Part 19

There was one moment of outward triviality which yet, to the looker-on, was charged with a pain almost beyond bearing; it was when English, with the lather white upon his chin and cheek, turned quickly round upon him with hands outstretched for a towel. How often had not he seen his comrade thus, in the old days, when they had lived together, marched together, laughed and fought and suffered together, and he had been so happy!

The shaving accomplished, Captain English bent forward to the mirror and occupied himself with minute care in trimming and combing the flaunting, upturned moustache of the Pathan back to the old sober limits. There was not a quiver in the strong busy hands.

Vaguely Bethune, in the chaos of his thoughts, wondered how he could ever have believed this man dead. Such as he did not die, so long as they were wanted in life.

Then it was Harry English, indeed, that looked round. If Bethune's brain had had room for any doubt, the doubt must have died at that instant. Harry English, pallid, where for years the Eastern beard had grown so close--almost as with the pallor of the cheek upon which the earth has lain--worn, not so much by these same years as by a devouring impatience sternly held: but the old leader nevertheless, with such a light in his dark eyes as had been wont to kindle there when he called his men into the heart of the fight.

He spoke suddenly, abruptly; and the other found once more the exorbitant situation heightened rather than lowered by the very triviality of the words that marked it:

"I suppose," he said, "that you can lend me a coat. Where is it? In your bag?"

He could not wait for his companion to draw his wits together. In a couple of movements the whole contents of the portmanteau were on the floor, and his arm was already in the sleeve of a shooting-jacket.

This urgency of haste, under strong control though it was, awoke an answering fever in Bethune's veins. Oh, there was no need of words to make him understand! When he thought of her to whom the husband was hastening, his own heart beat to madness.

In two steps Harry was at the door, when Bethune, with an inarticulate sound, flung himself before him, stretching out his arms. So poignantly familiar did the old comrade look in the shabby shooting-jacket that his heart was all dissolved within him for ruth and tenderness.

A second English fixed his friend with cold and steel-bright glance, inquiring: then his face relaxed.

"Not now, Raymond," said he, put him on one side with quick but kindly touch, and was gone.

*CHAPTER II*

"The Captain Sahib! the Captain Sahib!" cried Jani in shrill tones; and prostrated herself before the brazier, her face on the floor.

"Does she think she has called him from the dead?" wondered Baby. Her thoughts danced in a mist; she would have liked to have caught one and clung to it, but they kept whirling beyond all control. She sat as if tied to her chair, staring stupidly at the two who held each other clasped so close--at the black head bent upon the golden head. Then she saw how the grip of Rosamond's hands relaxed; how the whole clinging figure fell inertly, while he--man or ghost--seemed to let it slip from him as though in surprise.

He turned his head and looked at Aspasia. There was indeed, something unearthly about his countenance; in the ashen pallor on cheek and chin, in contrast to the bronze of the rest of the face, which seemed still to hold the touch of that Indian sun under which he had died. His eyes burnt with fierce light in their dark hollows. Aspasia felt that she ought to shudder with terror, that the situation, at least, ought to be one of desperate interest, but she was only conscious of a numb curiosity. She sat and stared. Then her gaze wandered from the mysterious presence to the figure lying on the bed. She saw the sharp outline of Rosamond's chin upturned, and thought, without the least emotion, that perhaps her aunt was dead. The very gold of the hair seemed lifeless, turning to ash. That cry still ringing in her ears must have been a death-cry. It had been as the cry of a soul that is passing.

She watched the man lay his hand on the still forehead, saw him look sharply about him and inhale the air with deep breath.

