Devil's Wind (2 page)

“An engagement—without you?”

“My health,” faltered Mrs. Lauriston. “I am unable to take Adela out myself, and Mrs. Willoughby has been most kind.”

Mrs. Middleton snorted.

“I always took my girls about myself. I felt it a duty. But if you are really unable to go out with Adela, I must say, Lucy, that I should have thought Hetty, her own cousin, a more suitable chaperon than Mrs. Willoughby.”

“Hetty is so young,” began Mrs. Lauriston, flushing.

“Hetty is a married woman, and exceptionally discreet for her years. She would at least have prevented Adela from getting herself talked about,” said Mrs. Middleton with emphasis.

“Harriet!”

Mrs. Middleton unfastened her shawl and threw it back. She had come on purpose to talk to Lucy about her daughter, but she had meant to lead up to the point more gradually.

“Your room is stifling,” she observed. “Helen, won't that window open?”

“I think it will,” said Helen, but she did not get up.

“Harriet, what do you mean?” cried Mrs. Lauriston.

“It is an extremely hot afternoon, and you have everything closed,” began Mrs. Middleton, but for once her sister interrupted her.

“Harriet, what did you mean about Adela?”

“My dear Lucy, how you agitate yourself. What did I say?”

“You said—you implied that Adela was being talked about.”

“Well, Lucy, and what can you expect when you let her go about with a flighty young woman like Mrs. Willoughby, and pick up with illegitimate, half-caste young men?”

“Harriet!”

“My dear Lucy, what is the use of taking that tone? Every one is talking about it. I wish I had come to town two months ago.”

Mrs. Lauriston caught at her dignity with tremulous hands.

“Mr. Manners is an excellent young man, his father was a cousin of Mr. Lauriston's,” she said. “He is devoted to Adela, and when he has established his claim to the Manners estates—”

“Really, Lucy! is it possible that you have encouraged him?”

“And why not, Harriet?”

“Lucy, are you crazy? Why not? Why not?”

“He is Colonel Manners's son.”

“And his mother?”

“I don't understand you, Harriet. His mother was a native lady of rank, or so I understood.”

“And the proofs of the marriage?”

“Mr. Manners certainly has ample proof.”

“Mr. Manners certainly has no proof at all,” said Mrs. Middleton, and saw her sister whiten.

“Oh, Harriet!”

“He has no proof at all,” she repeated. “I felt it my duty to let you know at once. He consulted Mortimer James, and Mortimer told Hetty that there was no proof at all—absolutely none—that would justify any respectable firm of solicitors in taking up the case; I felt you could not know the truth too soon.”

Mrs. Lauriston burst into tears.

“Now, Lucy, for mercy's sake don't cry. Adela has got herself into a mess, as I always foretold that she would, but we must do what we can. How far has it gone? They are not engaged?”

“Oh, no,” sobbed Mrs. Lauriston. “Oh, Helen, dear love, where is my handkerchief? Oh, my dear, what a dreadful thing! Adela is so wilful—”

“Aunt Lucy, dear, please—”

“Adela is so wilful. She will make friends that I cannot approve of, Mrs. Willoughby now, and Mr. Manners. Of course being as it were a cousin—only now I come to think of it, it was Mr. Lauriston's grandmother's step-mother who was a Miss Manners, so one cannot say that there is any relationship, can one?”

Helen said, “No, one couldn't,” and Mrs. Lauriston went on talking and dabbing her eyes, from which flowed a constant effortless stream of tears.

“And not being a relation, even if he is legitimate, only I shouldn't talk of such things to you, Helen, I can say now that there was always something I did not quite like about Mr. Manners. He never seemed to me to be quite—quite straightforward, and of course Adela thought those dark eyes of his so romantic, but to me dark eyes are a little unreliable. Now, blue eyes—so becoming with sunburn—a soldier should be sunburned—and don't you think, Harriet, that people with dark blood in them are never quite reliable and straightforward?”

