Proper pride

Maurice, with a broad piece of flannel round his throat, appeared at breakfast next morning as well as ever; and Alice, pale and languid, took her place before the teapot as usual. She observed a change in her husband. On other mornings he disappeared after breakfast, and was never seen till luncheon, excusing himself on the plea of business with the bailiff; and, in fact, unless absolutely obliged to ride or play lawn-tennis, they saw nothing of him all day.

Alice had reason to know that many of his spare hours were spent with Maurice. More than once she had come across the pair in the park, Maurice riding Tweedle Dum, his father holding the bridle and relating long and thrilling fairy tales—accounts of dwarfs, giants, and fairy-princesses with golden hair; or they would be discovered on the edge of a pond, sailing boats, or under the lee of a haycock, sharing a leaf of strawberries. Maurice idolised his father, and Alice could see that she no longer had the first and only place in his affections. She felt no twinge of jealousy as she made this discovery; she was very ready to share his heart with Reginald.

This particular morning her husband did not vanish as usual the instant breakfast was over. He loitered about the grounds with the ladies, made suggestions about the garden, and gave them a lesson in budding roses.

He distinctly put a veto on lawn-tennis as far as Alice was concerned, but he fetched a chair, a book, and a shawl, and established her under a tree, where she could look on. She caught his eyes fixed on her more than once with a look of anxiety and concern in their dark depths that puzzled her extremely.

What did this change mean? Could he be going to forgive her after all? Her colour and her spirits rose at the thought; a little happiness goes a long way at twenty. Revived by a whole morning’s rest, she was meditating a move, when Geoffrey, with a broad smirk on his face and a fat frog in his handkerchief, lounged up to her.

“Here,” said he, “is the frog who would a-wooing go;” and he added, as he uncovered the treasure, “he is come to pay his addresses to you, Alice,” making a feint of putting him in her lap.

“That he is not,” she cried, jumping up and dodging Geoffrey round a tree. Round and round they went like a pair of squirrels, Mary and Reginald gravely looking on.

“Did you ever see such a pair of children?” exclaimed Mary. “That’s the way Alice used to go on before she was married. She had such wild spirits; she was the life of us all at Rougemont. I would never have known her to be the same person, she is so changed,” she observed, with a reproachful glance at Reginald.

“I see you blame me for it all, Miss Ferrars; but Alice has only herself to thank, no one else. You would say that I was changed too if you had known me three years ago, before this unfortunate separation between us. Alice has told you all about it, of course?” he asked with conviction.

“No, not one word.”

“Do you mean to say that, living together in such close intimacy—sharing the same room, and no doubt sitting up half the night talking, as young ladies do—she has never made you her confidante?”

“Not with regard to you. On any other subject she is as open as the day, but her married life she never alludes to; and well as I know her and love her—childish and young as she is—she is the last person into whose confidence I would thrust myself uninvited.”

Just at this instant Alice, who had hitherto eluded Geoffrey, came running up exhausted and out of breath with laughing.

“Save me, Mary, save me!” she cried, stretching out both hands, and at the same time catching her foot in the tennis-rope she would have measured her length on the sward, had not her husband stepped forward and caught her in his arms. It was altogether accidental, and only for a second that he held her, but Alice became crimson.

“I cannot allow any more of this kind of thing,” he said, coolly picking up his tennis-bat. “Helen will be back this afternoon, and I am sure she will not hear of your going to the ball to-morrow if you knock yourself up to-day. I am going into Manister now, and I leave you in Miss Ferrars’ charge. I see Cardigan waiting, and as I have to change my clothes I must be off.”

“By-the-way, Rex, before you go I want you to tell me something,” said Geoffrey with an air of unusual solemnity.

“Yes?” responded Reginald, turning back and looking at him gravely. “Look sharp, then, for I’m in a hurry.”

“You have been brought up amongst horses since you were the size of Maurice, and ought to know all about them, both from a civil and military point of view——”

“Well, what is it?” impatiently.

“On which side of a horse does the most hair grow?”

“The side the mane is on.”

“No; try again.”

“The off side!—the near side!”

“No. Give it up?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“The outside! Good riddle, isn’t it?”

“No. Your own, I presume. I have no time to waste listening to such nonsense. Now mind you don’t encourage Alice in running about and tiring herself,” he concluded, as with a glance at his wife he walked rapidly away.

“What does he mean?” asked Geoffrey with raised brows and an air of veiled derision; “one would think you were made of sugar! I suppose he is going into Manister to buy a glass case to keep you in! You don’t mean to tell me you are about to set up as a young lady who faints and goes into hysterics, or a delicate creature with nerves? If you are, I’ve done with you!”

