Читать книгу The Flag of the Adventurer - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 4

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But if a difference about money was the immediate cause of the strained relations between Major Ambrose and his wife, no one would have denied more vehemently than Eveleen herself that it was the beginning of their estrangement. That had happened long ago—even, so she sometimes thought, before their marriage. This might seem an Irish way of putting it, but at times she would tell herself that she must have been blind not to see there was something wrong with Richard then, though again the idea would look absolutely absurd. For why should he have married her unless he wanted her as she did him? She would never have lifted a finger to hold him had he wished to be free! She raged against him a little now as she stood solitary in the middle of the absent Mrs Bayard’s drawing-room, seeing nothing of her surroundings. If he must be sarcastic and cross, why try to humiliate her in the presence of a stranger, instead of keeping his horrid remarks till they were alone together, and she could answer them as they deserved? There was little of the patient Griselda about Eveleen Ambrose.

“Such an English room!” Her wrath was suddenly diverted—though rather to the general atmosphere of bleak tidiness than to poor Mrs Bayard’s treasured “Europe” furniture—and she shuddered. “Sure I’ll choke here!” She fled to the verandah. “Ah, now!” and she stood spellbound by the wonderful moonlight shining on a limitless sea that washed the very hill-top on which the house stood. A moment’s reflection assured her that the sea was a thick mist enshrouding the town and the low-lying land about it, and hiding the mud and dust and crudeness which had been so painfully evident by day, and she dropped into a chair to watch it, for there were little eddies which looked exactly like moving water. She had not meant to stay in the drawing-room; her intention had been to slip away to bed, leaving an excuse with the servants for her host’s benefit, but it was so peaceful here, and she needed a little mental refreshment before coping once more with Ketty. But her meditations hardly brought her the peace she desired, for almost at once she was involved again in the perpetual quest of When? and How? and Why?

It was twenty years since Richard Ambrose and Eveleen Delany had first met in the hunting-field—and parted almost as soon. She was a pretty girl riding as daringly as the conventions of the time and a fierce old uncle would allow her, he one of the junior officers of the regiment quartered in the neighbourhood. Two or three days’ hunting, a scrambled meal or two taken in common, sandwiches shared in the shelter of a deep lane—Richard’s fingers had actually trembled so that he could scarcely untie the string, she remembered,—such a brief and broken acquaintance to change the whole course of one life, if not two! He had nothing but his pay and his debts, she was an orphan adopted into an already overflowing and impoverished household in a spirit of mingled improvidence and charity. To do him justice, Richard had no hope of being allowed to marry her then, but he would pay his debts with the sale of his commission, and transfer to the Indian Service, and come or send for her as soon as he could see his way clear. Had he been an Irishman the engagement might have been allowed, but old General Delany discerned a calculating and parsimonious spirit in his anxious planning, and sent him about his business with slight sympathy. To this day Eveleen could not think calmly of their parting. Something of the old agony shook her again as she heard her own voice—hoarse with the strain of trying to speak bravely for her lover’s sake—assuring him again and again that she would wait any length of time, five years, a hundred years, for ever, for him to return and claim her. He had sworn to come back, sworn that her image would be ever before his eyes until that blessed moment arrived; had sobbed—Richard Ambrose sobbing!—as he tore him self away when they kissed for the last time. Thus they parted—the boy setting his face resolutely eastwards, with the safeguard of a high purpose in his soul, the girl taking up the harder task of doing nothing in particular.

Those many, many years of waiting! Eveleen could not look back on them dispassionately even now. She was again the girl who watched feverishly for the ramshackle “ass’s cart” which conveyed the rural post-woman on her rounds, who manœuvred for the privilege of asking for letters at the post-office when the family drove into town. And there never were any letters. Deeply in love as he was, Richard Ambrose had been cut to the quick by General Delany’s contemptuous dismissal, and registered a vow that he would never return until he could confront the old man with abundant proof that he could keep Eveleen in proper comfort. That time did not come. Things were bitterly hard for the Company’s Army in time of peace. Its officers were the unfailing victims of the constant demands from home for economy and retrenchment, until no man remained with his regiment who had influence to obtain civil employ. Richard Ambrose was uniformly unfortunate. He had no influence, and a malign fate seemed to shut him out of the little wars of the period—often lucrative enough. Once he had been mauled out tiger shooting, and was in hospital; once, after several unusually obstinate bouts of fever, he was an invalid in Australia. But his was not one of the crack regiments, and the greater part of his time was spent in one dull station or another, doing the work of two or three seconded men as well as his own. Faithful alike to his self-imposed vow and to General Delany’s commands, he never wrote to Eveleen.

