"It is good to talk to you. You want to know. You are so near it all. I wish I could help you; I am so exquisitely happy myself."My writing was at a standstill. It seemed the groping of a blind man in a radiant world. Once perhaps I had felt that life was good in itself - when the guns came thundering toward the Vimy Ridge in a mad gallop of horses, and men shouting and swearing and frantically urging them on. Then, riding for more than life, I had tasted life for an instant. Not before or since. But this woman had the secret.
Lady Meryon, with her escort of girls and subalterns, came daintily past the hotel compound, and startled me from my brooding with her pretty silvery voice.
"Dreaming, Mr. Clifden? It isn't at all wholesome to dream in the East. Come and dine with us tomorrow. A tiny dance afterwards, you know; or bridge for those who like it."I had not the faintest notion whether governesses dined with the family or came in afterward with the coffee; but it was a sporting chance, and I took it.
Then Sir John came up and joined us.
"You can't well dance tomorrow, Kitty," he said to his wife.
"There's been an outpost affair in the Swat Hills, and young Fitzgerald has been shot. Come to dinner of course, Clifden. Glad to see you. But no dancing, I think."Kitty Meryon's mouth drooped like a pouting child's. Was it for the lost dance, or the lost soldier lying out on the hills in the dying sunset. Who could tell? In either case it was pretty enough for the illustrated papers.
"How sad! Such a dear boy. We shall miss him at tennis." Then brightly; "Well, we'll have to put the dance off for a week, but come tomorrow anyhow."II
Next evening I went into Lady Meryon's flower-scented drawing-room. The electric fans were fluttering and the evening air was cool. Five or six pretty girls and as many men made up the party - Kitty Meryon the prettiest of them all, fashionably undressed in faint pink and crystal, with a charming smile in readiness, all her gay little flags flying in the rich man's honour. I am no vainer than other men, but I saw that. Whatever her charm might be it was none for me. What could I say to interest her who lived in her foolish little world as one shut in a bright bubble? And she had said the wrong word about young Fitzgerald - I wanted Vanna, with her deep seeing eyes, to say the right one and adjust those cruel values.
Governesses dine, it appeared, only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments.
Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her silver ripple of talk.
It was when the party had settled down to bridge and I was standing out, that I ventured to go up to her as she sat knitting by a window - not unwatched by the quick flash of Lady Meryon's eyes as I did it.
"I think you hypnotize me, Miss Loring. When I hear anything Istraightway want to know what you will say. Have you heard of Fitzgerald's death?""That is why we are not dancing tonight. Tomorrow the cable will reach his home in England. He was an only child, and they are the great people of the village where we are the little people. Iknew his mother as one knows a great lady who is kind to all the village folk. It may kill her. It is travelling tonight like a bullet to her heart, and she does not know.""His father?"
"A brave man - a soldier himself. He will know it was a good death and that Harry would not fail. He did not at Ypres. He would not here. But all joy and hope will be dead in that house tomorrow.""And what do you think?"
"I am not sorry for Harry, if you mean that. He knew - we all know - that he was on guard here holding the outposts against blood and treachery and terrible things - playing the Great Game.
One never loses at that game if one plays it straight, and I am sure that at the last it was joy he felt and not fear. He has not lost. Did you notice in the church a niche before every soldier's seat to hold his loaded gun? And the tablets on the walls;"Killed at Kabul River, aged 22." - "Killed on outpost duty." -"Murdered by an Afghan fanatic." This will be one memory more.
Why be sorry."
Presently:-
"I am going up to the hills tomorrow, to the Malakhand Fort, with Mrs. Delany, Lady Meryon's aunt, and we shall see the wonderful Tahkt-i-Bahi Monastery on the way. You should do that run before you go. The fort is the last but one on the way to Chitral, and beyond that the road is so beset that only soldiers may go farther, and indeed the regiments escort each other up and down.
But it is an early start, for we must be back in Peshawar at six for fear of raiding natives.""I know; they hauled me up in the dusk the other day, and told me I should be swept off to the hills if I fooled about after dusk.
But I say - is it safe for you to go? You ought to have a man.
Could I go too?"
I thought she did not look enthusiastic at the proposal.
"Ask. You know I settle nothing. I go where I am sent." She said it with the happiest smile. I knew they could send her nowhere that she would not find joy. I thought her mere presence must send the vibrations of happiness through the household. Yet again - why? For where there is no receiver the current speaks in vain;and for an instant I seemed to see the air full of messages - of speech striving to utter its passionate truths to deaf ears stopped for ever against the breaking waves of sound. But Vanna heard.
She left the room; and when the bridge was over, I made my request. Lady Meryon shrugged her shoulders and declared it would be a terribly dull run - the scenery nothing, "and only" (she whispered) "Aunt Selina and poor Miss Loring?"Of course I saw at once that she did not like it; but Sir John was all for my going, and that saved the situation.
