CHAPTER XXVII.
CHRISTMAS AT DUSTYPORE.
Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true-- And love's the truth of mine--time prove the rest!
Christmas had arrived, and Christmas was a festival observed atDustypore with all the emphasis proper to men who had carried theirLares and Penates beneath a foreign sky, and were treasuring in alienregions the sacred fire of the paternal hearth.
The weather was cold enough to realise all that English traditionrequires as 'seasonable' in the way of climate. For weeks past, greatbullock-carts, piled high with gnarled heaps of jungle-wood, had beencreaking along the dusty tracks from the outlying villages and supplyingthe Station with materials for Christmas-fires of appropriatemagnificence. The air was deliciously clear, crisp and invigorating: thesearching wind came with its breath frozen from the Elysian snows andleft a hoary rime on all the country's face. English habits began toresume their sway: people were glad to forego the morning ride, and camedown to breakfast at half-past nine with red noses and blue fingersand--romantic reminiscence of European life--extremely bad colds intheir heads.
Dustypore surrendered itself to holiday-making. The Salt Board suspendedits sittings. The vehement Blunt, finding that no work was to be got outof any one for love or money, started off into the country with hisrifle after black-buck and jungle-partridges. The courts were closed fora fortnight, and judges and collectors devoted themselves to sweepingoff long arrears of morning calls. Contingents of visitors from all thesurrounding out-stations came pouring in to share the festivities: everyhouse was full and more than full; for, by the hospitable usages ofIndia, when your spare rooms are filled you order tents to be pitched inthe garden, and enlarge your encampment as each new guest arrives. AnIndian house is, therefore, viewed as to its capacities for hospitality,extremely elastic, and just now every house in Dustypore had itselasticity tested to the uttermost. Felicia was renowned as a hostess;and there were half-a-dozen friends whose winter holiday would have losthalf its charm if spent anywhere but beneath her roof. There was amixture of joyousness and pathos in these Christmas gatherings whichsuited her temperament exactly, and showed her in her sweetest, mostattractive mood. Her guests invariably went away with cheered spiritsand lightened hearts and a little store of remembered kindness to lastthem through the dreary months to come. Nor was Felicia alone in hergood intentions. Everybody set about keeping Christmas with heroicgood-nature. The Agent gave a ball in the state apartments in the Fort.The Dustypore Hunt had a home meet and a lunch. The 'Tent Club'organised a pig-sticking expedition for the keener sportsmen. Thevolunteers had a gala-day, and were formed into a hollow square andpanegyrised by the General of the Division on their loyalty anddiscipline. Everybody attempted something for the edification ofeverybody else.
The Vernons gave some private theatricals, and Felicia and Maud made agreat success as Portia and Nerissa in the 'Merchant of Venice.'Desvoeux, who was entrusted with the part of Shylock, heroically shavedoff his moustache and transformed himself into the most frightful of oldIsraelites, with a hook-nose and beard of diabolical aspect. The way inwhich he rolled his eyes when Gratiano exclaimed 'Now, infidel, I havethee on the hip!' had twice caused Maud to explode in irrepressiblelaughter at rehearsals and very nearly caused a break-down among theactors at the final performance. Altogether it was very like home, andvery pleasant, as all the party felt.
These Indian festivities are, perhaps, none the less festive, andcertainly the more touching, for the fact that at least half theholiday-makers have a dark, sad corner in their hearts which has to behidden from the world's eye and to be ignored in the common intercourseof life. Separation is the dark cloud which hangs over an Indianexistence: husbands and wives, mothers and children, forced asunder,perhaps at the very time when union is most delightful, and living (howmaimed and sad a life!) in the absence of all that is best-beloved. Theyput a brave face upon it, but the heartache is there all the same. Whata strong pulse of love and tenderness and sorrow goes throbbing week byweek across half the world from the wives and children at home to thelonely exile, struggling bravely with his fate in the far-off Indianstation: what dear, ill-spelt, round-hand, stupid letters, which yet arewept over with such passionate pleasure and treasured with such piouscare! People have a cheap tariff for telegraphing back to India theirsafe arrival in England, with a rupee extra for saying that thetraveller 'is better.' What a story it tells of anxious men in Indiatoiling over work, with their hearts far away with the shattered,invalid lady or flickering child's life, carried away to cool regions inhopes of saving it!