Suddenly, in two great strides, he was across the room. There was a noise of tearing curtains and jingling glass; and Aspasia found herself inhaling icy breaths of air in gasps. Heavily, with a sob of pain, she woke from her stupor. She seemed to be drawing this delicious coldness into herself as if it were new life. The man passed before her once again. He was holding Jani's tripod high in his hands. A trail of aromatic vapour swept against her face; and, as she involuntarily breathed it, she had a nauseating sense of suffocation, and the vanishing stupor returned upon her momentarily, like the shadow of some huge bird's wings. With an effort she turned her eyes, saw the man hoist the brazier in his hands and hurl it through the open window, saw the charcoal scattered apart like a shower of falling stars, heard a crash without. Then she knew it was no ghost.

The singular white and bronze face bent over her.

"You are better, Miss Cuningham?" said a voice. She knew that voice, too; she smiled lazily.

"Now I know you," she said. "You are Muhammed."

He smiled back at her, a fugitive smile, mixed sweetness and sadness.

"By-and-by you will know me better--by-and-by," he said. "Now try and wake up, if you can, and help me."

He had left her and was again at the bed. Aspasia did as she was bidden. She shook herself from her torpor and stood up, somewhat dizzy, somewhat sick, but yet herself.

The man, Muhammed or another, she did not allow herself to think out the matter further, was hanging over Rosamond's inanimate form. Now he laid down the hand he held and bent his dark head to her breast. Baby flung one look of horror at the rigid upturned chin.

"She's dead!" she screamed.

He raised himself abruptly, his countenance grey even under the bronze.

"She is not dead," he answered her quickly, with a gesture that forbade her words, "but I have been too sudden with her, and Jani has been playing devil's tricks with her drugs. Is there any brandy----?" He wheeled round as he spoke, for the door had opened and old Mary's figure appeared.

The Ancient House was now full of rumours. Old Mary's blue eyes were fixed in a stare of uttermost ecstasy. Her trembling hands were lifted as if in invocation; all at once she stretched them out, with an inarticulate cry of exaltation. Then her voice faltered into homely accents:

"My lamb!" she stammered.

"Oh, Mary," said the man, and his tones rang with boyish note. "Mary dear, brandy! Mary, if you love me, quick."

He sat down on the side of the bed chafing Rosamond's fingers. Silently Aspasia held up a bottle of essence, taken from the dressing-table. He nodded, and she began to lave her aunt's temples, not daring to let her thoughts or eyes rest on the waxen face, on the ominous air of irrevocable repose about the long relaxed figure. She wished the silent lips did not wear that mysterious smile. Determinedly arresting her mind on those strong words: "She is not dead," she felt that so long as she could hold this confidence it would help to keep the dread angel at bay.

"I was too sudden with her," said the man again, "but when I heard her call me, I think I went mad--I had waited so long!"

Then it seemed to Aspasia that, from the first moment since he had spoken to her in the passage to-night, she had known him.

"You are Harry English," she said. And saying this, she began to cry. She looked down at the piteous fixed smile. He had waited so long! Was it not now too late?

"Oh," she said aloud, sobbing, "is it now not too late?"

Then he flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and she drew back, for none should come between them. He gathered the inanimate form into his arms; his lips were close to the deaf ear, and he was speaking into it.

"Rosamond, my wife, Rosamond, I have come back to you--come back to me. Rosamond, beloved!"

The room was suddenly full of people.

Was it possible, Aspasia asked herself, that between that cry of Rosamond and this gathering of the inmates of the house so short a time had lapsed. She felt as if she had lived a span of years.

"My goodness," cried Lady Aspasia. "Who was screaming? Any one hurt? I never heard such a scream in my life!"

Then speech and movement alike left the eager lady. Gazing at the bed, she stood open-mouthed with stupefaction--an odious inclination to laugh barely stifled, for decency's sake, in her throat.

Sir Arthur also had halted on the threshold. His eyes were fixed, as if he could hardly credit their evidence, upon the figure of the man in the shooting-jacket who knelt at the side of the low bed, almost covering the unconscious body with his embrace. And, indeed, Sir Arthur's eyes at the moment were playing him false.

"Bethune!" ... he exclaimed. "Major Bethune!"

