Читать книгу The Devil's Wind (Historical Novel) - Patricia Wentworth - Страница 6

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Serve seven years for Honour and seven years for Love.

The children of Honour are many, thou shalt ’stablish them, branch and root.

And what of the children of Love, shall Love then bear no fruit?

Sufficient unto the day is the good and the evil thereof.

As Adela Lauriston crossed the ballroom at Lavington House a good many people watched her, and then turned to whisper with their friends.

Adela was worth looking at. Even Hetty Lavington admitted that, though her round, prominent eyes were full of disapproval as she observed her cousin, and noted that it was on Francis Manners’s arm that she was leaving the room. “Really!” she said, in a low angry voice, and Sir Henry Lavington, who knew very well what she meant, tried to look as disapproving as he was expected to. He did not really find it very easy. A good many people had expected Adela Lauriston to stand in her cousin Hetty’s place. Hetty Middleton’s engagement had come as a great surprise to these people. Rumour even had it that it had come as a surprise to Sir Henry himself. He looked away from Hetty in her diamonds, and her unbecoming dress, and his eyes followed Adela, as she went lightly and proudly down the long room; she was not tall, but how well she moved, and how all these lights flattered her!

Her hair, a dark chestnut in colour, fell all about her shoulders, in a shower of curls,—those curls to which Harriet Middleton objected so strongly. They shaded a face which Greuze might have painted, and were caught over the ear on either side by a scarlet geranium. Adela’s colouring stood the test triumphantly, for her lips were as red as the flowers, and the tint in her cheeks, though much fainter, was just as pure and fine.

From under arched brows, her hazel eyes looked smilingly upon all this crowd of people who must be admiring her in her new dress. It was her last glance in the mirror that had waked the smile. She carried with her a pleasant memory of many white silk flounces, all veiled with blonde, and caught up here and there with vivid clusters of geranium flowers.

She smiled very sweetly under Francis Manners’s admiring gaze, and her modestly dropped eyes caught a faint reflection of her white and scarlet bravery from the polished floor at her feet.

“By Jove, that’s a pretty girl!” said Freddy Carlton, half to himself, and then, being a communicative soul, he turned to his neighbour, and received a shock.

“What, you, Dick! Lord, what brings you to a dance?”

“Hullo, Ginger!” said Captain Richard Morton. He looked down at the top of Freddy’s head with affection.

“And what brings you?” he said. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“Just come. Jolly glad to be out of the romantic East too. Lavington is my second cousin fourteen times removed. I say, fourteen times isn’t too much for his wife, is it? But what on earth brings you here? You’ve never been learning to dance?”

Captain Morton looked a little rueful.

“A cousin of mine tried to teach me once. You remember Floss Monteith—and she said it wasn’t any use. You see I’m rather large to go about treading on people—at least that is what she said, and now with all these flounces and fallals that girls wear——”

Freddy had an inward spasm.

“Old Dick dancing—my stars! I wonder who she is,” he said to himself, and then aloud:

“I say, who is that jolly pretty girl who is just going out? No, not the one in pink, the other one, with the fellow who looks as if he’d been dipped in the ink over night and hadn’t got it all off?”

Captain Morton drew his brows together. A moment before his eyes had been very blue and gay. Now they darkened.

“That is Miss Lauriston,” he said, and Freddy had another little spasm, and said to himself, “The one and only!”

“And who’s the man? If it weren’t England I’d give him about eight annas in the rupee.”

“Intelligent Frederick. Do you remember old Manners in the palmy days of our youth?”

“What, at Seetapore, when we were kids? Retired in the year one, and settled down with a native wife?”

“That’s the man, and the dark boy is his son.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Trying to get accepted as his father’s heir. Apparently a few odd cousins and people dropped off, and old Manners would have come in for a whole lot of property if he had lived.”

“And the half-caste son succeeds? Well, some people have all the luck.”

“Oh, I don’t know about luck.” Richard Morton’s frown deepened. “He’s a poor creature, but one can’t help feeling sorry for the boy. There’s a screw loose somewhere, and apparently he won’t get anything.”

“Stupid business marrying a native,” was Freddy’s comment. “Always leads to trouble. Oh, Lord, Dick, who in the world is this?”