Eveleen gave no sign of resenting his silence. When she refused one or two good matches, her relatives were loud in scorn of her folly, but by-and-by they arrived at the comfortable conviction that all was for the best. Her cousins were marrying off or setting up homes of their own, and the General was becoming increasingly difficult to live with. It was really providential that the niece who owed him so much should be available to ride with him, to keep house for him in the scrambling style from which neither of them dreamed of departing, and in the long evenings to take a hand at whist if other players were available, join him in chess or backgammon if they were not, and at all times turn away his wrath with cheerful—if not invariably soft—answers. If her recompense seemed inadequate, there was Brian to be thought of—the young brother for whose sake Eveleen would sometimes even attempt that hardest of all tasks, saving money. “I would rob the mail for Brian!” she declared once defiantly to her uncle, and thanks to her unceasing efforts, Brian was given—and, urged tearfully by her, submitted to receive—some sort of education, sufficient at any rate to enable him to take advantage of the offer of an old comrade of the General’s to attach him to his staff as a Volunteer, until he could obtain a commission. It was a difficult business to supply the young gentleman’s needs while he was expected to live as an officer on the pay of a private, and the habits he picked up on the staff were not exactly such as would conduce to his efficiency in a marching regiment, but the day she first saw her boy in the uniform of the 990th Foot, Eveleen felt she could die happy.

Perhaps the attainment of this ardent desire made her feel more like Brian’s mother or aunt than his sister, but it was about this time that Eveleen became aware she was growing old. Not in mind—she was one of those who, far from growing old, never even really grow up—nor in body, for she could last out a long day with the hounds as well as most men, and skin and hair and eyes showed slight trace of the process of time, but in the estimation of her little world. Nowadays she would have been considered a girl still, but in her day to pass the thirtieth birthday unmarried was to be stamped irrevocably as an old maid, and she had done this five years ago. Other girls were coming forward—real girls—and she found herself confronted with the choice of ceding her place to them or holding it by mingled assurance and main force, becoming in course of time “Old Miss Evie”—one of those determined middle aged sportswomen whom English people regarded as an eccentric and scandalous feature of Irish hunts. Eveleen laughed and withdrew. Her choice was made easier by the complication of diseases and old wounds which incapacitated the General, for ladies did not hunt without male escort, and she would not tack herself to any of his friends; but it was a bitter moment. Nor was it made easier by the discovery that she was becoming an object of suspicion—or at least mistrust—to her cousins and her cousins’ wives. To them, as to all their class, money as money was nothing, but family possessions were something to be clutched and held by fair means or foul. The idea that Eveleen might be providing for herself—or her uncle providing for her—at their future expense worked like poison in their brains, leading them to lay ingenious conversational traps in the hope of surprising the admission that the General had added a codicil to his will, and to conduct furtive searches for household treasures which they imagined to have disappeared. It was inevitable that when Eveleen realised what was in their minds, she should resent it violently, and for a whole day such a battle-royal raged as was spoken of with respect among the servants ever after. Alone against the cousinhood, she held her ground victoriously, swearing to leave the house there and then unless all imputations were withdrawn and an ample apology offered. Where she could have gone she knew no more than her cousins, but she would have done it; and they realised the fact, and having no desire to take up her burden, listened to the moderating counsels of brothers and husbands, hovering in the background with insistent murmurs of “Ah, well, then——” and “Sure, the creature——” But her future was still a cause for anxiety, if not for suspicion. “Sure I see ‘What’ll we do with poor Evie?’ in every eye that looks at me!” she said once.