Not a thought, not a glance had he for the death-like stillness of his wife's face against the crisp black head--to him that head appeared sleek, close-cropped, indefinitely brown. He cried out again loudly:

"You infernal scoundrel..." and caught the intruder roughly by the shoulder.

The kneeling man merely turned his head.

"What ... what ... the devil!----" The words died on Sir Arthur's lips. His eyes protruded. "Who the devil are you, sir?"

"Who is it?" came Lady Aspasia's whisper, more penetrating than natural tones.

"Oh hush, hush," said Baby, rebuking she knew not what spirit of sacrilegious curiosity. "Hush! It is Harry English, uncle!"

Slowly the man got up from his knees and looked round; then his eye came back to Sir Arthur.

"Harry English!" repeated Lady Aspasia's lips, voicelessly.

Her mind leaped; an irrepressible lightning satisfaction wrote itself on her harsh, handsome face; then her glance swept over the bed, and the corners of her mouth went down in a grimace. There lay Death--Death already, or very near, or she had never seen it. A double release! This double release was unnecessary--nay, a complication. Fate played such tricks at times! But Sir Arthur had staggered and reeled, and Lady Aspasia, ever practical, had to postpone thought for action. She caught him firmly by the elbow:

"Hold up, Arty; be a man."

The Lieutenant-Governor's first impulse had naturally been to deny the monstrous thought, to wither Aspasia for her impious suggestion. Then a look at the black and white portrait over the dressing-table, fitfully but vividly illumined by the flames of the draught-blown candles--a look from that strong presentment to the pallid-faced, black-haired man by the bed, brought an overwhelming conviction. He faltered under it. For a while he could collect no words, no thought; but presently, as the tide of blood began slowly to recede, eddying, from his brain, broken phrases escaped him, almost in a whisper:

"Your--your conduct is infamous, sir," he babbled, "ungentlemanly--ungentlemanly in the extreme!" ...

Harry English, with one hand on Rosamond's quiet breast as if mutely claiming his own, spoke then, his eyes on the creature who had robbed him.

"Your place, sir, is no longer here," he said. His voice was very low, but it contained an authority which Sir Arthur instinctively felt with a fresh spasm of indignation and self-pity, trembling upon tears. "Your place is no longer here," repeated English. "Leave the room."

The Lieutenant-Governor fairly suffocated:

"How long has she known it?" cried he, panting, as he pointed to the bed. "No wonder I thought her mad. You have killed her!" he exclaimed acridly, upon another revulsion of thought.

"Had you not better have a doctor?" came Lady Aspasia's dispassionate accents. "If it's not too late," she added cynically.

Baby called out as if she had been struck, and burst into fresh tears.

The inert figure on the bed was all the girl had of home, all she had of certain love. This marble woman, no longer kin to her, had lavished on her more than a mother's care; from those lips, now so silent, except in the last sad days of trouble, Aspasia had never heard an ungentle word.

"She must not die," sobbed she.

"She will not die," said Harry English.

He shifted his hand till it rested over Rosamond's heart. Then he looked down at the face, with its faint smile of secret joy, pitifully exposed to all these eyes; and his own countenance took an expression of tenderness so infinite that weeping Baby, catching sight of it, held her breath. He moved and stood with his back to the bed, to shelter in some measure the unconscious woman from the violation of curious looks.

"I must beg you all to go," he said.

Sir Arthur, who had been gradually growing, within and without, to the purple stage of fury, now exploded. Portrait or no portrait, the story was preposterous. This fellow was an impostor!

"Turn me out! ... 'Tis you, sir, I'll turn out. I'll have you committed, sir, I'll----"

"Please," said a voice from the door, "if any one is ill, let it not be forgotten that I am a doctor. I offer my services," said Monsieur Châtelard.

*CHAPTER III*

Monsieur Châtelard, compact in self-possession, precisely attired, as if he had not been called from slumber at the worst hour of the night by a sense of mortal emergency! And yet a very different Châtelard, either from the eager traveller or the genial raconteur and table companion they had known: this was Châtelard the physician--the world-renowned specialist.