A very magnificent person had just come into view. His dark skin contrasted strongly with the shirt of fine white muslin which he wore buttoned to the throat with emerald studs. His tall figure, not yet too full for shapeliness, was set off by a long coat of green and gold brocade, and his waist was confined by folds of crimson kincob, against which there glittered the jewelled hilt of a dagger. A long necklace of many rows of pearls hung down upon the crimson and gold of the sash, and a pearl and emerald aigrette showed up bravely against his muslin turban. Three ladies hung on his every word, and his dark eyes roved from one to the other. Critics might have detected a certain insolence in his glance, but London vowed that his manners were charming.

Captain Morton looked for a moment, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Blatant beast,” he observed.

“But who—what is it?”

“Used to be a khitmutghar, I believe. Picked up English and got taken on to teach in a school at Cawnpore. You know old Bajee Rao—last of the Peishwas—disreputable old blackguard—well, his adopted son Dhundoo Punth—the man they call the Nana Sahib—took a fancy to this Azimullah creature, and made him his vakil. Now he has unlimited influence, and apparently unlimited cash.”

“What is he doing here?” inquired Freddy, wrinkling up his upper lip.

Dick Morton laughed a little grimly. “Was it David, or Shakespeare, who said that all men were fools?”

“Original I think, dear boy,” murmured Freddy.

“True, anyhow. Azimullah Khan is the idol of the season. Look at old Lady Mountjoy smiling away at him, and that pretty creature in blue. No party is a success without the ‘Indian Prince,’ and he dresses the part all right, doesn’t he?”

“Beast—oily beast,” said Freddy Carlton with conviction. “What is he doing in England at all, though?”

“Trying to get a hard-hearted Company to continue Bajee Rao’s pension to his beloved adopted son. It’s been a grievance for a long time, and now Azimullah is trying to get things settled. Also, I believe, he is financing and generally looking after young Manners, whose mother was the Nana’s sister, or cousin, or something of that sort.”

“I met the Nana Sahib once—rather a sportsman. Well, I hope he’ll get his money, I like to hear of some one getting money out of the Company. By Jingo, Dick, I wish they’d give me some! By the way, I saw George Blake on my way down country, and he said you were going into the Civil—cutting the regiment. It’s not true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why on earth?”

“A regimental officer has no chances.”

Freddy burst out laughing.

“Why, you’ve seen more service than any of us. I wish I’d had your luck.”

“Well, I wasn’t at Multan with the regiment, and it wasn’t regimental work that took me to Burmah, and the chances get less every day.”

He paused. Freddy Carlton and he had been boys together. He had not many near relatives, and this coming home had been rather a lonely business. Looked forward to for ten years, it had resolved itself into a counting of empty places, a wandering to and fro amongst haunting memories, and a realisation of how dead, how absolutely dead, were the friendships and the interests which in anticipation had seemed warm and still alive.

He had an impulse towards confidence.

“There have been times when I could have thrown up the whole thing,” he said. “Then Edwardes showed me a way out. I’m not supposed to be going for good. I learned Pushtoo when I was up at Multan, you know, and I’m to be lent for a year or two for special work, under Edwardes at Peshawur. Things are pleasantly fluid in the Punjab at present. I’m pretty sick of a régime of red-tape and doddering inefficiency.”

Freddy’s little greenish eyes twinkled.

“Oh, insubordinate young man!” he exclaimed. He pulled at his sandy moustache. “You’ve still got old Crowther for a colonel, I see.”

“Oh, Lord, yes. Crowther will die—or at least we’ll hope so—but he’ll never surrender. Heavens, Freddy, what sort of a system is it that never gives a man his chance till he’s past taking it? I dare say Crowther was all right once.”

“I’ll swear he wasn’t,” grinned Freddy.

“No, I don’t suppose he could have been; but this hanged system of purchase does wear a lot of good fellows out. They haven’t got the money, and their chances pass them by, and when they’ve wasted the best years of their lives, and fretted their hearts out, and the chance does come,—why the rust has gone too deep, and they just crumble.”

“That how you feel? Man to man now, Dick, how deep has it got with you? As for my humble self—well, I don’t know that I feel so very rusty.”

“Oh, you’ve used it up on your hair,” said Dick Morton, laughing, “and I——”

“Rolling stones gather no rust—eh? What’ll George Blake do without his fidus Achates, Dick?”

“I hope he’ll get the Adjutancy.”