And then Richard Ambrose came back. He had found his opportunity at last. The Ethiopian adventure, which was the grave of so many reputations, made his. He went into it an undistinguished captain, and he came out a major and a C.B., whose resolute defence early in the war of an all-important post on the line of communications had even been heard of at home. He was wounded—but the present generation would have hailed his wound as a “Blighty one”; it was just sufficiently severe to induce the surgeons to advise a voyage home and back before he took up the new post of Assistant Resident in Khemistan which Colonel Bayard promised to keep open for him. Eveleen could never quite decide whether she had been expecting him to return or not. So many years had passed, and he had never sent her word or sign. But one morning, as she sat in her saddle at the covert-side, a little removed from the throng of cheery riders, watching the meet in which she no longer took part, one figure detached itself from the rest. A gentleman dismounted, and throwing the bridle to his servant, approached her—a tall bronzed man, wearing the frogged blue coat which was the recognised dress of officers in mufti, or as they called it, “coloured clothes.” He raised his hat, and the years fell from Eveleen. She was the girl of seventeen again, glowing with youth.

“You have waited for me, Eveleen?” he asked, without any conventional greeting, and she dropped the reins on her horse’s neck and held out both hands to him.

“All these years. Ah, but I knew you’d come!” she answered. For that moment, at least, she had no doubt. Richard had justified himself, had come back, famous and successful, to the woman whose welcome would have been no less warm had he been broken and penniless, and to that woman earth was heaven from henceforth. That the Richard who had come back would not be the Richard who had gone forth was unlikely to occur to her at that moment, or to commend itself to her belief when it did occur. She had not changed; why should he?

Everything was so natural, so simple. Richard never even asked her again to marry him. Why should he? he had come back for nothing else. It was necessary to ask the General for her, of course, and the General resented the request so vehemently that all his children and their respective husbands and wives had to be summoned to bear down his opposition by sheer weight of eloquence. Such ingenuity was displayed in devising schemes for his future, such amazement lavished on his selfishness in wishing to retain poor Evie, who had given herself up to him for so long, that he was dinned at last into acquiescence. He gave his consent with tolerable grace, and presented his niece with the turquoise disc, which had come into his possession after the fall of Seringapatam. It was too large even for Early Victorian taste, which liked its jewellery to be of substantial size, but the daughters and daughters-in-law agreed that it was a very handsome present, and most appropriate, as Evie was going to India. Unfortunately, the first time she wished to wear it at Bombay she learned that to wear Indian ornaments in India was to incur irretrievably the stigma of being “country-born,” but the cousins did not know this. Some sort of outfit was got together for her, the cousinhood eking out an impossibly small sum of money with great goodwill and much contrivance, that she not disgrace the family; but the bride herself would have sailed for India cheerfully with what one plain-spoken “in-law” called cruelly her usual ragbag of clothes.

Had the shadow fallen even then? Eveleen asked herself the question this evening, as often before. One night—it was at a dance—she had surprised on Richard’s face, as he met her in a blaze of wax-lights, a look in which she read cold criticism, even dislike. It struck her to the heart, stripping her in one moment of her new found youth and joy. They thought she was going to faint, and it was Richard himself, all compunction and anxiety, who took her out and fussed about her with water and borrowed smelling-salts and a glass of wine; and when she sobbed out something of her sudden terror, admitted that his wound had been paining him horribly all day, and cursed himself for spoiling her evening by letting her see that he was suffering. He refused angrily to let her sit out the dances with him, and happy and satisfied, she entered the ballroom again on his arm, never dreaming of doubting his assurance. But now the doubts had crept in once more, and refused to be silenced.

If the shadow had not been there before, it had certainly made itself felt on the voyage. Eveleen was not shy—she did not know what shyness was,—and in the intervals of sea-sickness she enjoyed herself like a schoolgirl. She bobbed up and down like a cork; nothing could keep her under the weather long—such was the admiring dictum of one of the youths drawn to her by her delight in new experiences, and the unfailing gusto with which she found interest and excitement in things which other people considered deadly dull. The rest of the ladies on board eyed her askance. There was something not quite ladylike about “that Mrs Ambrose”; one did not wish to be uncharitable, but really one was almost afraid she might be called just a little bit fast. No one was more surprised both by her popularity and her unpopularity than her husband, and he resented both—or rather, the personality which was their common root. That, without any effort on her part, his wife could keep every one within sound of her voice amused and interested, gave him no pleasure—it was as though a modest violet had turned into a flaunting poppy on his hands. He had had little to do with women in his hard life, but the few ladies with whom he had come in contact did not trouble themselves to amuse the men around; they left it to the men to amuse them. Richard Ambrose had never been particularly successful in this respect, but he felt the attitude was the right one. As Eveleen told herself bitterly one day on catching sight of his disapproving face on the outskirts of the circle which her hunting stories had set in a roar, it really seemed that the only person who didn’t like Mrs Ambrose was Mrs Ambrose’s husband!

