FALSE DAWN.
To-night God knows what thing shall tide, The Earth is racked and faint-- Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed; And we, who from the Earth were made, Thrill with our Mother's pain.
In Durance.
No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; though women maysometimes whisper it to one another after a dance, when they are puttingup their hair for the night and comparing lists of victims. A man, ofcourse, cannot assist at these functions. So the tale must be told fromthe outside--in the dark--all wrong.
Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your complimentsreaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later on.Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will find thatyou do yourself harm.
Saumarez knew this when he made up his mind to propose to the elder MissCopleigh. Saumarez was a strange man, with few merits, so far as mencould see, though he was popular with women, and carried enoughconceit to stock a Viceroy's Council and leave a little over for theCommander-in-Chief's Staff. He was a Civilian. Very many women took aninterest in Saumarez, perhaps, because his manner to them was offensive.If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance, hemay not love you, but he will take a deep interest in your movementsever afterwards. The elder Miss Copleigh was nice, plump, winning andpretty. The younger was not so pretty, and, from men disregarding thehint set forth above, her style was repellant and unattractive. Bothgirls had, practically, the same figure, and there was a strong likenessbetween them in look and voice; though no one could doubt for an instantwhich was the nicer of the two.
Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they came into the station fromBehar, to marry the elder one. At least, we all made sure that hewould, which comes to the same thing. She was two and twenty, and he wasthirty-three, with pay and allowances of nearly fourteen hundred rupeesa month. So the match, as we arranged it, was in every way a good one.Saumarez was his name, and summary was his nature, as a man once said.Having drafted his Resolution, he formed a Select Committee of One tosit upon it, and resolved to take his time. In our unpleasant slang, theCopleigh girls "hunted in couples." That is to say, you could do nothingwith one without the other. They were very loving sisters; buttheir mutual affection was sometimes inconvenient. Saumarez held thebalance-hair true between them, and none but himself could have said towhich side his heart inclined; though every one guessed. He rodewith them a good deal and danced with them, but he never succeeded indetaching them from each other for any length of time.
Women said that the two girls kept together through deep mistrust, eachfearing that the other would steal a march on her. But that hasnothing to do with a man. Saumarez was silent for good or bad, and asbusiness-likely attentive as he could be, having due regard to his workand his polo. Beyond doubt both girls were fond of him.
As the hot weather drew nearer, and Saumarez made no sign, women saidthat you could see their trouble in the eyes of the girls--that theywere looking strained, anxious, and irritable. Men are quite blind inthese matters unless they have more of the woman than the man in theircomposition, in which case it does not matter what they say or think.I maintain it was the hot April days that took the color out of theCopleigh girls' cheeks. They should have been sent to the Hillsearly. No one--man or woman--feels an angel when the hot weather isapproaching. The younger sister grew more cynical--not to say acid--inher ways; and the winningness of the elder wore thin. There was moreeffort in it.
Now the Station wherein all these things happened was, though nota little one, off the line of rail, and suffered through want ofattention. There were no gardens or bands or amusements worth speakingof, and it was nearly a day's journey to come into Lahore for a dance.People were grateful for small things to interest them.
About the beginning of May, and just before the final exodus ofHill-goers, when the weather was very hot and there were not more thantwenty people in the Station, Saumarez gave a moonlight riding-picnic atan old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the river. It was a "Noah'sArk" picnic; and there was to be the usual arrangement of quarter-mileintervals between each couple, on account of the dust. Six couples camealtogether, including chaperons. Moonlight picnics are useful just atthe very end of the season, before all the girls go away to the Hills.They lead to understandings, and should be encouraged by chaperones;especially those whose girls look sweetish in riding habits. I knew acase once. But that is another story. That picnic was called the "GreatPop Picnic," because every one knew Saumarez would propose then to theeldest Miss Copleigh; and, beside his affair, there was another whichmight possibly come to happiness. The social atmosphere was heavilycharged and wanted clearing.
We met at the parade-ground at ten: the night was fearfully hot. Thehorses sweated even at walking-pace, but anything was better thansitting still in our own dark houses. When we moved off under the fullmoon we were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez rode with theCopleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the procession, wonderingwith whom Saumarez would ride home. Every one was happy and contented;but we all felt that things were going to happen. We rode slowly: andit was nearly midnight before we reached the old tomb, facing the ruinedtank, in the decayed gardens where we were going to eat and drink. Iwas late in coming up; and before I went into the garden, I saw that thehorizon to the north carried a faint, dun-colored feather. But no onewould have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment asthis picnic--and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.
We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out a banjo--which is amost sentimental instrument--and three or four of us sang. You must notlaugh at this. Our amusements in out-of-the-way Stations are very fewindeed. Then we talked in groups or together, lying under the trees,with the sun-baked roses dropping their petals on our feet, until supperwas ready. It was a beautiful supper, as cold and as iced as you couldwish; and we stayed long over it.
