the treatment of her wound," said Joyce beginning to understand how it was that the doctor had learned to appreciate Honor Bright. Yet he was "not seeking to marry her."

"I must get Honor to tell me all about it when I see her. Perhaps she does not know I am back?"

"She knows right enough, for, as I have said, the doctor was with her yesterday, talking across the garden fence."

Mrs. Fox smoked her second and third cigarette, drank tea with Joyce, and, when every topic of interest was exhausted, wended her way homeward, deploring the fact that her husband was too selfish to give her a motor-car. "He doesn't care for one, so I have to do without; and with only one riding-horse and that one lame, I am obliged to tramp the dusty lanes on foot."

"I am also without a conveyance while my husband is in camp," said Joyce, "but it does not matter as I like walking."

"I don't. My frocks are not suited to pedestrian exercise and cost too much--" which suggested the idea to Joyce that Mrs. Fox's expensive clothes accounted for her husband's economy in other directions. She watched her swaying languidly down the drive, a tall and graceful figure, stylishly dressed and pretty in a faded way, in spite of the delicate pink of her oval cheek and the brightness of her thin lips.

What a pity it was that she had never a good word for any one, and made herself so ridiculous with the men, thought Joyce; it lowered her in their estimation and laid her open to impudence. Though she was attractive to many, she never succeeded in holding the attention of her admirers very long; which was humiliating to say the least of it. Joyce looked upon her as an example of a true flirt, and feared her accordingly--not on her husband's account, for Ray gave her a wide berth--but as a criminal at large. Women had whispered tales which she found impossible to credit; the world was so censorious! But on the theory that there was never any smoke without fire, she decided that Mrs. Fox was unscrupulous, and deplored the fact that the Station was obliged to put up with her. Apparently, so long as a husband countenanced his wife, no one else had any right to object to whatever she might do! It was a strange world!

The trend of her thoughts reminded her of the doctor's estimate of herself, which he had subsequently withdrawn. But then, he could only have been teasing, for Joyce knew herself, and flirting was very far from her intentions at any time, or under any circ.u.mstance. For instance, she was very sure she would never allow any man but her husband to kiss her!--the bare idea was appalling!

After the tennis hour at the Club, Honor Bright cycled up to the steps of the Bara Koti, and ran in to embrace Mrs. Meredith and welcome her home. "I am sorry not to have been able to come earlier, there was so much to do, and a tennis match in the afternoons," she said in her full, deep voice which Joyce thought so musical. Yet she never sang. G.o.d had given her a larynx, but the wicked fairies had robbed her of ear, so, though she loved music pa.s.sionately, she could never produce a tune. "I must be fit only for 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils,'" she was once heard to say, "for it seems I was not born musical."

However, it was pointed out to her that she was not just to herself; she had plenty of "music in her soul" to satisfy even Shakespeare; it was only her inability to use the divine instrument in her throat. "You put me in mind of 'Trilby.' Perhaps you will sing if you are hypnotised!"

Joyce had told her.

"Captain Dalton mentioned that you and Baby had both been ill. However I am glad to see _you_ so well. How is Squawk?"

"How can you call him such a horrid name!" said Joyce reproachfully.

Honor laughed heartily. "Tommy is responsible; you must scold him."

"I shall, indeed. He's a bad boy!"

"Not at all!--he's a Deare!" at which they both laughed, for Mr.

Bright's a.s.sistant, like the a.s.sistant Magistrate, had a name of infinite possibilities. A comic fate had thrown him and Jack Darling together in the same Station, and they were provocative of fun in more senses than the coincidence of their names afforded.

The guest was carried off to see the son-and-heir in his crib and admire his indefinite features that were prophetic of beauty, and his limbs that were a miracle of elasticity.

By and by, they settled down to talk and Honor was told of the Padre's approaching visit. "Mrs. Fox thinks we should ask him to put up with us this time, or he might be offended," she explained. "Will your mother mind?"

"Mind? she'll be only too glad, for in private life the old man is a terrible bore! he tells the same joke over and over again, and Mother says she is determined not to laugh the next time. There ought to be some way of choking off stale jokes, don't you think, without offending the poor dear?"

"Tell him one of his own. I am sure it will make such an impression that he'll never forget it."

"He's so polite, that he'll laugh heartily as though he'd never heard it in his life!"

"What a hopeless person! However, I shall be glad to save your mother from nervous prostration," said Joyce.

"Mrs. Fox always gets news in advance of everyone else," said Honor. "I wonder how she does it?"

"She says she hears a lot--Ray says, servants carry news about the District as fast as telegrams."

"I hate to think that she takes the liberty of dropping in upon you whenever she likes. She's not a safe person, so I hope you are careful of what you tell her."

"Generally, it is she who does the telling, and I the listening."

"It won't do you any good, what she has to say!"