CHAPTER XIV
THE TANGLED SKEIN OF LOVE
The Lieutenant-Governor's ball was for Noreen but the beginning of a longseries of social entertainments, of afternoon and evening dances,receptions, dinner and supper parties, concerts, and amateur theatricalperformances that filled every date on the calendar of the DarjeelingSeason. Only in winter sport resorts like St. Moritz and Muerren had sheever seen its like. But in Switzerland the visitors come from many landsand are generally strangers to each other, whereas in the Hills in Indiathe summer residents of the villas and the guests at the big hotels are ofthe same race and class, come from the same stations in the Plains or knowof each other by repute. For, with the exception of the comparatively fewlawyers, planters, merchants, or railway folk, the names of all are setforth in the two Golden Books of the land, the Army List and the CivilService List; and hostesses fly with relief to the blessed "Table ofPrecedence" contained in them, which tells whether the wife of Colonel Thisshould go in to dinner before or after the spouse of Mr. That. The greatgod Snob is the supreme deity of Anglo-India.
Many hill-stations are the Hot Weather headquarters of some importantGovernment official, such as the Governor of the Presidency or theLieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner of the Province. These are greatpersonages indeed in India. They have military guards before their doors.The Union Jack waves by command above their august heads. They have IndianCavalry soldiers to trot before their wives' carriages when these goodladies drive down to bargain in the native bazaar. But to the hill visitorstheir chief reason for existing is that their position demands the givingof official entertainments to which all of the proper class (who dulyinscribe their names in the red-bound, gold-lettered book in the hall ofGovernment House) have a prescriptive right to be invited.
Noreen revelled in the gaieties. Her frank-hearted enjoyment was like achild's, and made every man who knew her anxious to add to it. She couldnot possibly ride all the ponies offered to her nor accept half theinvitations that she got. Even among the women she was popular, for nonebut a match-making mother or a jealous spinster could resist her.
Proposals of marriage were not showered on her, as persons ignorant ofAnglo-Indian life fondly believe to be the lot of every English girl there.While a dowerless maiden still has a much better chance of securing ahusband in a land where maidens are few and bachelors are many, yet the dayhas long gone by when every spinster who had drawn a blank in England couldbe shipped off to India with the certainty of finding a spouse there.Frequent leave and fast steamers have altered that. When a man can go homein a fortnight every year or second year he is not as anxious to snatch atthe first maiden who appears in his station as his predecessor who lived inIndia in the days when a voyage to England took six months. And men in theEast are as a rule not anxious to marry. A wife out there is a handicap atevery turn. She adds enormously to his expenses, and her society too oftenlends more brightness to the existence of his fellows than his own.Children are ruinous luxuries. Bachelor life in Mess or club is toopleasant, sport that a single man can enjoy more readily than a married onetoo attractive, rupees too few for what Kipling terms "the wild ass of thedesert" to be willing to put his head into the halter readily.
Yet men do marry in India--one wonders why!--and a girl there has so manyopportunities of meeting the opposite sex every day, and so little rivalry,that her chances in the matrimonial market are infinitely better than athome. In stations in the Plains there are usually four or five men to everywoman in its limited society, and the proportion of bachelors to spinstersis far greater. Sometimes in a military cantonment with five or sixbatteries and regiments in it, which, with departmental officers, mayfurnish a total of eighty to a hundred unmarried men from subalterns tocolonels, there may be only one or two unwedded girls. The lower ranks areworse off for English spinster society; for the private soldier there isnone.
Noreen's two most constant attendants were Charlesworth and Melville. TheIndian Army officer's devotion and earnestness were patent to the world,but the Rifleman's intentions were a problem and a source of dispute amongthe women, who in Indian stations not less than other places watch theprogress of every love-affair with the eyes of hawks. It was doubtful ifCharlesworth himself knew what he wanted. He was a man who loved hisliberty and his right to make love to each and every woman who caught hisfancy. Noreen's casual liking for him but her frank indifference to him inany other capacity than that of a pleasant companion with whom to ride,dance, or play tennis, piqued him, but not sufficiently to make him risklosing his cherished freedom.
