His Honour, and a Lady
CHAPTER XIX.
Ten minutes later Rhoda stood fastening her glove at her father’s doorand looking out upon a world of suddenly novel charm. The door opened,as it were, upon eternity, with a patch of garden between, but eternitywas blue and sun-filled and encouraging. The roses and sweet-williamsstood sheer against the sky, with fifty yellow butterflies dancing abovethem. Over the verge of the garden—there was not more than ten feet ofit in any direction—she saw tree-tops and the big green shoulders of thelower hills, and very far down a mat of fleecy clouds that hid theflanks of some of these. The sunlight was tempting, enticing. It madethe rubble path warm beneath her feet and drew up the scent of thegarden until the still air palpitated with it. Rhoda took littledesultory steps to the edge of the ledge the house was built on, anddown the steep footway to the road. The white oaks met over her head,and far up among the tree-ferns she heard a cuckoo. Its note softenedand accented her unreasoned gladness, seemed to give it a form and ametre. She looked up into the fragrant leafy shadows and listened tillit came again, vaguely aware that it was enough to live for. If she hadanother thought it was that Philip Doyle had come too late to see theglory of the rhododendrons, there was only, here and there, a red rag ofthem left.
She stepped with a rattle of pebbles into the wide main road round themountain, and there stood for a moment undecided. It was the chief road,the Mall; and if she turned to the right it would lead her past thehalf-dozen tiny European shops that clung to the side of the hill, pastthe hotels and the club, and through the expansion where the band playedin the afternoon, where there were benches and an admirable view, andwhere new-comers to Darjiling invariably sat for two or three days andcontentedly occupied themselves with processes of oxygenation. This partof the Mall was frequented and fashionable; even at that hour she wouldmeet her acquaintances on hill ponies and her mother’s friends indandies and her mother’s friends’ babies in perambulators, with aplentiful background of slouching Bhutia coolies, their old felt hatstied on with their queues, and red-coats from a recuperating regiment,and small black-and-white terriers. It was not often that this prospectattracted her; she had discovered a certain monotony in its cheerfulnesssome time before; but to-day she had to remind herself of that discoverybefore she finally decided to turn to the left instead. She had anotherreason: if she went that way it might look to Philip Doyle as if shewanted to meet him. Why this gentleman should have come to soextraordinary a conclusion on the data at his disposal Miss Daye did notpause to explain. She was quite certain that he would, so she turned tothe left.
It suited her mood, when once she had taken that direction, to walk veryfast. She had an undefined sense of keeping pace with events; hervigorous steps made a rhythm for her buoyant thought, and helped it out.She was entirely occupied with the way in which she would explain to Mr.Doyle how it was that she was not married to Lewis Ancram. Sheanticipated a pleasure in this, and she thought it was because Doylewould be gratified, on his friend’s account. He had never liked thematch—she clung to that impression in all humility—he would perhapsapprove of her breaking it off. Rhoda felt a little excited satisfactionat the idea of being approved of by Philip Doyle. She put the words withwhich she would tell him into careful phrases as she walked,constructing and reconstructing them, while Buzz kept an erratic coursebefore her with inquisitive pauses by the wayside and vain chasing oflittle striped squirrels that whisked about the boles of the trees.Buzz, she thought, had never been more idiotically amusing.
The road grew boskier and lonelier. Miss Daye met a missionary lady in ajinricksha, and then a couple of schoolboys sprinting, and then for aquarter of a mile nobody at all. The little white houses stoppedcropping out on ledges above her head, the wall of rock or of rubblerose solidly up, wet and glistening, and tapestried thick with tinyferns and wild begonias. All at once, looking over the brink, she sawthat the tin roofs of the cottages down the khud-side no longer shone inthe sun; the clouds had rolled between it and them—very likely downthere it was raining. Presently the white mist smoked up level with theroad, and she and the trees and the upper mountain stood in dappledsunlight for a moment alone above a phantasmally submerged world. Thenthe crisp leaf-shadows on the road grew indistinct and faded, thesunlight paled and went out, and in a moment there was nothing near orfar but a wandering greyness, and here and there perhaps the shadowedhole of an oak-tree or the fantastic outline of a solitary nodding fern.
“It’s going to rain, Buzz,” she said, as the little dog mutely inquiredfor encouragement and direction, “and neither of us have got anumbrella. So we’ll both get wet and take our death of cold. _Sumja_,[E]Buzz?”
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Footnote E:
“Do you understand?”
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As she spoke they passed the blurred figure of a man, walking rapidly inthe other direction. “Buzz!” Rhoda cried, as the dog turned and trottedbriskly after: “Come back, sir!” Buzz took no notice whatever, andimmediately she heard him addressed in a voice which made a suddenrequirement upon her self-control. She had a divided impulse—to betakeherself on as fast as she could into remote indistinguishability, and tocall the dog again. With a little effort of hardihood she turned andcalled him, turned with a thumping heart, and waited for his restorationand for anything else that might happen. The mist drifted up for amoment as Philip Doyle heard her and came quickly back; and when theyshook hands they stood in a little white temple with uncertain walls anda ceiling decoration of tree-ferns in high relief.