“Do not be alarmed; I think I shall reassure you at luncheon. I have the appetite of a ploughman, and I am yearning for the gong,” replied Alice as, shouldering her parasol, she turned towards the house, followed by her two friends.

Helen arrived the same afternoon and related her adventures and news at five-o’clock tea. She also delivered a short but severe lecture to Alice for having taken a long ride, and looking pale, heavy-eyed, and tired. In spite of Alice’s indignant denial she could not conceal from herself that she was very tired as she entered the drawing-room just before dinner and wearily seated herself in one of the windows. The only other occupant of the room was her husband, ensconced in an easy-chair and almost concealed by a large newspaper. She recognised him, however, by the slim brown hand that firmly grasped The Standard. He did not take any notice of her entrance. “He never did,” she thought with a sharp pang as she leant her head listlessly against the window-sash and looked out. Suddenly the grass appeared to heave, earth and sky seemed confusedly mixed. She turned her head, the room was swimming round and round; she was going to faint. She rose to escape to her own room whilst there was yet time, but it was too late; she tottered, grasped blindly at a chair; somebody, tall and strong, took her in his arms, and she remembered no more. Reginald had been surreptitiously glancing at Alice for some minutes. Her dejected attitude, the weary pathetic pose of her haughty little head, struck him painfully. How white, how awfully white she was; was she going to faint? She was; he saw her rise unsteadily and try to speak. In an instant he was beside her, and saved her from a fall for the second time that day. Very, very tenderly he carried her over and laid her on a couch. How light and fragile was his burden—she seemed like a child in his arms! She looked deathlike as he laid her down. He had never seen a woman faint before, and was at his wits’ end to know what to do. To leave her was impossible; he dare not. He rang the bell madly and returned to his post. As he thought of the doctor’s words the previous evening his heart stood still with horror. She looked so cold, so marblelike, so utterly inanimate—could she be dead? He took up one of her small limp hands and felt her pulse. As he was doing so, Helen and Mary, to his great relief, came into the room.

“Ah, I’m not one bit surprised,” said the former composedly. “Run for my salts, Mary. Fetch a glass of water and a fan, Regy. She will come round presently.”

Her quiet matter-of-fact manner relieved him at once. Mary’s mind was set at rest now and for ever on one subject—Sir Reginald did care for Alice after all: loved her as a man like him could love.

One glance at him had been sufficient. Even now, though reassured by Helen, his face was ashy white, and the hand that held the tumbler of water shook visibly. By this time they were joined by Mark and Geoffrey. Alice had revived; she sat up, looking very pale and dazed, and announced “that she was all right and going in to dinner, and really did not know how she could have been so stupid.”

She was quickly suppressed by Helen, who said:

“No, my dear, no dinner for you; you are going to bed, and Regy will carry you upstairs.”

“Indeed he shall not!” cried Alice, a faint tinge of pink coming into her cheeks, and starting up as though to leave the sofa. “No, no,” she added, glancing nervously at her husband; his grave, anxious face touched her and surprised her.

“Will you let Mark carry you?” said Helen soothingly. “He has had plenty of practice with me, and he won’t drop you.”

“No, ten thousand times; why should anyone carry me? I’ve not lost the use of my limbs; I am quite capable of walking upstairs. I shall stay here for the present, whilst you all go to dinner. Pray go! Please go! Don’t mind me. Helen will tell you,” addressing her husband, “that it is nothing—nothing at all. Why, at one time I used to faint regularly every day—I got quite into the habit of it,” with a reassuring smile. “There is the gong. You really make me very uncomfortable all of you, staring at me like this. Go,” she added, waving them away, “go to dinner.”

Thus eagerly adjured they trooped off, with the exception of Helen. Mary observed that one person barely touched a morsel of food, and that was Reginald. He was silent and preoccupied, and answered at random when addressed.

Towards the middle of the meal Helen came sailing into the room, prepared to make up for lost time as she briskly unfolded her napkin.

“You may make your mind quite easy, Regy,” she said. “Alice will be all right to-morrow. She was only worn out, poor child, and has gone to bed, and is, I daresay, already asleep. How frightened you did look! What would have become of you if you had seen her when she was really ill, and her life hung by a thread from hour to hour?” she added between two spoonsful of soup.

“How do you know I was frightened?”

“Your face spoke volumes, my dear boy; you were as white as this tablecloth.”

“Is that how you look when you go into action, Regy?” asked Geoffrey, looking up from his plate.

“Scarcely, I hope, or I would be a sorry example to the men.”

“Tell me, Rex, did you ever know what it was to be in a regular blue funk?”