Chunerbutty left Darjeeling after a week's stay. Parry, having becomesufficiently sober to enquire after him and learn of his absence,demanded his instant return in a telegram so profanely worded that itshocked even the Barwahi post-office _babu._ The engineer called onNoreen to say good-bye, and offered to be the bearer of a message to herbrother. He kept up to the end the fable of his sick father.
He could not tell her the real reason of his coming to Darjeeling. Thetruth was that he had learned that the Rajah had inspired the attempt bythe Bhuttias to carry off Noreen and wanted to see and upbraid him for hisdeceit and treachery to their agreement. There had been a furious quarrelwhen the two accomplices met. The Rajah taunted the other with his lack ofsuccess with Noreen and the failure of his plan to persuade her to marryhim. Chunerbutty retorted that he had not been allowed sufficient time towin the favour of an English girl, who, unlike Indian maidens, was free tochoose her own husband. And he threatened to inform the Government if anyfurther attempt against her were made without his knowledge and approval.But the quarrel did not last long. Each scoundrel needed the help of theother. Still, Chunerbutty judged it safer to remove himself from theRajah's house and find a lodging elsewhere, lest any deplorable accidentmight occur to him under his patron's roof.
After the engineer's departure Noreen seldom saw the Rajah, and then onlyat official entertainments, to which his position gained him invitations.He spoke to her once or twice at these receptions, but as a rule shecontrived to elude him.
So far she had got on very well with Mrs. Smith. Their wills had neverclashed, for the girl unselfishly gave in to her friend whenever the latterdemanded it, which was often enough. Ida's ways were certainly notNoreen's, and the latter sometimes felt tempted to disapprove of herexcessive familiarity with Captain Bain and one or two others. But the nextmoment she took herself severely to task for being censorious of the elderwoman, who must surely know better how to behave towards men than a youngunmarried girl who had been buried so long in the jungle. And Ida did notguess why sometimes her repentant little friend's caresses were so ferventand her desire to please her so manifest, and ascribed it all to her ownsweetness of nature.
The coming of the Rains did not check the gaiety of the dwellers on themountain-tops, though torrential downpours had to be faced on black nightsin shrouded rickshas and dripping _dandies_, though incessant lightning litup the road to the club or theatre, and the thunder made it difficult tohear the music of the band in the ballroom. Noreen missed nothing of therevels. But in all the whirl of gaiety and pleasure in which her days werepassed her thoughts turned more and more to the great forest lyingthousands of feet below her, and the man who passed his lonely daystherein.
Little news of him came to her. He never wrote, and her brother seldommentioned him in his letters; for during Parker's absence on two months'privilege leave from Ranga Duar Dermot did not quit it often and veryrarely visited the planters' club or the bungalows of any of its members.And Noreen wanted news of him. Much as she saw of other men now--many ofthem attractive and some of whom she frankly liked--none had effacedDermot's image or displaced him from the shrine that she had built for himin her inmost heart. Mingled with her love was hero-worship. She darednot hope that he could ever be interested in or care for any one asshallow-minded as she. She could not picture him descending from thepedestal on which she had placed him to raise so ordinary a girl to hisheart. She could not fancy him in t
he light, frothy life of Darjeeling.She judged him too serious to care for frivolities, and it inspired herwith a little awe of him and a fear that he would despise her as afeather-brained, silly woman if he saw how she enjoyed the amusementsof the hill-station. But she felt that she would gladly exchange thegaieties and cool climate of Darjeeling for the torments of the Teraiagain, if only it would bring him to her side. For sometimes the longingto see him grew almost unbearable.
As the days went by the power of the gay life of the Hills to satisfy hergrew less, while the ache in her heart for her absent friend increased. Ifonly she could hear from him she thought she could bear the separationbetter. From her brother she learned by chance that he was alone in RangaDuar, the only news that she had had of him for a long time. The Rains hadburst, and she pictured the loneliness of the one European in the solitaryoutpost, cut off from his kind, with no one of his race to speak to,deprived of the most ordinary requirements, necessities, of civilisation,without a doctor within hundreds of miles.
At that thought her heart seemed to stop beating. Without a doctor! Hemight be ill, dying, for all she knew, with no one of his colour to tendhim, no loving hand to hold a cup to his fevered lips. Even in the shorttime that she had been in India she had heard of many tragedies ofisolation, of sick and lonely Englishmen with none but ignorant, carelessnative servants to look after them in their illness, no doctor to alleviatetheir sufferings, until pain and delirium drove them to look for relief andoblivion down the barrel of a too-ready pistol.
