Banked Fires Part 21

"You must often be very lonely?" he ventured sympathetically. He had heard many rumours of Fox's neglect of his wife--of the temptations to which she was exposed and to which a woman placed as she was might be excused for yielding. Plenty of fellows paid court to her, and a good few had grown attached--yet, barring Smart who was a cad and a bounder, he was sure that none could cast a stone.

"I am always desperately lonely," she sighed, as she sank into a chesterfield and motioned him to the seat beside her. "You little know how it preys upon me; how I welcome a sympathetic friend! but--why speak of it?" she pa.s.sed him her cigarette case, and they began to smoke companionably. "So few understand me," said she in subdued tones. "So many misunderstand! I ask you, what is life worth to a young woman in my position?" her chest heaved, her eyes filled with self-pity.

"And who can stifle nature and be happy?--the ache for human sympathy--tenderness--love...." she brushed the moisture from her eyes with a diminutive handkerchief, and smiled a wintry smile. "I refuse to talk only of myself!--let us talk of you, dear Jack. You are a dear and I have so longed to make a friend of you," she interrupted herself to say.

Jack coloured furiously while filled with indignant pity for her. Poor girl!--after all, she was quite young!... He did not care how old she was; she was young enough to be pitied for the rotten time her selfish husband gave her.

They spent a supremely innocent evening looking through alb.u.ms of photographs and talking football and polo. The dinner was excellent, and Mrs. Fox, clever in the art of entertaining, modelled her conversation to suit his manly tastes, in the end breaking down all his natural shyness and placing him on terms of easy friends.h.i.+p. When Jack eventually rose to go he was flattered by her open reluctance to part with him; her pleasure in his society had been so frank and appealing.

"I have never enjoyed an evening so much in my life, Jack," she said cooingly. "Why are you so different from other men?"

"Am I?" he asked in some confusion as she retained his hand in hers.

"In a thousand ways. I almost wish I had never met you, Jack!"

"Why?" he asked, his breath suddenly short, his heart beating a rapid tattoo in his breast. For the life of him he could not say the easy pretty things that fell so naturally from other men's lips.

"Because--Oh! why, you must know--I shall always be making comparisons which are odious, and remember, I have to put up with only odiousness!"

"I hate to think of it," he said huskily.

"It is sweet to think you mind."

"It makes a fellow--mad to do something. It's d.a.m.ned hard and cruel for you!"

"Never mind, dear boy. Come again, come often, will you?" she pleaded, leaning her head against the pillar behind her and looking languis.h.i.+ngly up at him with the moonlight full on her face and throat, bathing her in a pale radiance.

Jack's eyes swept the deserted verandah. He did not know that the servants were well drilled in the etiquette of keeping out of the way when the lady of the house entertained a male visitor. "Good-bye," he said indistinctly, moving a step nearer.

"Good-bye," she returned almost inarticulately, her eyes melting to his own. "I shall weep my heart out when you are gone."

"Why?" he demanded unsteadily.

"For the things that I have missed. I always dream of a man just like you--you are the man of my dreams come to me--too late!--and my heart has been starved so long!"

"Don't," he said sharply. "I am not made of stone."

Their faces were very near together, so near, that Jack had only to stoop to press her lips fiercely with his.

"Oh, Jack!--" she cried emotionally. "You mustn't make me love you--you darling!" yet she returned his kiss with equal fervour. "Oh, go--go quickly," she breathed. "You must not stay----"

Dazed and bewildered, Jack took her at her word and went swiftly down the steps, nor did he halt when her voice called after him to stop and return. "Oh, Jack!--come back--come back, I cannot let you go!"

Nevertheless, he went without a backward look, wondering within himself if all men found it so easy to tread the path of dishonour. Where it might lead him if he allowed his baser instincts headway, he could guess, and with a mighty effort he made up his mind to apply the brake there and then. Poor woman!--he could not blame her--it was he alone who had had no excuse--not a shadow of an excuse for the outrage. She, a disappointed wife was like a being temporising with suicide. Small blame to her if she took the plunge. It was for men of sound brain and clear judgment to save her--not supply the means of self-destruction.