Far worse was the trouble that arose at Bombay. Eveleen had naturally taken it for granted that she would accompany her husband to the scene of his duties, but he told her curtly that Khemistan was not a place to which one could take ladies, and not knowing that Mrs Bayard was heroically attempting to defy the dangers of the climate, she accepted his dictum perforce. With Richard’s old butler to guide her inexperienced feet, she found herself established in a small hired bungalow—its ramshackle condition and shabby furniture made it feel really homelike,—mistress of what seemed to her huge sums of money, and pledged to keep accounts strictly. The result was what might have been expected. It was all very well for Ambrose to impress upon her that, apart from his political appointment, which might come to an end at any moment, he was still a poor man; her conception of poverty differed radically from his. He had inured himself to living on rice and chapatis in his comfortless bungalow—dinner at mess the one good meal of the day—that he might pay the subscriptions expected of him, and maintain a creditable appearance in public. The people of Eveleen’s world had cared nothing whatever about appearances, but had lived in a rude plenty, supported by contributions in kind from tenants whose rents were paid or not as the fancy took them—generally not. To Richard money was a regular institution, to be doled out with punctual care according to a plan carefully considered and rigidly fixed beforehand; to her it was a surprising windfall, affording delicious opportunities for the almost unknown joy of spending, and to be used accordingly. Her efforts at keeping accounts shared the fate of poor Dora Copperfield’s. The entries began by being rigorously minute, but they ceased with startling suddenness, unless the butler’s demands sent Eveleen flying to the book in horror, to put down what she could remember spending—which was very little in comparison with what she had spent. The extraordinary thing was that in these spasms of economy—which occurred periodically—she could find so dreadfully little to show for the vanished money. She might declare proudly that she had not bought a single thing for herself, and it was true, but the money was gone—how, she could not say. She was popular and hospitable, her possessions were all at the service of her friends and her friends’ servants, and her modest stable was a constant source of expense—even before she lit upon the half-starved, under-sized little Arab which she rescued from cruel treatment and named Bajazet because it sounded Eastern and imposing, and reconstructed her outbuildings to accommodate him properly. Then there was Brian, who was quartered at Poonah, and being a youth of keen affections, seized every opportunity of taking a little jaunt to Bombay to see his sister, who welcomed him on each occasion as if he were the Prodigal Son. Brian must be fed on the fat of the land—Eveleen had a wholly unjustified conviction that “sure the poor boys must be starved, without a woman to see after them,”—and his ever-recurring money troubles assuaged as far as possible. To do her justice—perhaps love made her clear-sighted, or in this one case she was able to see through Richard’s eyes—Eveleen did realise the danger of Brian’s living regularly beyond his income, and lecture him on the absolute need of pulling up. Brian listened meekly, promised to comply, accepted with almost tearful gratitude whatever his sister could scrape together to placate his most pressing creditors—and returned to duty, as often as not, to spend the money on something else.

Richard Ambrose was not left wholly ignorant of the Rake’s Progress on which his wife was embarked. Laborious epistles from the old butler betrayed anxiety lest Master’s interests should suffer, and friends coming up from Bombay brought amusing tales—amusing to them, that is—of Mrs Ambrose’s open-handedness. An opportune cholera scare enabled Ambrose to issue an edict of temporary banishment from the scene of temptation. Eveleen was to go up to Mahabuleshwar with the wife of one of her husband’s friends, to whom she was to pay a fixed sum monthly, and rusticate for awhile away from shops and entertainments. But temptation followed her even to the hills, though in a different guise. The place was the recognised summer headquarters of the Bombay Government, and the wife and daughters of the newly-arrived Commander-in-Chief were already in residence. To them came on flying visits Sir Henry Lennox himself, best loved and best hated of all the survivors of the Peninsula. Lady Lennox was what Eveleen characteristically called “aggressively motionless,” and her step-daughters were being painfully trained to follow in her decorous footsteps; but the veteran himself had a most appreciative eye for a pretty woman, and a ready enthusiasm for one who dared to ride wherever he did. Brian had wheedled a gullible commanding officer out of a week’s leave to see Eveleen comfortably settled, and the brother and sister and the scarred old soldier forgathered by some mysterious affinity, without any conventional presentation or introduction. The scandalised Military Secretary reported to the distressed Lady Lennox that it was all the fault of the Irish lady and her brother; but Lady Lennox—hearing hourly of break-neck gallops and impossible leaps—confessed in her heart of hearts that her susceptible warrior was in all probability just as much to blame. Her alarm extended merely to what Sir Harry was wont to call his “battered old carcass,” for he was too chivalrous an admirer of women in general to offer compromising attentions to one in particular. Imprudent he might be, but his imprudence confined itself to regaling Eveleen with scraps of autobiography of a startling character and moral deductions drawn from them, together with lurid denunciations of such of his many enemies as suggested themselves to his mind at the moment.