“I can’t honestly say I ever was on my own account—probably it’s a treat in store for me—but I have felt fears for others that have made my heart stand still more than once. The sensation must be the same as abject personal fear—in other words, a blue funk.”

“Well, I don’t understand; explain yourself?”

“For instance, when I saw a gun and four horses suddenly back over the edge of a pass, and ultimately go over—in spite of the horses’ frantic exertions—a fall of two thousand feet, I trembled for the gunners.”

“So I should imagine.”

“Fortunately they flung themselves off in time.”

“Poor horses! what a horrible sight!” said Mary Ferrars. “I daresay you have seen a good many such.”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say I have. For instance, I have seen a horse’s head taken clean off with a shell.”

“Don’t, Reginald!” exclaimed Helen; “you are making me perfectly sick.”

“Well then, I won’t; I’ll spare you the rest of my experiences. You want to know, Geoff, what I mean by ‘fearing for others’? Now, for instance, if old Fordyce gets the regiment, I tremble for you. He has seen the superb caricature you drew of him, nearly all nose; and he strongly suspects that you are the ‘party’ that painted old Blowhard, his favourite white charger, a dazzling shepherd’s-plaid. I shudder when I think of your fate, my young friend.”

“Stuff, rubbish, nonsense!” exclaimed Geoffrey contemptuously. “Do you know what I heard the other day? but I need hardly say that I did not believe it: that you, Reginald Fairfax,—‘Fighting Fairfax,’ as they call you—keep the young fry of the Seventeenth in glorious order. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’ I said. The benighted youths look upon you as a happy blending of Bayard and Sir Galahad. I assured my informant that ‘Still waters run deep’ was a proverb made expressly to fit you, and that they little knew you.”

“Much obliged,” replied Reginald, stroking his moustache to conceal a smile. “We have a very nice set of boys in the Seventeenth, and you might do worse than exchange. I’ll see that they don’t bully you, and do what I can to smarten you up.”

“Thanks for your noble offer, but the Fifth could not afford to lose me. As to smartening me up, it would be impossible; it would be painting the lily. Don’t you think so, Miss Ferrars? Don’t you think I’m a very smart-looking young fellow? just as efficient, if not actually as bloodthirsty, as our host, who revelled in the name of ‘Shaitan’ whilst in Afghanistan. It was a pretty little nickname given him by the tribes. You can guess what it means,” nodding across the table mysteriously.

“Enough of these mutual compliments,” exclaimed Helen. “It was not Reginald himself, but his horse that was called ‘Shaitan,’ my good Geoffrey, and the Afghans had something else to do than find nicknames for British officers.”

“By-the-way, Rex,” remarked Geoffrey, leaning back in his chair, adjusting his eye-glass, and evidently stretching his long legs still farther under the mahogany, with the air of a man who has dined to his satisfaction, “what’s your opinion of the native of that part of the world, candidly and impartially?”

“If you mean the Afridi of the period, my candid, impartial opinion of him is that he is a dirty-looking ruffian, who would rob his own mother, and cut his father’s throat for the sake of two rupees.”

“Inhuman monster!” ejaculated Helen, tragically.

“One old fellow told me himself that there was nothing in life so pleasant as sitting on the roof of one’s house, and shooting at the wayfarers who came to drink at the well. He dwelt on the subject with such pleasure, that I have no doubt that he looked back on it as one of his happiest experiences.”

“Old brute!” muttered Geoffrey. “How I should have enjoyed a pot-shot at him! What sort of shots were they, take them all in all?”

“Not bad, considering their weapons and ammunition; a long Jazail studded with brass, and rams’ horns full of very doubtful powder. They are no use at a snap shot, or in the open; but give them lots of time to aim, and good cover behind a bit of rock, and they generally pick off a fair share of stragglers. The first night we camped beyond Ali Musjid we chose a bad place, a hollow, and the light attracted swarms all round us. The bullets went everywhere, and the firing resembled nothing on earth so much as a hot corner at a big battue.”

“Awfully pleasant for all you fellows!” ejaculated Geoffrey.

“We had only two casualties, strange to say, though some of the tents were riddled. I need scarcely remark that we were more careful about the site of our next camp.”

“No doubt you made yourselves very secure and luxurious when you were permanently fixed at Dabaule?” inquired Helen.