Mrs. Middleton tapped with her foot upon the cabbage-coloured carpet.

“Is Captain Morton sunburned, and has he blue eyes?” she inquired drily.

“He has, Aunt Harriet,” said Helen with equal dryness.

“And so much in love with Adela, and really such a fine man, though I find him just a little trying to my nerves. I never seem to know whether he means quite what he says, or not, and he has a way of fixing his eyes on one that makes one feel as if he were reading all the secrets of one's past.”

Mrs. Middleton gave an angry sniff.

“My dear Lucy, you never had a secret in your life,” she ejaculated, but Mrs. Lauriston took no notice. She had stopped dabbing her eyes, and looked quite cheerful.

“Yes, really most piercing eyes,” she murmured, “but when he looks at Adela, it is quite touching, they soften so—his devotion—”

“And his prospects?” inquired Mrs. Middleton in tones of sisterly contempt.

“Oh, my dear Harriet, he really has a brilliant future before him. He distinguished himself very greatly at the siege of—of—no, I have forgotten the name—Helen, love, what was the name?”

“Multan,” said Helen Wilmot.

“Yes, yes—of course, when those two poor men were killed. Captain—oh, dear, it has gone again—Helen love, the names of those two poor fellows. Oh, of course, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Vans Agnew. They were murdered, you know, and that wonderful Major Edwardes collected an army, and Captain Morton was with him, and they did the most extraordinary things, and Captain Morton was wounded in the head—such an escape—”

“Yes—yes,” said Mrs. Middleton impatiently.

“One can't be too thankful—”

“Well, Lucy, what I should like to know is this—how much is there to be thankful for? He is not dependent on his prospects in the future, and his pay in the present, is he?”

“I think there was an uncle—I think he said an uncle had died and left him something. I know I did not really listen, because I felt so uncomfortable at his telling me—so pointed—and I never thought then—”

Mrs. Middleton opened her mouth, and then shut it again firmly. She had a strong desire to speak her mind, but a stronger desire to see her niece Adela married; she controlled herself, therefore, and talked at large about Hetty, and Hetty's glory, only returning to Adela's affairs in the calm of the tea-hour.

Finally, she resumed her shawl, pinned it across her chest with a very large cameo brooch, bordered with plaited hair, rose majestically, and pecked at her sister's cheek.

“You are not going?”

“I must get back. I promised Hetty. Now, Lucy, take my advice, get Adela safely married to this Captain Morton. Once a girl has got herself talked about, her chances are gone. Especially if she is pretty. People always believe the worst of a pretty girl—get her married. Goodness me, Lucy, what is the use of looking at me like that? If no one else tells you the truth, I do—I always did, and I always shall, and perhaps some day you will be grateful to me. Good-bye, Helen. When do you sail for India? Hasn't Edward sent the money for your passage yet? Oh, he has. Well, it is time. Your grandmother has been dead six months, and really if Lucy had not been able to take you in, I don't know what you would have done. I couldn't have invited you for the best part of a year.”

When Helen had taken her aunt downstairs, she came back into the drawing-room and shut the door. She was smiling a little.

“Poor Sir Henry,” she said.

“Oh, my dear, why?” protested Mrs. Lauriston, a little shocked that any one should pity a baronet with fifteen thousand a year.

“Hetty is going to be exactly like Aunt Harriet. That's why,” said Helen.

CHAPTER II

HOW CAPTAIN MORTON TALKED ABOUT DISCIPLINE

Serve seven years for Honour and seven years for Love.

The children of Honour are many, thou shalt establish them, branch and root.

And what of the children of Love, shall Love then bear no fruit?

Sufficient unto the day is the good and the evil thereof.

As Adela Lauriston crossed the ballroom at Lavington House a good many people watched her, and then turned to whisper with their friends.