Thus the girl tortured herself, as a loving woman will do, by imagining allthe most terrible things happening to the man of her heart. She feared nolonger the perils of the forest for him. She felt that he was master of manor beast in it. But fever lays low the strongest. It might be that whileshe was dancing he was lying ill, dying, perhaps dead. And she would notknow. The dreadful idea occurred to her after her return from a ball atwhich she had been universally admired and much sought after. But, as shesat wrapped in her blue silk dressing-gown, her feet thrust into satinslippers of the same colour, her pretty hair about her shoulders, insteadof recalling the triumphs of the evening, the compliments of her partners,and the unspoken envy of other girls, her thoughts flew to one solitary manin a little bungalow, cloud-enfolded and comfortless, in a lonely outpost.The sudden dread of his being ill chilled her blood and so terrified herthat, if the hour had not made it impossible, she would have gone out atonce and telegraphed to him to ask if all were well.
Yet the next instant her face grew scarlet at the thought. She sat for along time motionless, thinking hard. Then the idea occurred to her ofwriting to him, writing a chatty, almost impersonal letter, such as onefriend could send to another without fear of her motives beingmisunderstood. She had too high an opinion of Dermot to think that he woulddeem her forward, yet it cost her much to be the first to write. But heranxiety conquered pride. And she wrote the letter that Dermot read in hisbungalow in Ranga Duar while the storm shook the hills.
The girl counted the days, the hours, until she could hope for an answer.Would he reply at once, she wondered. She knew that, even shut up in hislittle station, he had much work to occupy him. He could not spare time,perhaps, for a letter to a silly girl. And the thought of all that she hadput in hers to him made her face burn, for it seemed so vapid and frivolousthat he was sure to despise her.
On the fourth day after she had written to Dermot she was engaged to ridein the afternoon with Captain Charlesworth. But in the morning a note cameto her from him regretting his inability to keep the appointment, as theDivisional General had arrived in Darjeeling and intended to inspect theRifles after lunch. Noreen was not sorry, for she was going to a dance thatevening and did not wish to tire herself before it.
Distracted and little in the mood for gaiety as she felt that night, yetwhen she entered the large ballroom of the Amusement Club she could nothelp laughing at the quaint and original decorations for the occasion. Forthe entertainment was one of the great features of the Season, theBachelors' Ball, and the walls were blazoned with the insignia of the Tribeof the Wild Ass. Everywhere was painted its coat-of-arms--a bottle,slippers, and a pipe crossed with a latch-key, all in proper heraldicguise. Captain Melville, who was a leading member of the ball committee andwho was her particular host that night, spirited her away from the crowd ofpartner-seeking men at the doorway and took her on a tour of the room tosee and admire the scheme of decoration. She was laughing at one originalornamentation when a well-known voice behind her said:
"May I hope for a dance tonight, Miss Daleham?"
The girl started and turned round incredulously, feeling that her ears haddeceived her. To her astonishment Dermot stood before her. For a fewseconds she could not trust herself to reply. She felt that she had grownpale. At last she said, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears:
"Major Dermot! Is it possible? I--I thought you--"
She could not finish the sentence. But neither man observed her emotion,for Melville had suddenly seized Dermot's hand and was shaking it warmly.They had been on service together once and had not met since. The nextmoment, a committee man being urgently wanted, Melville was called away andleft Dermot and the girl together.
"I suppose you thought me shut up in my mountain home," the man said, "andprobably wondered why I had not answered your very interesting letter. Itwas so kind of you in all your gaiety here to think of me in myloneliness."
Noreen had quite recovered from her surprise and smiled brightly at him.
"Yes, I believed you to be in Ranga Duar," she said. "How is it you arehere?"
"An unexpected summons reached me at the same time as your letter. Fourdays ago I had no idea that I should be coming here."
"How could you bear to leave your beloved jungle and that dear Badshah? Iknow you dislike hill-stations," said the girl, laughing and tremulouslyhappy. The world seemed a much brighter place than it did five minutesbefore.