There was a weighty professional seriousness about him as he advanced into the room, fixing his spectacles with thumb and forefinger; an air of confident responsibility. He wasted not a second upon curiosity at the singular group by the bed, but sent his keen direct gaze straight to the patient.

"She's killed herself," was his first thought. "Poison," he murmured aloud, and his gesture was enough to clear the bedside for his own approach.

"No," said a voice close to him. "Not poison-shock."

M. Châtelard looked up quickly, and immediately became aware of a stranger's presence.

"Monsieur?" he exclaimed. He, too, had instantly concluded that the second man in the room must be Bethune. He was shaken into surprise. "In the name of Heaven, who are you?"

"I am her husband, whom she thought dead. I took her by surprise; she fainted."

M. Châtelard formed his lips for a noiseless whistle. Affairs, at one bound, had complicated themselves with a vengeance. Incredibly interesting! ... But the emergency claimed him. He bent over the bed, and there was silence all through the room.

Even Sir Arthur, recalled from his undignified attitude, was stilled; not so much indeed from the sense that a human life was trembling in the balance, but from the demands which the presence of a new witness made upon decorum.

The doctor raised himself and held out his hand.

"A candle," he said briefly.

It was given to him, and again the silence reigned.

M. Châtelard, with deft and gentle touch, lifted the heavy eyelid, passed the flame before it, and peered for some seconds into the fixed pupil, abnormally dilated. Then he handed back the light. Harry English took it, and held it aloft while the doctor once more consulted pulse and heart.

Muttering that he would never travel without his stethescope again, M. Châtelard laid his cropped head on the fair bosom. Again the seconds ticked by with nightmare slowness. The brown hand that held the candle was shaken with slight tremor. At last M. Châtelard straightened himself with the final air of one who pronounces a verdict.

"This is no mere syncope," he said. "This is brain trouble. Shock, as you said, sir," with a grave inclination of his head towards Captain English.

Old Mary, back from her errand, here proffered some brandy in a glass.

"What is that?" cried the physician, sharply. "Brandy," he said, sniffing. "Heaven preserve us, 'tis well I am here! Above all things she must not be roused. Mon cher Monsieur," he went on, turning again to Harry English, "here all our efforts must be to help nature, not to oppose her. Let all those lights be extinguished," he added authoritatively. "We must have darkness and quiet. How come all these people in the room?" He spoke with the doctor's immediate irritation at surroundings injurious to his patient.

There are situations passing the endurance of human nature, especially when it is the human nature of a person of high political importance. Here was M. Châtelard actually addressing yonder infernal interloper as the leading person!

"I call you to witness, M. Châtelard," Sir Arthur cried excitedly, "that this is some conspiracy that I by no means acknowledge----"

Old Mary interposed, subdued yet urgent.

"Oh, sir, it is indeed my master!"

"Hush, Arty, come away now!" whispered Lady Aspasia; and once more clasped his elbow with strong sensible hand. "There will be plenty of time for all this by-and-by."

"Unless you want to kill her altogether, Sir Gerardine," said Dr. Châtelard, gravely, "you will make no scenes here."

Harry English stood sentinel by his wife's bed, disdaining speech.

"Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife. "Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought. Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury away.

"I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Châtelard, in tones of restrained impatience; "I can have no one remain."

A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner, slid away one after the other.

Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure, succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The doctor looked at old Mary--she dropped her curtsey.

"I might be of use, sir."

He considered her a second in silence.

"You may stay," he said.

"And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust pleadingly forward.

"You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally.

"Doctor ... she will not die?"

"Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling. From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again his eyes answered her: "She will not die."

Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking.

"I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Châtelard of Mary; and when she had left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady Gerardine's husband.

"You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us."

Harry English started. For the first time, that evening, discomposure laid hold of him.

"I? ... but I cannot go. She will want me."