I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter; but nobodyseemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind beganlashing the orange-trees with a sound like the noise of the sea. Beforewe knew where we were, the dust-storm was on us, and everything wasroaring, whirling darkness. The supper-table was blown bodily into thetank. We were afraid of staying anywhere near the old tomb for fear itmight be blown down. So we felt our way to the orange-trees where thehorses were picketed and waited for the storm to blow over. Then thelittle light that was left vanished, and you could not see your handbefore your face. The air was heavy with dust and sand from the bedof the river, that filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks andcoated eyebrows and moustaches. It was one of the worst dust-storms ofthe year. We were all huddled together close to the trembling horses,with the thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting likewater from a sluice, all ways at once. There was no danger, of course,unless the horses broke loose. I was standing with my head downward andmy hands over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing each other. I couldnot see who was next me till the flashes came. Then I found that I waspacked near Saumarez and the eldest Miss Copleigh, with my own horsejust in front of me. I recognized the eldest Miss Copleigh, becauseshe had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger had not. All theelectricity in the air had gone into my body and I was quivering andtingling from head to foot--exactly as a corn shoots and tingles beforerain. It was a grand storm. The wind seemed to be picking up the earthand pitching it to leeward in great heaps; and the heat beat up from theground like the heat of the Day of Judgment.
The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard adespairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly andsoftly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind: "O myGod!" Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying:"Where is my horse? Get my horse. I want to go home. I WANT to go home.Take me home."
I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened her;so I said there was no danger, but she
must wait till the storm blewover. She answered: "It is not THAT! It is not THAT! I want to go home!O take me away from here!"
I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her brushpast me and go away. It was too dark to see where. Then the whole skywas split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end of the worldwere coming, and all the women shrieked.
Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and heardSaumarez bellowing in my ear. Through the rattling of the trees andhowling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once, but at lastI heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one! What shall I do?"Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence to me. I was never afriend of his, nor am I now; but I fancy neither of us were ourselvesjust then. He was shaking as he stood with excitement, and I was feelingqueer all over with the electricity. I could not think of anything tosay except:--"More fool you for proposing in a dust-storm." But I didnot see how that would improve the mistake.
Then he shouted: "Where's Edith--Edith Copleigh?" Edith was the youngestsister. I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do you want with HER?"Would you believe it, for the next two minutes, he and I were shoutingat each other like maniacs--he vowing that it was the youngest sister hehad meant to propose to all along, and I telling him till my throatwas hoarse that he must have made a mistake! I can't account forthis except, again, by the fact that we were neither of us ourselves.Everything seemed to me like a bad dream--from the stamping of thehorses in the darkness to Saumarez telling me the story of his lovingEdith Copleigh since the first. He was still clawing my shoulder andbegging me to tell him where Edith Copleigh was, when another lull cameand brought light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on theplain in front of us. So we knew the worst was over. The moon was lowdown, and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes aboutan hour before the real one. But the light was very faint, and the duncloud roared like a bull. I wondered where Edith Copleigh had gone; andas I was wondering I saw three things together: First Maud Copleigh'sface come smiling out of the darkness and move towards Saumarez, who wasstanding by me. I heard the girl whisper, "George," and slide her armthrough the arm that was not clawing my shoulder, and I saw that lookon her face which only comes once or twice in a lifetime-when a womanis perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-coloredfire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and is loved. Atthe same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard Maud Copleigh's voice,and fifty yards away from the clump of orange-trees I saw a brownholland habit getting upon a horse.
It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quickto meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to thehabit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain. I'llfetch her back!" and I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a perfectlyunnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order,and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe the happy look out of MaudCopleigh's face. All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wonderedhow he would do it.
I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly onsome pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she saw me,and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called back over hershoulder--"Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away!" two or three times;but my business was to catch her first, and argue later. The ride justfitted in with the rest of the evil dream. The ground was very bad, andnow and again we rushed through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" inthe skirts of the flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowingthat brought up a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through thehalf light and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain,flickered the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed forthe Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the riverthrough beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. Incold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a countryat night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightningcrackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils.I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and theaftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove usdownwind like pieces of paper.
I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs andthe roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon throughthe yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I wasliterally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the graystumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up dead lame. My brute was usedup altogether. Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, plastered with dust,her helmet off, and crying bitterly. "Why can't you let me alone?" shesaid. "I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh, PLEASE let me go!"
"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez hassomething to say to you."
It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh;and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I couldnot tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told me. I thought hecould do that better himself. All her pretence about being tired andwanting to go home broke down, and she rocked herself to and fro in thesaddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. Iam not going to repeat what she said, because she was utterly unstrung.
This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I, almostan utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved herand she was to come back to hear him say so! I believe I made myselfunderstood, for she gathered the gray together and made him hobblesomehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm went thunderingdown to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out thatshe had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sisterand had wanted to go home and cry in peace, as an English girl should.She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, andbabbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That wasperfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in theplace. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I,ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of thismisguided world seemed to lie in my hands.
When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that followedthe storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away. Theywere waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all. His face was whiteand drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came forward to meet us,and, when he helped her down from her saddle, he kissed her beforeall the picnic. It was like a scene in a theatre, and the likeness washeightened by all the dust-white, ghostly-looking men and women underthe orange-trees, clapping their hands, as if they were watching aplay--at Saumarez's choice. I never knew anything so un-English in mylife.
Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would comeout to look for us, and WOULD I be good enough to ride home with MaudCopleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.
So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two; Saumarezwalking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse.
The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt wewere all dropping back again into ordinary men and women and thatthe "Great Pop Picnic" was a thing altogether apart and out of theworld--never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and thetingle in the hot air.
I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went infor a bath and some sleep.
There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never bewritten.... unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.