"My beloved jungle has no charm for me at this season," he said. "ButBadshah--ah, that was another matter. I have seldom felt parting with ahuman friend as much as I did leaving him. The dear old fellow seemed toknow that I was going away from him. But I was very pleased to come here tosee how you were enjoying yourself in this gay spot. I was glad to knowthat you were out of the Terai during the Rains."
So he had wanted to see her again. Noreen blushed, but Dermot did notobserve her heightened colour, for he had taken her programme out of herhand in his usual quiet, masterful manner and was scrutinising it.
"You haven't said yet if I may have a dance," he continued. "But I knowthat on an occasion like this I must lose no time if I want one."
"Oh, do you dance?" she asked in surprise. Somehow she had never associatedhim with ballrooms and social frivolities.
Dermot laughed.
"You forget that I was on the Staff in Simla. I shouldn't have been keptthere a day if I hadn't been able to dance. What may I have?"
Noreen felt tempted to bid him take all her programme.
"Well, I'm engaged for several. They are all written down. Take any of theothers you like," she said demurely, but her heart was beating fast at thethought of dancing with him.
"H'm; I see that all the first ones are booked. May I--oh, I see you havethe supper dances free. May I take you in to supper?"
"Yes, do, please. We haven't met for so long, and I have heaps to tellyou," the girl said. "We can talk ever so much better at the supper-tablethan in an interval."
"Thank you. I'll take the supper dances then."
"Wouldn't you care for any others?" she asked timidly. What would he thinkof her? Yet she didn't care. He was with her again, and she wanted to seeall she could of him.
"I should indeed. May I have this--and this?"
"With pleasure. Is that enough?"
"I'll be greedy. After all, the men up here have had dances from you allthe Season, and I have never danced with you yet. I'll take these, too, ifyou can spare them."
She looke
d at him earnestly.
"I owe you more than a few dances can pay," she said simply.
"Thank you, little friend," he said, and a happy feeling thrilled her athis words. He had not forgotten her, then. He used to call her thatsometimes in Ranga Duar. She was still his little friend. What a delightfulplace the world was after all!
As he pencilled his initials on her programme a horde of dance-hungry menswooped down on Noreen and almost pushed him aside. He bowed and strolledaway to watch the dancing. He had no desire to obtain other partners andwas content to watch his little friend of the forest, who seemed to havesuddenly become a very lovely woman. She seemed very gay and happy, hethought. He noticed that she danced oftenest with Melville and a tall, fairman whom he did not know.
Never had the early part of a ball seemed to Noreen to drag so much as thisone did. She felt that her partners must find her very stupid indeed, forshe paid no attention to what they said and answered at random.
At last almost in a trance of happiness she found herself gliding round theroom with Dermot's arm about her. The band was playing a dreamy waltz, andher partner danced perfectly. Neither of them spoke. Noreen could not; shefelt that all she wanted was to float, on air it seemed, held close toDermot's breast. She gave a sigh when the dance ended. In the interval shedid not want to talk; it was enough to look at his face, to hear his voice.She hated her next partner when he came to claim her.
But she had two more dances with Dermot before the band struck up "TheRoast Beef of Old England," and the ballroom emptied. At supper hecontrived to secure a small table at which they were alone; so they wereable to talk without constraint. She began to wonder how she had everthought him grave and stern or felt in awe of him. For in the gayatmosphere his Irish nature was uppermost; he was as light-hearted as aboy, and his conversation was almost frivolous.
During supper Noreen saw Ida watching her across the room, and later on,when the dancing began again, her friend cornered her.
"I say, darling, who is the new man you've been dancing with such a lottonight? You had supper with him, too. I've never seen him before. He'sawfully good-looking."
"Oh, that is--I suppose you mean Major Dermot," replied the girl, feelingsuddenly shy.
"Major Dermot? Who's he? What is--Oh, is it the wonderful hero from theTerai, the man you told me so much about when you came up?"
"Yes; he is the same."
"Really? How interesting! He's so distinguished-looking. When did he comeup? Why didn't you tell me he was coming?"
"I didn't know it myself."
"I should love to meet him. Introduce him to me. Now, at once."