“Comparatively speaking I suppose we were more secure, although Vaughan caught an Afridi in his tent one night. He heard a noise, and putting out his hand to get hold of a revolver, he caught the bare, shaven head of one of these beggars. He gave the alarm, and some of us rushed in and found him struggling with a powerful fellow, with the fiend’s own expression and a knife between his teeth. We made an example of him next day as a warning to others. But it was of precious little use; they slaughtered our unfortunate grass-cutters and syces in the most barbarous way, and sent us in our regimental barber with both hands cut off. He did not seem to mind that so much as eighty rupees they had robbed him of, and he was utterly heartbroken about them—his savings, his little all. So I promised to make up the money if he got well; and, strange to say, he made a most wonderfully rapid recovery, and seems to get on capitally with his two bare stumps.”

“Poor creature!” exclaimed Helen.

“How horrible!” cried Miss Ferrars.

“I suppose it was all open country?” remarked Geoffrey; “no roads, and like a bleak sort of common, I always fancy it; with a few hills and lots of stones and rocks.”

“That was the case in some places, but in others we had, after awhile, a capital road, especially by the Kyber line, thanks to the sappers; and some wag in one place put up a finger-post with ‘Madras to Cabul’ painted on it in large letters; and the road itself was as good as you need wish to see; but in many parts we had no road at all, and it was terrible work for the artillery, especially when the country was cut up with lots of watercourses.”

“By-the-bye, Rex,” said Helen, helping herself to her second peach, “how were you off for food?”

“Very badly, indeed, sometimes; and I assure you that I now know what hunger means, from downright practical experience.”

“Why, you had your rations and your mess,” cried Geoffrey.

“A pound of meat a day for a hungry man who spends, perhaps, twelve hours in the saddle, with a bitter bleak wind to sharpen his appetite, was not much to boast of; and sometimes the ration was bad, or bone. When we had our permanent camp we fared well enough, and had a stew—a big pot into which everything was thrown: game, rations, goat, etc.; and as the pot was always kept going, it had a rich miscellaneous flavour, difficult to describe, but most excellent.”

“Do you mean that it was not made afresh every day?” asked Miss Ferrars, a fair amateur cook.

“Every day something fresh was added, but the original stew was about three months old. Never cleared out, that was the beauty of it.”

“O-oh!” cried Helen, “how could you! how can you?”

“It was most superior, I assure you; our pot-au-feu was noted, I can tell you, Helen.”

“That will do. No more traveller’s tales for me, Rex”—rising—“I’m going to see if Alice is asleep.”

As the door closed on the disgusted matron, Reginald said:

“Helen may turn up her nose at our stew, but if she had been one week in camp, she would have appreciated it just as keenly as the most ravenous among us.”

“Had you a mess-tent?” asked Geoffrey solicitously.

“Yes, a kind of one, when we were fixtures; nothing very luxurious, I need scarcely say, and little or no mess kit. It was a sight, once seen never forgotten, to witness our fellows going to dinner; various figures in greatcoats and comforters solemnly approaching, and each bearing in his hand his own drinking-cup, and plate, and knife and fork. We lived in Spartan simplicity, I can assure you.”

“And how did you like it?” inquired Miss Ferrars.

“To be frank with you, not much,” returned her host candidly. “The cold was simply awful—bad enough for us who come from a coldish climate, but for our poor camp-followers and syces, natives of the broiling plains, it was, in many cases, death. I could not say how many camel-drivers and grass-cutters have been found frozen in their sleep.”

“But they had warm clothes,” said Mrs. Mayhew, with the air of asserting an unanswerable fact.

“Yes; such as they were. A kind of blanket suit made to fit the million. And then you saw tall men in clothes barely below their miserable knees, and little men shambling along, one huge wrinkle. These garments were better than nothing, that’s all.”

“And did you feel the cold yourself?” asked Mark, with sympathetic interest.

“Sometimes; but I am a hardy fellow, and could stand it better than lots of others. Duck-shooting of a winter’s day, at home, broke me in pretty well, you know.”

“And was your appetite equally well broken in?” asked Geoffrey, with raised eyebrows.

“I’m afraid not,” returned Reginald, with a laugh. “Many a time I have gone to bed hungry.”

“But you could always buy?” said Geoffrey, combatively.

“Not always. When the surrounding country was nothing but stones and brown grass, and there was no bazaar, no mess, nothing but our strictly allotted ration, I declare I’ve sometimes envied my chargers, who were pretty well off for hay. But of course these short commons were the exception, not the rule,” he added cheerfully.

Mary gazed with blank, open-eyed amazement at her neighbour, and tried to realise that this nonchalant, handsome host of hers, who seemed to consider it rather an exertion to break a few walnuts, who was surrounded by every luxury taste could devise or money could obtain, had been quite recently a cold, hungry soldier, garbed in a sheepskin coat; had confronted hardship and war, and had ridden up undaunted and looked into the very face of death itself.