Did she wish him to believe that she already loved him?

Then he must a.s.sist her quickly to recover from the delusion, for Jack well knew that there is a difference between love and the feeling that could simulate it to the destruction of honour and self-respect. Pa.s.sion had swept him off his feet with sudden violence and he was shaken to the depths with fear of himself, for he had let himself go unpardonably and was ashamed.

All the way to his bungalow he walked with bowed head, alternately thrilled with temptation, and abased at his moral collapse; the latter, because he cherished an ideal and was now convicted in his own estimation as unworthy.

The ideal had been established in the _Puja_[13] holidays he had spent in Darjeeling playing with the "Squawk" and listening to its mother's innocent reminiscences of her home and her people in England. He had found a wonderful thing: a beautiful woman without vanity--a child-nature in a woman; an ideal wife; one who respected her husband and obeyed him while idolising their child. Wedded to such purity a husband's life was paradise, and Jack accounted him a lucky man. It was refres.h.i.+ng to bask in her presence and hear her describe her simple past, so transparently virtuous and inexperienced, into which a certain name was always intruding. "Kitty" the little sister was mentioned constantly. Always "Kitty!" She had said this or that, she had done so and so. She was a little wonder, full of charm, and so intensely human that the picture of her had haunted his imagination.

[Footnote 13: Hindu festival.]

"Is she like you?" he had asked wondering if Nature could possibly have twice excelled herself.

"We are considered rather alike, but she has twice the courage and initiative that I have, and her eyes are the deepest violet you have seen."

"Haven't you a photo of her?" curiosity had impelled him to ask.

"Oh, yes. A beauty, taken by Raaf's in Regent Street." She had fetched the photograph and Jack had fallen straightway in love with the sparkling face so full of charm and suns.h.i.+ne. The small features were not unlike Mrs. Meredith's, but where they lacked her beauty, they made up a thousandfold in attraction. It was a face to hold the attention, to follow to the ends of the earth. From Mrs. Meredith's description, Kitty was brimful of life and high spirits, affectionate and generous, but quite a "handful" to manage. "She always dared infinitely more than ever I did, and was always the first to get into sc.r.a.pes! But so loyal and honourable!"

"I should imagine every fellow for miles around must be head and ears in love with her!"

"That, of course, but she is not a bit silly about boys, being practically a boy herself in disposition. Only lately she has begun to do up her hair and is to be presented next season when she will be considered 'out.'"

"And be married straight away!"

"I suppose so," said Joyce proudly. "She is such a darling!"

"I can believe it," said he.

Jack had been so completely captivated by Kitty's photograph that Joyce had generously told him to keep it. She had other copies and thought it as well that he should cultivate an ideal for the elevation of his soul.

"It is good for a man to look up to a really good girl with admiration and trust; it should make him determined to become worthy of the possession even of her picture."

"It is something for a fellow to live up to," Jack had blus.h.i.+ngly returned, full of delight in the gift. He mentally resolved to go in search of the original the very first time he obtained furlough and to be satisfied with no other. If the Fates would only keep her fancy-free for himself!

He carried the picture home and Tommy was tormented with curiosity concerning the face which was so like Mrs. Meredith's and yet not hers.

The memory of that afternoon at Darjeeling and of the photograph in his dispatch-box came to taunt Jack in the moonlight as he wended his way to the bungalow at the Police Lines, fresh as he was from the experience of a married woman's kisses given in response to his own.

Tommy was at home and awake when he came in, and remarked bluntly concerning his extraordinary pallor.

"How did it go off? Was Barrington Fox Esquire particularly cordial?"

"He wasn't there," came gruffly from Jack.

"Not there?"

"I'll repeat it if you like."

"Don't be ratty. I was only expressing natural surprise. Possibly she knew he wouldn't be there when she asked you."

"You are as uncharitable as everyone else."

"No, I am merely somewhat discerning."

"It does you credit."