With a hurried apology to her own partner and Noreen's she dragged the girloff in search of the fresh man who had taken her fancy, and did not give upthe chase until, with Melville's aid, Dermot was run to earth in thecardroom and introduced to her. Ida did not wait for him to ask her todance but calmly ran her pencil through three names on the programme andbestowed the vacancies thus created on him in such a way that he could notrefuse them. Dermot, however, did not grumble. She was Noreen's friend; ifnot the rose, she was near the rose.
Ida was not the only one who noticed how frequently the girl had dancedwith him. Charlesworth, disappointed at finding vacancies on her programme,for which he had hoped, already filled, commented on it and asked who thestranger was in a supercilious tone that made her furious and gained forhim a well-merited snubbing.
Indifferent to criticism, kind or otherwise, Noreen gave herself up for theevening to the happiness of Dermot's presence, trying to trick herself intothe belief that he was still only a dear friend to whom she owed an immensedebt of gratitude for saving her life and her honour. Never had a ballseemed so enjoyable--not even her first. Never had she had a partner whosuited her so well. Certainly he danced to perfection, but she knew that ifhe had been the worst dancer in the room she still would have preferred himto all others. And never had she hated the ending of an entertainment somuch. But Dermot walked beside her _dandy_ to the gate of her hotel, calmlydisplacing Charlesworth, much to the fury of the Rifleman, who had begun toconsider this his prerogative.
Ida and she sat up for hours in her room discussing the ball and all itshappenings, but the older woman's most constant topic was Dermot. It was asubject of which Noreen felt that she could never weary; and she drew herfriend on to talk of him, if the conversation threatened to stray toanything less interesting. The girl was used to Ida's sudden fancies formen, for the married woman was both susceptible and fickle, and Noreenjudged that this sudden predilection for Dermot would die as quickly as ahundred others before it. But this time she was wrong.
The Major was not to remain many days in Darjeeling, but Noreen hoped thathe would give her much of his spare time while there. She was disappointed,however, to find that although he was frequently in her and Ida's companyat the Amusement Club or elsewhere, he made no effort to compete withCharlesworth or Melville or any other man who sought to monopolise her, butdrew back and allowed him to have a clear field while he himself seemedcontent to talk to Mrs. Smith. At first she was hurt. He was her friend,not Ida's. But he never sought to be alone with her, never asked her toride with him, or do anything that would take her away from the others.
Then she grew piqued. If he did not value her society he should see thatothers did, and she suddenly grew more gracious to Charlesworth, who seemedto sense in Dermot a more dangerous rival than was Melville or any of theothers and began to be more openly devoted and to put more meaning into hisintentions.
One hateful night when she had been with Charlesworth to a private dance towhich Ida had refused to go, dining instead with Dermot, who had noinvitation to the affair, the blow fell. After her return to the hotel hertreacherous friend had crept into her room, weeping and imploring hersympathy. Too late, she sobbed on Noreen's shoulder, she had found hersoul-mate, the man destined for her through the past aeons, the one man whocould make her happy and whose existence she alone could complete. Why hadshe met Dermot too late? Why was she tied to a clod, mated to a clown? Whywere two lives to be wrecked?
As Noreen listened amazed an icy hand seemed to clutch her shrinking heart.Was this true? Did Dermot really care for Ida? Could the man whom she hadrevered as a white-souled knight be base enough to make love to anotherman's wife?
Then the demon of jealousy poisoned her soul. She got the weeping Ida backto her bed, and sat in her own dark room until the dawn came, her brain ina whirl, her heart filled with a fierce hatred of Dermot. And when nextday, his business finished, he had to leave Darjeeling, she made a point ofabsenting herself with Charlesworth from the hotel at the time when Dermothad arranged to come to say good-bye.
But long before the train in which he travelled down to the Plains washalf-way to Siliguri, the girl lay on her bed, her face buried in herpillow, her body shaken with silent but convulsive sobs.
And Dermot stared out into the thick mist that shrouded the mountains andenfolded his downward-slipping train and wondered if his one-time littlefriend of the forest would be happy in the new life that, according to herbosom-friend and confidant, Mrs. Smith, would open to her as Charlesworth'swife as soon as she spoke the word that was trembling on her lips.
And he sighed unconsciously. Then he frowned as the distasteful memoryrecurred to him of the previous night, when a wanton woman, misled byvanity and his courteous manner, had shamelessly offered him what shetermed her love and forced him to play the Joseph to a modern Mrs.Potiphar.