She asked him when he had come, although she knew that already, and heinquired for her mother, although he was quite informed as to Mrs.Daye’s well-being. He explained Buzz’s remembering him, as if he hadtaken an unfair advantage of it, and they announced simultaneously thatit was going to rain. Then conversation seemed to fail them wholly, andRhoda made a movement of departure.
“I suppose you are going to some friend in the neighbourhood,” he said,lifting his hat, “if there is any neighbourhood—which one is inclined todoubt.”
“Oh, no, I’m only walking.”
“All alone?”
“Buzz,” she said, with a downcast smile.
“Buzz is such an effective protection that I’m inclined to ask you toshare him.” His voice was even more tentative than his words. He fanciedhe would have made a tremendous advance if she allowed him to come withher.
“Oh, yes,” she said foolishly, “you may have half.”
“Thank you. I am three miles from my club, twenty-four hours from myoffice, and four thousand feet above sea-level—and I don’t mindconfessing that I’m very frightened indeed. How long, I wonder, does ittake to acquire the magnificent indifference to the elements which youdisplay? But the storm is indubitably coming: don’t you think we hadbetter turn back?”
“Yes,” she said again, and they turned back; but they sauntered alongamong the clouds at precisely the pace they might have taken in themeadows of the world below.
She asked him where he had spent his leave and how he had enjoyed it,and she gathered from his replies that one might stay too long in Indiato find even Italy wholly paradisaical, although Monte Carlo had alwaysits same old charm. “You should see Monte Carlo before some cataclysmovertakes it,” he said. “You would find it amusing. I spent a month atHomburg,” he went on humorously, “with what I consider the greatestpossible advantage to my figure. Though my native friends have beenopenly condoling with me on my consequent loss of prestige, and I haveno doubt my sylph-like condition will undermine my respectability.” Hefelt, as he spoke, deplorably middle-aged, and to mention these thingsseemed to be a kind of apology for them.
Rhoda looked at him with the conviction that he had left quite ten yearsin Europe, but she found herself oddly reluctant to say so. “Mummie willtell you,” she said. “Mummie always discovers the most wonderful changesin people when they have been home. And why did you come back so soon?”
“Why?” he repeated, half facing round, an
d then suddenly dropping backagain. “I came to see about something.”
“Oh, yes, of course you did. I know about it. And do you think you willwin?”
She looked at him with a smile of timid intelligence. Under it she wasthinking that she had never had such a stupid conversation with Mr.Doyle before. He smiled back gravely, and considered for a moment.
“I don’t in the least know,” he said with courageous directness; “but Imean to try—very hard.”
If he had thought, he might have kept the suggestion out of his voice—itwas certainly a little premature—but he did not think, and thesuggestion was there. Rhoda felt her soul leap up to catch its fullsignificance; then she grew very white, and shivered a little. Theshiver was natural enough: two or three big drops had struck her on theshoulders, and others were driving down upon the road, with wide spacesbetween them, but heavily determined, and making little splashes wherethey struck.
“It is going to pour,” she said; and, as they walked on with a futilequickening of pace, she heard him talk of something else, and calledherself a fool for the tumult in her heart. The rain gathered itselftogether and pelted them. She was glad of the excuse to break blindlyinto a run, and Doyle needed all his newly acquired energy to keep upwith her. The storm was behind them, and as it darkened and thickenedand crashed and drove them on, Rhoda’s blood tingled with a wild sweetknowledge that she fled before something stronger and stranger than thestorm, and that in the end she would be overtaken, in the end she wouldcede. Her sense of this culminated when Philip Doyle put a staying handupon her arm—she could not have heard him speak—and she sped on faster,with a little frightened cry.
“Come back!” he shouted; and, without knowing why, she did as he badeher, struggling at every step, it seemed, into a chaos out of which therain smote her on both cheeks, with only one clear sensation—that he hadher hand very closely pressed to his side, and that somewhere or other,presently, there would be shelter. They found it not ten yardsbehind—one of those shallow caves that Sri Krishna scooped out long agoto lodge his beggar priests in. Some Bhutia coolies had been cooking ameal there; a few embers still glowed on a heap of ashes in the middleof the place. Doyle explained, as he thrust her gently in, that thesehad caught his eye.
“You won’t mind my leaving you here,” he said, “while I go on for adandy and wraps and things? I shall not be a moment longer than I canhelp. You won’t be afraid?”
“In this rain! It would be wicked. Yes, I shall—I shall be horriblyafraid! You must stay here too, until it is over. Please come inside _atonce_.”
