Читать книгу The Great Amulet - Diver Maud - Страница 8

Table of Contents

"And, at each turn, it seemed as though

Fate some huge net round both did throw

To stay their feet, and dim their sight."

—W. Morris.

Three weeks later, on a diamond-bright morning of early May, Eldred Lenox was in the saddle, riding at a foot's pace along a strip of a path that links the Strawberry Bank Hotel with Dalhousie's central hill. Brutus trotted soberly to heel, while Shaitan—a black Galloway, half Biluch, half Arab—tossed an impatient head, sneezed several times in succession, and generally declared his intention of taking matters into his own hands, so soon as he should reach the broader expanse of Terah Mall. But Lenox, impelled by an inbred desire to climb, was minded to push on to the higher, emptier levels of Bakrota—the great hill that towered, formidable, directly ahead of him. For the chalet-like dwellings of Dalhousie are scattered sparsely over three hills, Bakrota, Terah, Potrain; and the summit of the last and lowest is crowned by Strawberry Bank Hotel, mainly the resort of captains and subalterns from the four plains stations of the district, doing their two months of signalling, Garrison Class, or of unadulterated loafing, as the case may be.

Lenox himself came under none of these headings. The man had a trick of refusing to be classed collectively, soldier though he was; a trick of isolation, inbred, unconscious, the outcome, perhaps, of much solitary wandering, of intimate association with the uttermost hills. It was as if they had imparted to him something of their own ruggedness, their aloofness, their stoical power of endurance.

A cheery little breeze stirred the branches of horse-chestnuts and rhododendrons, tossed the silver-backed foliage of the ilex, and set the cedar boughs swaying with slow, dignified indolence. Hidden within their depths of shadow, birds and monkeys twittered and chattered; and at intervals there came to Lenox the peculiar long-drawn note with which the hill villagers call to one another across the valleys. An infectious spirit of jubilation pervaded the air. The sun himself, in these cheerful latitudes, is transformed from an instrument of torture to the golden-locked hero of Norse and Greek legend; and with every step of the ascent Lenox felt the blood course more swiftly through his veins.

Ilex and rhododendrons, clustering close to the road's edge, shut off the vast prospect on his left; till, at an abrupt turn of the road, they gave place to a watercourse, descending in a cataract of boulders to the valley below. Then the glorious company of the mountains sprang suddenly into view, lifting scarred heads to heaven, and greeting the new day with a Te Deum audible to the spirit, if not to the ear itself. To the spirit of Eldred Lenox these outward symbols of the eternal verities, fit emblems of the stern faith in which he had been reared, spoke with no uncertain voice; and their message was a message of aspiration, of conquest, of the iron self-mastery and self-restraint indispensable to both. They reminded him, also, that life held many good gifts in atonement for the one gift denied; that a man might do worse than live and work unhindered by the volcanic forces of passion.

The past five years had, after all, been years of fruitful service to the great country he loved; the three letters after his name assured him of that. And there remained much more to be done in the same direction; work that would make unstinted demands upon his energy and fortitude; work that must, in due time, force him to forget.

Arrived on the Mall, with its far-reaching view of valley and hill, and its outcrop of glittering granite, a word of encouragement set Shaitan into a smart canter that brought them speedily to the half-way corner, whence a densely shadowed road climbs upward to the great forest of Kalatope. The glimpse of sun-splashed path and red pine-stems drew Lenox aside from the open Mall; and horse and rider passed into the stretch of scented coolness at a brisk trot. The path, little more than six feet wide, was innocent of railing. But much riding in the Himalayas hardens the nerves to these tight-rope performances, which are part and parcel of life in the hills.

For a while they went steadily forward, well content; till, on rounding a sharp corner, Shaitan stopped dead, his forefeet firmly planted on the roadway, his sensitive ears thrust forward; and Lenox, who had fallen into an absorbing train of thought, found himself confronted by a sufficiently startling reality.

The path ahead of him was blocked by the unwieldy forms of five buffaloes, in charge of a naked brown wisp of humanity four feet high, armed with a no more formidable weapon than a pine branch stripped of its needles. But the crux of the situation lay in the fact that, between the fourth and fifth buffaloes an Englishwoman, in a brown habit, mounted on a restive chestnut pony, was in imminent danger of slipping off the road to certain death among the rocks and boulders below. For the chestnut had succeeded in wrenching his hindquarters outward, his heels were already over the edge, and his rider, leaning well forward, was applying whip and spur with a coolness and vigour that could not fail to excite the man's admiration.