Adela was worth looking at. Even Hetty Lavington admitted that, though her round, prominent eyes were full of disapproval as she observed her cousin, and noted that it was on Francis Manners's arm that she was leaving the room. “Really!” she said, in a low angry voice, and Sir Henry Lavington, who knew very well what she meant, tried to look as disapproving as he was expected to. He did not really find it very easy. A good many people had expected Adela Lauriston to stand in her cousin Hetty's place. Hetty Middleton's engagement had come as a great surprise to these people. Rumour even had it that it had come as a surprise to Sir Henry himself. He looked away from Hetty in her diamonds, and her unbecoming dress, and his eyes followed Adela, as she went lightly and proudly down the long room; she was not tall, but how well she moved, and how all these lights flattered her!

Her hair, a dark chestnut in colour, fell all about her shoulders, in a shower of curls,—those curls to which Harriet Middleton objected so strongly. They shaded a face which Greuze might have painted, and were caught over the ear on either side by a scarlet geranium. Adela's colouring stood the test triumphantly, for her lips were as red as the flowers, and the tint in her cheeks, though much fainter, was just as pure and fine.

From under arched brows, her hazel eyes looked smilingly upon all this crowd of people who must be admiring her in her new dress. It was her last glance in the mirror that had waked the smile. She carried with her a pleasant memory of many white silk flounces, all veiled with blonde, and caught up here and there with vivid clusters of geranium flowers.

She smiled very sweetly under Francis Manners's admiring gaze, and her modestly dropped eyes caught a faint reflection of her white and scarlet bravery from the polished floor at her feet.

“By Jove, that's a pretty girl!” said Freddy Carlton, half to himself, and then, being a communicative soul, he turned to his neighbour, and received a shock.

“What, you, Dick! Lord, what brings you to a dance?”

“Hullo, Ginger!” said Captain Richard Morton. He looked down at the top of Freddy's head with affection.

“And what brings you?” he said. “I didn't know you were home.”

“Just come. Jolly glad to be out of the romantic East too. Lavington is my second cousin fourteen times removed. I say, fourteen times isn't too much for his wife, is it? But what on earth brings you here? You've never been learning to dance?”

Captain Morton looked a little rueful.

“A cousin of mine tried to teach me once. You remember Floss Monteith—and she said it wasn't any use. You see I'm rather large to go about treading on people—at least that is what she said, and now with all these flounces and fallals that girls wear—”

Freddy had an inward spasm.

“Old Dick dancing—my stars! I wonder who she is,” he said to himself, and then aloud:

“I say, who is that jolly pretty girl who is just going out? No, not the one in pink, the other one, with the fellow who looks as if he'd been dipped in the ink over night and hadn't got it all off?”

Captain Morton drew his brows together. A moment before his eyes had been very blue and gay. Now they darkened.

“That is Miss Lauriston,” he said, and Freddy had another little spasm, and said to himself, “The one and only!”

“And who's the man? If it weren't England I'd give him about eight annas in the rupee.”

“Intelligent Frederick. Do you remember old Manners in the palmy days of our youth?”

“What, at Seetapore, when we were kids? Retired in the year one, and settled down with a native wife?”

“That's the man, and the dark boy is his son.”

“What's he doing?”

“Trying to get accepted as his father's heir. Apparently a few odd cousins and people dropped off, and old Manners would have come in for a whole lot of property if he had lived.”

“And the half-caste son succeeds? Well, some people have all the luck.”

“Oh, I don't know about luck.” Richard Morton's frown deepened. “He's a poor creature, but one can't help feeling sorry for the boy. There's a screw loose somewhere, and apparently he won't get anything.”

“Stupid business marrying a native,” was Freddy's comment. “Always leads to trouble. Oh, Lord, Dick, who in the world is this?”

A very magnificent person had just come into view. His dark skin contrasted strongly with the shirt of fine white muslin which he wore buttoned to the throat with emerald studs. His tall figure, not yet too full for shapeliness, was set off by a long coat of green and gold brocade, and his waist was confined by folds of crimson kincob, against which there glittered the jewelled hilt of a dagger. A long necklace of many rows of pearls hung down upon the crimson and gold of the sash, and a pearl and emerald aigrette showed up bravely against his muslin turban. Three ladies hung on his every word, and his dark eyes roved from one to the other. Critics might have detected a certain insolence in his glance, but London vowed that his manners were charming.