The little imperious note thrilled Doyle; but he stayed where he was.
“My dear child,” he said, “this may last for hours, and, if you don’tget home somehow, you are bound to get a chill. Besides, I must let yourmother know.”
“It will probably be over by the time you reach the house. And my motheris always quite willing to entrust me to Providence, Mr. Doyle. And ifyou go I’ll come, too.”
She looked so resolute that Doyle hesitated. “Won’t you be implored tostay here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not if you go,” she said. And, without furtherparley, he stooped and came in.
They could not stand upright against the shelving sides and roof of theplace, so perforce they sat upon the ground—she, with her feet tuckedunder her, leaning upon one hand, in the way of her sex, he hugging hisknees. There might have been thirty cubic feet of space in the cave, butit was not comfortably apportioned, and he had to crouch ratherawkwardly to keep himself at what he considered a proper distance. Itwas warm and dry there, and the dull fire of the embers in the middlegave a centre and a significance to the completeness of their shelter.The clouds hung like a grey curtain before the entrance, bordered allround with trailing vines and drooping ferns; the beat of the rain camein to them in a heavy distant monotone, and even the thunder seemed tobe rolling in a muffled way among the valleys below. Doyle felt thatnothing could be more perfect than their solitude. He would not speak,lest his words should people it with commonplaces; he almost feared tomove, lest he should destroy the accident that gave him the privilege ofsuch closeness to her. The little place was filled, it seemed to him,with a certain divine exhalation of her personality, of her freshnessand preciousness; he breathed it, and grew young again, and bold. In themoments of silence that fell their love arose before them like apresence. The girl saw how beautiful it was without looking, the manasked himself how long he could wait for its realisation.
“Are you very wet?” he asked her at last.
“No; only my jacket.”
“Then you ought to take it off, oughtn’t you? Let me help you.”
He had to lean closer to her for that. The wet little coat came off withdifficulty; and then he put an audacious hand upon the warm shoulder inits cambric blouse underneath, with a suddenly taught confidence that itwould not shrink away.
“Only a little damp,” he said. It was the most barefaced excuse for hiscaressing fingers. “Tell me, darling, when a preposterously venerableperson like me wishes to make a proposal of marriage to somebody who isaltogether sweet and young and lovable like you, has he any business totake advantage of a romantic situation to do it in?”
She did not answer. The lightness of his words somewhat disturbed hersense of their import. Then she looked into his face, and saw thewonderful difference that the hope of her had written there, and,without any more questioning, she permitted herself to understand.
“Think about it for a little while,” he said, and came a good dealnearer, and drew her head down upon his breast. He knew a lifetime ofsweet content in the space it rested there, while he laid his lipssoftly upon her hair and made certain that no other woman’s was sosweet-scented.
“Well?” he said at last.
“But——”
“But?”
“But you never did approve of me.”
“Didn’t I? I don’t know. I have always loved you.”
“I have never loved anybody—before.”
That was as near as she managed to get, then or for long thereafter, tothe matter of her previous engagement.
“No. Of course not. But for the future?”
Without taking her head from his shoulder, she lifted her eyes to his;and he found the pledge he sought in them.
And that upturning of her face brought her lips, her newly grave, sweet,submissive lips, very near, and the gladness within him was newborn andstrong. And so the storm swept itself away, and the purple-necked dovescooed and called again where the sunlight glistened through the drippinglaurels, and these two were hardly aware. Then suddenly a Bhutia girlwith a rose behind her ear came and stood in the door of the cave andregarded them. She was muscular and red-cheeked and stolid; she woremany strings of beads as well as the rose behind her ear, and as shelooked she comprehended, with a slow and foolish smile.
“It is her tryst!” Rhoda cried, jumping up. “Let us leave it to her.”
Then they went home through a world of their own, which the piping birdsand the wild roses and the sun-decked mosses reflected fitly. The cloudshad gone to Thibet; all round about, in full sunlight, the greatencompassing, gleaming Snows rose up and spoke of eternity, and made ahorizon not too solemn and supreme for the vision of their happiness.
* * * * *
“My dearest child.” said Mrs. Daye that night—she had come late to herdaughter’s room with her hair down—“don’t think I’m not as pleased aspossible, because I _am_. I’ve always had the greatest admiration forMr. Doyle, and you couldn’t have a better—unofficial—position inCalcutta. But I _must_ warn you, dear—I’ve seen such misfortune come ofit, and I knew I shouldn’t sleep if I didn’t—before this engagement isannounced——”
“I’ll go to church in a cotton blouse and a serge skirt this time, ifthat’s what you’re thinking of, mummie.”
“There! I was sure of it! Do think seriously, Rhoda, of the injustice
topoor Mr. Doyle, if you’re merely marrying him for _pique_!”