It was a matter of seconds: Lenox could not stop to calculate possible risks. Buffaloes and herd-boy scattered right and left before his furious onset. A swinging blow from his hunting-crop sent two of the bulky beasts scrambling up the inner slope, while Brutus, who found the situation all that heart of dog could desire, sent a third crashing over the khud to the accompaniment of shrill lamentations from the terrified child in charge.

The whole thing passed in a flash; the pony, by a frantic but futile effort to right himself, had just sent a shower of loose stones rattling from under his hind feet, when Lenox, dismounting, gripped the cheek-strap with one hand, the other being occupied with his own reins.

A vigorous forward pull landed the chestnut, panting and quivering, with all four feet on terra firma. But the rider's right arm had fallen limply to her side, and Lenox, looking up, for the first time, into a face deeply shadowed by a wide-brimmed helmet, recognised … his wife.

Her breath was still coming In small, quick gasps; but there was no shadow of fear in her eyes; no lightest tremor about her close-set lips.

"Great God! You!" he ejaculated under his breath, and involuntarily took a backward step away from her.

At the shock of their encountering glances her cheeks flamed, and she lowered her lids.

"I suppose I may say thank you for that," she said, and her voice shook ever so little. "A minute later, I should have gone over."

He nodded, keeping his teeth close, his eyes down; and a deadweight of silence fell between them.

Small sounds became suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side. He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found the buffalo incident very much more to his taste.

At length, in desperation, Quita made a movement as if to pass on. But

Lenox laid a peremptory hand upon her bridle.

"Tell me, how do you come to be here of all impossible places on earth?"

His voice was harder than he knew, and a slight shadow passed across her face.

"Is it really necessary to explain?" she asked, coldly.

He relinquished her bridle at that.

"As you please, of course. Only—it is a little awkward our being here together; and it might be as well to come to some sort of understanding before we separate. Are you up here for the season?"

"Yes, we have been up all the winter, Michael and I, except for two months at Lahore. When the snow melted we moved to the highest cottage on Bakrota. It is beautiful up there. We came out here eighteen months ago," she went on a trifle hurriedly, grateful, now that the ice was broken, for the relief of commonplace speech. "I had heard a good deal about India, you know. I wanted to see it for myself, and if possible put a little of it on canvas."

"And you are not disappointed?"

"No, indeed. It is wonderful beyond words."

They had themselves well in hand now. Each had given the other a false impression at the start, and when two people are living at cross-purposes it is easier to move mountains than to remove that most intangible of all barriers, a false impression.

"And are you—up for the season?" Quita added, after a pause, with a natural touch of hesitancy.

"No. Two months' leave. I am free, therefore, to go elsewhere, if my presence here is in the least degree … annoying to you."

"Oh, but that would be a pity. You must have had a special reason for choosing Dalhousie."

"Some friends of mine were coming up, and asked me to come too. But they will quite understand if I say I should prefer to go shooting beyond Chumba."

"Don't say it, though, please. I would really rather you did not put yourself out in the smallest degree on my account. Besides," she added, achieving a rather uncertain smile, "we need not meet often, and no one—except Michael—will have any notion of … the truth."

"Of course not," he agreed, with glacial dignity. "I was forgetting that you had—discarded my name."

Again the blood flew to her cheeks.

"It seemed the simplest way to avoid possible complications, or unnecessary lies."

"And you flung away—my ring also?"

The question came out in spite of himself, for he had noted her ungloved left hand.

"No. Only I could not very well wear it—under the circumstances."

He stood aside now to let her pass. He himself then mounted, and followed her along the narrow path, raging against the irony of circumstance, as a man bites upon a sore tooth.

On reaching the spaciousness of Bakrota Mall, he had no choice but to ride abreast of his companion. He did so without remark, and since Quita lacked courage to spur her pony to a canter, they continued to ride thus for a time; each, under an admirable mask of composure, painfully aware of the other's presence.

Speech seemed only likely to widen the gulf between them, and at all times Lenox had a large capacity for silence.

Not so Quita. The last ten minutes had been overcrowded with conflicting emotions; her husband's mute proximity got upon her nerves, and a setting of pine and mountain put a finishing touch to an already intolerable situation. She turned upon him at length, with a small gesture of defiance—a well-remembered tilt of her chin that pierced him like a sword-thrust.

"Don't feel bound to escort me, please. I am constantly out alone. You may have a long way to go; and we need hardly play at polite conventionalities—you and I."

He glanced at her keenly for a second.

"Thanks; I am in no hurry. But—if you would prefer it?"

"I think it would be less—uncomfortable for us both," she made answer desperately.

"In that case, of course … " He gathered up his reins, and lifted his hat, "At least I am glad to have been of some small service to you," he added, quietly. And before her brain or lips could formulate an answer, he had cantered off and vanished round a shoulder of the hill.