Captain Morton looked for a moment, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Blatant beast,” he observed.

“But who— what is it?”

“Used to be a
khitmutghar
, I believe. Picked up English and got taken on to teach in a school at Cawnpore. You know old Bajee Rao—last of the Peishwas—disreputable old blackguard—well, his adopted son Dhundoo Punth—the man they call the Nana Sahib—took a fancy to this Azimullah creature, and made him his
vakil
. Now he has unlimited influence, and apparently unlimited cash.”

“What is he doing here?” inquired Freddy, wrinkling up his upper lip.

Dick Morton laughed a little grimly. “Was it David, or Shakespeare, who said that all men were fools?”

“Original I think, dear boy,” murmured Freddy.

“True, anyhow. Azimullah Khan is the idol of the season. Look at old Lady Mountjoy smiling away at him, and that pretty creature in blue. No party is a success without the ‘Indian Prince' and he dresses the part all right, doesn't he?”

“Beast—oily beast,” said Freddy Carlton with conviction. “What is he doing in England at all, though?”

“Trying to get a hard-hearted Company to continue Bajee Rao's pension to his beloved adopted son. It's been a grievance for a long time, and now Azimullah is trying to get things settled. Also, I believe, he is financing and generally looking after young Manners, whose mother was the Nana's sister, or cousin, or something of that sort.”

“I met the Nana Sahib once—rather a sportsman. Well, I hope he'll get his money, I like to hear of some one getting money out of the Company. By Jingo, Dick, I wish they'd give me some! By the way, I saw George Blake on my way down country, and he said you were going into the Civil—cutting the regiment. It's not true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why on earth?”

“A regimental officer has no chances.”

Freddy burst out laughing.

“Why, you've seen more service than any of us. I wish I'd had your luck.”

“Well, I wasn't at Multan with the regiment, and it wasn't regimental work that took me to Burmah, and the chances get less every day.”

He paused. Freddy Carlton and he had been boys together. He had not many near relatives, and this coming home had been rather a lonely business. Looked forward to for ten years, it had resolved itself into a counting of empty places, a wandering to and fro amongst haunting memories, and a realisation of how dead, how absolutely dead, were the friendships and the interests which in anticipation had seemed warm and still alive.

He had an impulse towards confidence.

“There have been times when I could have thrown up the whole thing,” he said. “Then Edwardes showed me a way out. I'm not supposed to be going for good. I learned Pushtoo when I was up at Multan, you know, and I'm to be lent for a year or two for special work, under Edwardes at Peshawur. Things are pleasantly fluid in the Punjab at present. I'm pretty sick of a regime of red-tape and doddering inefficiency.”

Freddy's little greenish eyes twinkled.

“Oh, insubordinate young man!” he exclaimed. He pulled at his sandy moustache.

“You've still got old Crowther for a colonel, I see.”

“Oh, Lord, yes. Crowther will die—or at least we'll hope so—but he'll never surrender. Heavens, Freddy, what sort of a system is it that never gives a man his chance till he's past taking it? I dare say Crowther was all right once.”

“I'll swear he wasn't,” grinned Freddy.

“No, I don't suppose he could have been; but this hanged system of purchase does wear a lot of good fellows out. They haven't got the money, and their chances pass them by, and when they've wasted the best years of their lives, and fretted their hearts out, and the chance does come,—why the rust has gone too deep, and they just crumble.”

“That how you feel? Man to man now, Dick, how deep has it got with you? As for my humble self—well, I don't know that I feel so very rusty.”

“Oh, you've used it up on your hair,” said Dick Morton, laughing, “and I—”

“Rolling stones gather no rust—eh? What'll George Blake do without his
fidus Achates
, Dick??