"My dear sir," said the other, his tone softening into compassion (here was one who loved as few love, or he knew not how to read countenances), "this affair is very strange, but I, as doctor, am here to judge of nothing but the good of my patient. She has had a shock, and the shock has been caused by you. I repeat, all I can do here is to aid nature--nature demands repose. She is as one who has had concussion of the brain. That brain must rest. Call her back to thought, you may call her to death."

"I would sit in a corner of the room--she would not know."

"Ah," said the doctor, "one never can tell. That is a fallacy I have long since seen through. So long as the soul is there, my dear sir, many things take place inside the body that we know naught of."

Then Harry English submitted. He went forth with bent head.... He who had waited so long! lint, even as Aspasia had done, he halted to question:

"If she comes to consciousness?"

"She will not come to consciousness, perhaps, for days."

"If she wants me----?"

"My dear sir--immediately, of course."

"When she comes to consciousness, will she----"

"Ah," interrupted the doctor, "who knows? We may have brain trouble--an illness we will surely have."

Then Harry English, who had so confidently said she would not die, looked at the other mutely inquiring yet further.

"Ah, my dear sir," said the Frenchman in his quick apprehension, and shrugged his shoulder. Then he added, compassionately, turning his head towards the bed:

"She is young."

Harry English closed the door and sat down in the dark passage, cross-legged after the habit that had grown second nature, and there remained. Waiting.

Suddenly he rose to his feet again; he had heard the handle of the door click. M. Châtelard stood on the threshold.

"The Indian woman," he whispered, "she makes a noise. She must go."

Jani, crouching in a hidden corner within, had set up a moaning. The sound of her wail caught Harry English's ear: a creeping chill passed over him; that Eastern lament that had nothing human in its note, but was as the despair of the animal that mourns without understanding, how familiar it was to his ear! So did the women there, over seas, wail only over death. He, who had held himself in such strength hitherto, was shaken to his soul. He could not form the words that rose to his lips.

"You know how to deal with these persons," pursued the Frenchman, absorbed in his thoughts, and in the dusk unable to read the other's countenance, "I beg you to remove her at once. But, _chut_, _chut_, attention, please, not to disturb my patient!"

English drew his breath sharply. Had he been of those who weep, he might have burst into tears then. It is the instant of relief that catches the strong-fighting soul unawares. He clenched his hands till the nails ran into the palm, and followed the doctor on noiseless feet into the room.

One glance at the bed! It was all in shadow; but even in the deliberate dimness there was evidence that a practised hand had already been at work. He could see that his wife had been settled among her pillows with care. The white of a bandage lay across her brow. A screen was set between the bed and the banked-up fire. Old Mary was seated in a high chair, within the glow, composed and watchful, the very picture of what a nurse should be. The light of the shaded candle illumined but one thing--the white hand that hung slightly over the edge of the bed; it scintillated back from the gems of the ring that guarded the narrow wedding circlet. His rings!

M. Châtelard pulled him by the sleeve. Harry English turned sharply. He had told Sir Arthur "that his place was not here," and must now realise in his turn that neither was his place here. There was bitterness and anger in his eyes as he bent over the ayah.

She looked up at him, terror on her face. He pointed to the passage, and she crawled out, on hands and knees, whimpering to herself like a dog. Without another glance towards Rosamond, Harry retired also, and closed the door behind him. Old Mary followed him with her eyes, and folded her hands; her lips moved as if in prayer.

* * * * *

In the passage Jani dragged herself towards her old master, and clutching his ankles, laid her head upon his feet.

"Sahib!" ...

Harry looked down at her a moment, without speaking. So intense was the bitterness that welled up within him, even towards this poor wretch, that he was ashamed of it. Thus, when he spoke, it was with an added gentleness.

"Ah, Jani," he said, "you knew me, here, from the beginning." ...

This miserable pawn on the chess-board of life, had she not worked against him, how different all might now have been!