Banked Fires Part 39

Mrs. Bright looked surprised. Doubtful thoughts flashed through her mind,--fear of gossip, reluctance to stand in the way of innocent pleasure, and wonder that the doctor should have shown a sudden inclination towards sociability. Seeing a critical expression lurking in Mrs. Ironsides' eye her dignity was immediately in arms.

"Certainly, darling, but don't be late. Mind you wrap up properly," she returned cordially. Mrs. Ironsides would have to appreciate the fact that Honor had her mother's fullest trust and confidence. However, throughout the ensuing rubber she could not avoid mentally speculating on the possibility of the most eligible bachelor in the District beginning to consider her child from a matrimonial point of view.

Miss Bright pa.s.sed out into the darkness with Captain Dalton, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with a new beauty, and Tommy watched her, filled with dismay.

What was the meaning of it? Honor with the doctor, of all men! The doctor paying Honor marked attentions, and she accepting them with sweet graciousness! He forgot to pull at his cigar which went out while he stared into the night with eyes that saw only the look in the girl's eyes as she walked beside Dalton towards his car.

The motor drive was repeated occasionally, and it became an ordinary event for Honor to shoot duck on the Panipara Jhil in his company. "It is better than tramping the _jhil_ alone," Mrs. Bright said, when the subject was mentioned in her presence. "I have always felt anxious while she has been absent on her snipe-shooting expeditions alone, but am so much easier in mind now that the doctor has taken charge of her. He is such an unerring shot, I am told; and she is learning to be so careful under his guidance."

It was the least of the lessons Honor learned from the doctor. He taught her the delights of a perfect companions.h.i.+p founded on mutual love; a man's reverence for the woman he respects: a complete knowledge of her own heart; its power of devotion, its great depths, and stores of feeling.

Sometimes Ray Meredith joined them in his fleeting visits to the Station--a lonely and pathetic being, in need of companions.h.i.+p, and grateful for friendly attentions. His wife wrote regularly, he said, and she and the child were well. Otherwise, he spoke little of his absent family. Sometimes Tommy would meet them on the _jhil_ and share their picnic luncheon. Jack was never accorded an invitation. On these occasions, the lovers would play at being ordinary friends but with poor success. Honor would avoid meeting the doctor's eyes, while the doctor's eyes were unable to stray long from contemplation of her engaging face which had never looked so lovable and full of charm.

With a quickened intuition, Tommy realised that his own sun had set, and he went about his business, a very subdued being; one who had lost all interest in his occupations and who was finding very little in life worth living for.

When Honor was alone with Dalton, they would discuss the future, and plan their Elysium together. He was engaged in making arrangements for taking up a practice in Melbourne, where a colleague, formerly his senior, had retired and was eager for his young brains in partners.h.i.+p.

When everything was settled, her parents were to be told, after which they would be quietly married at the Mission, and leave for Australia.

"You will not mind such a hole-and-corner sort of wedding?" he asked anxiously.

"What does it matter, so long as we are married?" she replied. "I have always hated a big, ostentatious wedding."

"I should loathe it!" he said strongly. "And what about Australia?"

"Anywhere with you--even if it is to the South Pole!"

Dalton kissed her to express his delight in her thoroughness. "How glad I shall be when I have you all to myself!--I shall spend every day of my life in proving to you how much I value your love, and you shall give this poor devil a chance to take up his life again. Honey!--sometimes I am sleepless with fears. It seems to me too good to be true. I am overcome with dread lest I should never carry it through! Something will be sure to happen to stop it. If so, I am done for! It will be the end of me!" He looked as if haunted with forebodings of evil.

Honor enfolded him in her embrace. Her tender arms clung about his neck and she kissed him tenderly in her desire to bring him comfort. "Why should anything happen to interfere? G.o.d knows how much we care, and He will be merciful." She fancied he alluded to sudden death.

"Ah! yes. Your G.o.d to whom you pray for safety every night of your life, may see fit to save you from such as I. I'm not good enough to take you, Honey; that's straight."

"You shall not say that," she protested laying her soft palm across his mouth. "Who is good in this world? Not I, by any means! So we are a pair in need of protection, and are both determined to begin a new life together in grat.i.tude for the Divine Countenance."

Dalton suppressed a sound that was almost a sob while he defiantly blinked away a tear. "Sweet little Puritan!--" He covered her hand with kisses. "But it will be a terrible day for me when that martinet of a conscience sits in judgment on my sins. It makes me wish with all my heart that I may be dead before then! I'd risk d.a.m.nation to----"

"Oh, hus.h.!.+----"

"To have you mine, anyway. Does that shock you? It's the truth," and Honor was pained and greatly puzzled.

But he was not often in such a strange frame of mind. There were times when he was a different man, almost boyish in his merriment, and full of a determined optimism. He would build castles in the air for them both to live in, and make her laugh just for the sake of admiring her beautiful teeth.

It was early in March when Honor, having lost much of her reserve, discussed Jack's affair with Dalton and deplored his inevitable ruin.

"Tommy says he'll be done for in every way if he marries her, but he will do so in spite of everything."

"More fool he."

"He's been very weak and very wicked," sighed Honor; "but _she_ began it. We watched it start, and Jack walk, as it were, blindfold into a trap. It seems terrible that she should escape and he receive all the punishment!"