“I hope he'll get the Adjutancy.”

“So you are getting out of his way?”

Captain Dick could still blush in spite of the sunburn. The colour ran up to the roots of his black hair, and he looked cross.

“What rubbish!” he said, and Freddy permitted himself the merest ghost of a whistle.

“Oh, I won't let on,” he said wickedly.

“How are you fellows?” asked Captain Morton in an abrupt voice.

“Oh, fairly gay, thanks. Willoughby's married, and Smith's going to be, and Kenton's homesick, and I'm on the verge of bankruptcy, and the only really bright spot is, that we don't think the Colonel's liver will stand another hot weather. If it weren't for that, I declare we'd offer him to you, lock, stock, and barrel, and take old Crowther in exchange, hanged if we wouldn't.”

“No, thanks, Freddy, we wouldn't deprive you for the world. And if Crowther went to-morrow they'd give the regiment to Marsh,—Marsh whose idea of Heaven is a place where we can all stand in rows for ever and ever, and never soil our pipe-clay with a profane touch. I tell you, Ginger, before I came away, I was hourly expecting to be told to keep the men in cotton-wool, once they were dressed.”

“Well, I like 'em smart,” protested Freddy with a grimace.

“Smart—oh, Lord, they're smart enough. They're a deuced sight too smart, Ginger, and they're getting to know it. They want taking down a peg or two, these stall-fed, caste-proud Brahmins. They'll be able to do without us soon; and they're beginning to know that too. I'd like to see 'em in sensible clothes, and I'd like to see 'em think less of their pipe-clay and more of their discipline.”

“Clothes, what sort of clothes? What's wrong with their clothes?”

“Everything. Too tight. Too hot. Too much pipe-clay. Damn pipe-clay!”

“All right—I don't mind. ‘Damn it' all you like. But what's wrong with the discipline? I'd bet my boots your men were disciplined within an inch of their lives, whilst you were Adjutant.”

“Rotten—that's what the discipline is,” said Richard Morton, with his black eyebrows in a straight frowning line.

“Insubordinate, are they?”

“I'd like to see 'em.” Captain Morton's eyes went very bright and hard. “No, but they'd like to be. Ginger, if I'd a free hand for six months—but with Marsh and Crowther over one's head, it's a sickening, heart-breaking job,—and besides, I don't want to be chucked out of the service for telling' em what I think of' em, and it's bound to come if I stay on.”

“Then you'd better go, my son.”

“That's what Edwardes says, so he's asked for me. I made friends with his horde of ruffians at Multan. Not much pipe-clay there. I tell you some of them would wake our Bengal regiments up a bit, only they wouldn't wear tight red jackets, and tight white pantaloons.”

“No, no, I draw the line at the wild Pathan, Dick. He's all very well for Irregulars.”

Richard Morton's eyes brightened.

“I tell you, Freddy, we are wasting our best material, absolutely wasting it. Look at the Sikhs. Every regiment is ordered to enlist two hundred of them. How many have you got?”

“Oh, I don't know. About fifty.”

“And we've got sixty-two. Have you got a Sikh native officer? No. Nor have we, nor has any one else. Can't get recruits is the cry, but, Lord, we didn't kill the whole Sikh, army at Moodkee and Ferozeshah.”

Freddy shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I'm not over partial to Sikhs myself,” he said lazily. “Dirty beggars, and the other men don't like 'em.”

“Have you seen them fight?”

“Oh, we don't all have your luck, Richard, my son.”

The band struck up an air that was very popular that season,

“Oh, shall I miss

That earliest kiss—”

and Captain Morton pulled himself up and made a feint of looking at his programme.

“I've got a partner to look for,” he said, and his eyes went towards the door by which Adela Lauriston had gone out.

“Going to dance with the poor girl?” inquired Freddy Carlton with malice, “because, if so, I'd better be hunting round for a doctor. Once those beetle-crushers of yours take the floor—”