They became so friendly that Eveleen was emboldened at last to confess her anxiety about Brian, and ask the Commander-in-Chief’s advice. Brian was with his regiment again, and his last letter from Poonah had shown his sister that he was still taking his usual light-hearted way, undeterred by her exhortations. She did more than ask Sir Harry’s advice; in all innocence she did a thing of which she failed altogether to realise the heinousness. Remembering Brian’s past Staff experience, she asked the Commander-in-Chief to make him one of his aides-de-camp. Since that day she had heard such things talked of, and the recollection made her cheeks burn in her solitude to-night, but at the moment it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. It was obvious that Brian could not or would not live within his means in the regiment, and that neither public opinion there nor the influence of his commanding officer tended to urge him to do so; therefore what could be better for him than to pass his days under the eye of the stern economist whose worn blue uniform did not put to shame even Eveleen’s ancient habit? Sir Harry seemed a little taken aback at first—unaccountably, she thought, but she realised now that he had probably never been asked for a highly desirable appointment so simply and directly before. But he respected Eveleen, and he liked the careless, good-natured young fellow about whom she was so anxious—and with good reason, as a few short sharp questions assured him. Then he gave his answer. If Brian could liquidate his debts and present himself before him as a free man three months hence, when it was possible an additional aide-de-camp might be required, he should have the post.

Probably the last thought in Sir Harry’s mind was the first that occurred to Eveleen. Brian must realise his assets, and she would supply any deficiency. If Brian had never gone into his affairs thoroughly before, he did it the next time he saw his sister, when the details of what he could sell and which of his possessions could be returned to the vendors in lieu of paying for them were remorselessly threshed out. Eveleen declared that if it turned both their hairs grey they would do it, and rewarded him at the end with the sum which was to set him free—and incidentally to bring Richard Ambrose rushing down from Khemistan as fast as the primitive Bab-us-Sahel steamer could bring him, drawn by the alarming report of his Bombay agent. It was too late to reclaim the money—save at the cost of exposing Brian to the Commander-in-Chief, which Eveleen’s tears and entreaties withheld her husband from doing,—but Brian received by letter a few home truths, which he took, until he had time to think them over, in very bad part, though Richard felt he had been criminally lenient. It was Eveleen on whom the chief punishment fell—at least, her husband regarded it as a punishment. She had to face the ordeal she had imposed upon Brian, when all the unpaid bills, the empty pages of the account book, the chits so easily signed and forgotten, were brought to light. It had never occurred to her that there was anything wrong in being in debt—she had grown up in an atmosphere of it,—and she was half alarmed and half resentful when she saw the effect of his discoveries upon Richard. But the breaking-up of the Bombay household, and her removal to Khemistan, where she would have no opportunity for extravagance, did not strike her as a punishment at all, and it made her indignant that her husband should so regard it. The one thing she feared was that he should learn the secret of Brian’s sudden elevation—which he ascribed carelessly to an idle whim on the part of a man too old for his high post,—and while that remained unknown she was happy.

“Brian’s in good hands now, at any rate, and safe,” she said to herself as she took a last look at the sea of mist, knowing nothing of a distracted letter which was already on its way to her from Poonah; “and what’s more, I’m here with Ambrose.” The two men in the dining-room were moving, but it was so late they would not expect to find her still up, and she slipped noiselessly along the verandah to her own room.