"Generally, it is the other way about!"

"Jack's punishment will be life-long. He will never be a happy man.

Already, he is almost ill for thinking of it. His people are so proud and would never receive Mrs. Fox. Can't anything be done? You don't think he is obliged to marry her?"

"Not Mrs. Fox. Circ.u.mstances alter cases. She had her eyes wide open and played her cards for this. It would serve a woman like that jolly well right if young Darling gave her the slip. Tell Tommy to prevail on him to see me. What he wants is a medical certificate and leave home for six months. I'm very much mistaken if that doesn't change the complexion of things considerably."

"But he has no real illness!"

"I dare say I'll find him really ill when I overhaul him. He looks on the verge of a break-down. I have never seen a lad go off as he has done the past few months."

"That is because, at heart, Jack is not really a bad fellow. It is just that he is deplorably weak; and remorse for having yielded to temptation, is tormenting his soul. In proper hands he would shape quite well."

Dalton was as good as his word, for, when Jack visited him for a medical opinion on his run-down health, he was ready with the certificate which was to obtain six months' leave for him in Europe.

And while the young man waited on tenterhooks for sanction to leave India, and the routine of station-life continued as usual, the doctor awoke to the fact of his own increasing unpopularity with the natives of Panipara. Joyce Meredith had once tried to warn him, at which he had been considerably amused. After that, the arrival on the scene of a surveyor and the taking in hand of preliminary measures, showed that the Government were seriously considering the drainage scheme; hence personal hostilities against the author of it became active, and the gravity of his position was forced upon him.

The villagers scowled whenever he pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed in his journeys about the District, and offered him open insolence in lonely places; while, on one occasion, a large mob had gathered to waylay the car, but had melted away at sight of Honor beside him. They had recognised the daughter of the senior police official, and were afraid,--or had caught sight of shot guns in the car; whereupon, discretion had prevailed.

Recognising symptoms as dangerous, Dalton refrained from taking Honor motoring with him, and had given up their joint expeditions to the _jhil_, at which Mrs. Bright was well pleased. Captain Dalton had, apparently, not proposed to Honor, and it was high time that he ceased making her conspicuous by his attentions. She had expected something to come of them but, so far, the only result was gossip and chaff on the part of ladies when they met at the Club, which was excessively annoying.

Didn't Honor see that matters were going a bit too far? Was it prudent for a young girl to get herself talked about--especially with a young man who had already caused plenty of gossip in the Station? Honor allowed that she had, perhaps, been a little unwise not to have considered the opinion of the neighbours, but her dear mother need not make herself anxious, as she and Captain Dalton understood each other perfectly.

That being the case, Mrs. Bright was consoled; for what is an "understanding" between a man and a maid, if not an unofficial engagement? Like most mothers, Mrs. Bright was anxious, at heart, to see her daughter happily settled in life; and the doctor, though not a wealthy man or popular, was, at least, a rising one in his profession, and considered a good match.

Honor, however, paid little attention to gossip and chaff, her mind being filled with anxiety and growing alarm for her lover's safety. She had quickly divined the increasing antagonism of the Panipara villagers towards him; and knowing his recklessness lived in continual dread.

"I shall not know a moment's peace while this sort of thing goes on,"

she fretted. "Can't you get a transfer till we are married?"

"And leave my little love?" It was unthinkable.

"It would make no difference in our feelings for each other."

"I couldn't do it, apart from the fact that it would look like running away. You little know what it means to me to see you every day."

Latterly he had spent most of his evenings at the Blights', who took compa.s.sion on his loneliness and were complaisant of his obvious attachment to Honor. Mrs. Bright, in her tactful way, gave him many opportunities of having Honor to himself in the drawing-room while she betook herself to her husband's own particular sanctum to indulge in confidential chat. "It is plain to see that he wors.h.i.+ps our Honey, and it is best they should meet here, since meet they must, in her own home," she would explain. "I dare say we shall be hearing something one of these days."

"He improves on acquaintance, and certainly has a devilish fine voice. I could listen to him all night," said her husband, nevertheless, obeying the hint and remaining a voluntary exile in his study.

Considering that his opportunities for s.n.a.t.c.hing whatever of happiness he could out of his life in the present lay in Muktiarbad, it was not likely that Dalton was inclined to seek a transfer and thus run away from bodily danger;--not even when a parcel containing a bomb was placed on his writing-table, which, owing to some technical defect, failed to go off when it was opened. The incident gave Tommy and his subordinates some work to do, trying to trace the culprit who had placed it there, but the matter was treated with unconcern by the doctor himself.

CHAPTER XIX

THE DELUGE

One day, at the close of April, when the thermometer was unusually high, Ray Meredith fell a victim to a stroke of the sun, and had to be carried in from camp like a dead man. His friends were thrown into consternation, telegrams were flashed to headquarters, and even the bazaar discussed his danger with bated breath. Captain Dalton, always at his best in critical moments, rose all at once to great heights in the estimation of the District. It was told of him how he was not only physician but nurse to the Collector, and no woman could have been more deft or capable in the sick-room than he was. But no one knew that a sense of obligation to his conscience as well as to the sick man was driving him hard, so that, for the time being, all personal considerations were swept aside,--even his cherished plans which were nearing completion,--in order that he might save a useful life to which he owed some reparation.