Take, for instance, little Major Storks, who was stage-manager for theVernons' theatricals and sang a comic song between the acts. He is agrizzly, wizen, well-tanned, wiry little fellow, but has, under thatrough exterior, as brave and tender a heart as ever beat. He is incharge of the Rumble Chunder Canal and bestows on it all a lover'sassiduity: for it he thinks, he writes, he plans, he labours early andlate: he rides about in the most demented fashion until the sun hasdried him up into a perfect mummy. He knows the Canal's ways andmanners--how much water it ought to pour per second; how much it _does_pour; which of the bridges are infirm; where the silt is accumulating;where the water is being wasted or stolen. He drives his subordinatesfrantic by a zeal in which they cannot participate and a thoroughnesswhich they cannot shirk. To the world outside he seems the merestdrudge. To-day, however, he is in paradise. It is Christmas morning andthe mail has brought him a goodly budget of letters, all redolent ofhome and tender conjugal love, and--precious alleviation ofexile--photographs of half-a-dozen little Storks. He sits now, with allhis family before him, with tears of joyful satisfaction in his eyes.What comely lads! what sweet, ingenuous little girls! what dear,familiar looks, the legacy of a youth that has passed away, greeting himfrom every little portrait! In a moment Storks' soul quits its shabbytenement of clay and its hot surroundings, and is away in England withwife and children--the wife, whose heart has ached for many a drearyyear of separation--the children, who have been taught to love him witha sort of romantic piety, all the more for being far away--the pleasant,cool, idle life in England, which lies afar off, a sort of PromisedLand, if ever his long, rough task in India can get itself performed.Then, in the fulness of his heart, he will put on his shabby uniform andorder round his shabby dogcart, and go and show his treasures toFelicia, who will, he knows, have a quick sympathy for his pleasure andhis pain; and when the two act in a charade that night, each will knowthat all is not as merry as it seems, but that, under a stoicalcalmness, lie thoughts and hopes and pangs which stir the very depths ofman's being, and which require all the help that sympathy and kindlinesscan give.
The last and most interesting occasion of the holidays was one in whichSutton and Maud played a leading part. Sutton had a two months'Inspection march before him, and no better sort of honeymoon could bedesired. The country through which they were to go was wild but verypicturesque. Sutton's duties would never take him away for more than afew hours; and camp life is idyllic in its freedom, unconstraint andtranquillity. Existence has something charming about it when eachmorning's ride takes you through new scenes to a new home, in which youlive as comfortably for the next twenty-four hours as if you had beenthere all your life. Maud was in rapture at the prospect, nor was herhappiness lessened by the arrival of the most perfect Arab to be foundin Bombay--her husband's wedding gift to her--on which her long journeywas to be performed. To Sutton these weeks seemed the fitting thresholdof the new and brighter existence into which he was about to pass. Eachday Maud bound herself closer to his heart by some sweet act or word,some unstudied outpouring of devotion, childish in its simplicity andunconsciousness, but womanly in its serious strength; some sympatheticnote which vibrated harmoniously to his inmost soul. 'To be with you,dear,' he said, 'is like travelling through a lovely mountain country,where each turn in the road opens up a fresh delight: you charm me insome new fashion every hour.'
To this sort of remark Maud had n
o need of any other reply than thateasiest and most natural of all to feminine lips, which dispenses withthe necessity of spoken words. Her kisses were, we may be certain,eloquent enough to Sutton's heart, irradiated for the first time with awoman's love and beating high with a courageous joyfulness and hope.
By the end of January Sutton was well enough to be emancipated from thepleasant thraldom of an invalid's sofa; nor could his march be anylonger delayed. One afternoon, accordingly, the little world ofDustypore assembled to see the brave soldier and the beautiful girl mademan and wife. Boldero came in from the District and performed his partas groomsman with creditable stoicism. No one--Maud and Sutton least ofall--had the least idea that he was assisting at the sacrifice of allhis hopes.
Desvoeux preserved his tragic demeanour to the last, presented Maud witha diamond pendant which must have gone far into his quarter's income,and refused obstinately to return thanks for the bridesmaids--a taskwhich was traditionally assigned to him in Dustypore, and which, on allordinary occasions, he accepted with alacrity and performed withsuccess.