“So you are getting out of his way?”

Captain Dick could still blush in spite of the sunburn. The colour ran up to the roots of his black hair, and he looked cross.

“What rubbish!” he said, and Freddy permitted himself the merest ghost of a whistle.

“Oh, I won’t let on,” he said wickedly.

“How are you fellows?” asked Captain Morton in an abrupt voice.

“Oh, fairly gay, thanks. Willoughby’s married, and Smith’s going to be, and Renton’s homesick, and I’m on the verge of bankruptcy, and the only really bright spot is, that we don’t think the Colonel’s liver will stand another hot weather. If it weren’t for that, I declare we’d offer him to you, lock, stock, and barrel, and take old Crowther in exchange, hanged if we wouldn’t.”

“No, thanks, Freddy, we wouldn’t deprive you for the world. And if Crowther went to-morrow they’d give the regiment to Marsh,—Marsh whose idea of Heaven is a place where we can all stand in rows for ever and ever, and never soil our pipe-clay with a profane touch. I tell you, Ginger, before I came away, I was hourly expecting to be told to keep the men in cotton-wool, once they were dressed.”

“Well, I like ’em smart,” protested Freddy with a grimace.

“Smart—oh, Lord, they’re smart enough. They’re a deuced sight too smart, Ginger, and they’re getting to know it. They want taking down a peg or two, these stall-fed, caste-proud Brahmins. They’ll be able to do without us soon; and they’re beginning to know that too. I’d like to see ’em in sensible clothes, and I’d like to see ’em think less of their pipe-clay and more of their discipline.”

“Clothes, what sort of clothes? What’s wrong with their clothes?”

“Everything. Too tight. Too hot. Too much pipe-clay. Damn pipe-clay!”

“All right—I don’t mind. ‘Damn it’ all you like. But what’s wrong with the discipline? I’d bet my boots your men were disciplined within an inch of their lives, whilst you were Adjutant.”

“Rotten—that’s what the discipline is,” said Richard Morton, with his black eyebrows in a straight frowning line.

“Insubordinate, are they?”

“I’d like to see ’em.” Captain Morton’s eyes went very bright and hard. “No, but they’d like to be. Ginger, if I’d a free hand for six months—but with Marsh and Crowther over one’s head, it’s a sickening, heart-breaking job,—and besides, I don’t want to be chucked out of the service for telling ’em what I think of ’em, and it’s bound to come if I stay on.”

“Then you’d better go, my son.”

“That’s what Edwardes says, so he’s asked for me. I made friends with his horde of ruffians at Multan. Not much pipe-clay there. I tell you some of them would wake our Bengal regiments up a bit, only they wouldn’t wear tight red jackets, and tight white pantaloons.”

“No, no, I draw the line at the wild Pathan, Dick. He’s all very well for Irregulars.”

Richard Morton’s eyes brightened.

“I tell you, Freddy, we are wasting our best material, absolutely wasting it. Look at the Sikhs. Every regiment is ordered to enlist two hundred of them. How many have you got?”

“Oh, I don’t know. About fifty.”

“And we’ve got sixty-two. Have you got a Sikh native officer? No. Nor have we, nor has any one else. Can’t get recruits is the cry, but, Lord, we didn’t kill the whole Sikh army at Moodkee and Ferozeshah.”

Freddy shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I’m not over partial to Sikhs myself,” he said lazily. “Dirty beggars, and the other men don’t like ’em.”

“Have you seen them fight?”

“Oh, we don’t all have your luck, Richard, my son.”

The band struck up an air that was very popular that season,

“Oh, shall I miss

That earliest kiss——”

and Captain Morton pulled himself up and made a feint of looking at his programme.

“I’ve got a partner to look for,” he said, and his eyes went towards the door by which Adela Lauriston had gone out.

“Going to dance with the poor girl?” inquired Freddy Carlton with malice, “because, if so, I’d better be hunting round for a doctor. Once those beetle-crushers of yours take the floor——”

“All right, Ginger. Wait till I pick you up by the collar, and carry you round the room. I’d do it now for twopence.”

“Haven’t got twopence,” complained Mr. Carlton ruefully. “But do it just to oblige an old friend, won’t you, Dick?”

“I would if I’d time. See you again, Ginger”; and Richard Morton went off, with his head in the air, and his big shoulders well above the crowd.