Transcriber's Note:
A Table of Contents has been added.

STAR OF INDIA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Into Temptation
Late in Life
The Spell of the Jungle
East of Suez
Red Records
The Stronger Claim
The Waters of Destruction
Idolatry
The Charm
The Anglo-Indians
The Happy Hunting Ground
The Woman in the Bazaar
Separation
Tales that are Told

STAR OF INDIA

BY
ALICE PERRIN

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

First published 1919

Dedicated to My Cousin,
BEATRICE MARY BYNG HOLDEN

CONTENTS

STAR OF INDIA

PART I

CHAPTER I

I dare not choose my lot;

I would not if I might.

Choose thou for me, my God,

So shall I walk aright.

The rustic portion of the congregation shouted the familiar hymn with laborious goodwill, overpowering the more cultivated voices that rose from the chancel and the front pews—almost defeating the harsh notes wrung from the harmonium by the village schoolmistress, who also led the singing in a piercing key, supported raucously by her pupils gathered about the unmusical instrument. Even in the early 'nineties nothing so ambitious as an organ or a surpliced choir had as yet been attempted in this remote west-country parish, though with the advent of the new vicar innovations had begun; actually, of late, the high oak pews had been removed to make way for shining pitch-pine seats that in the little Norman church produced much the same effect as a garish oleograph set in an antique frame. Most of the parishioners approved the change; certainly it had the advantage of permitting everyone to observe at leisure who came to church, what they wore, and how they behaved during the sermon, even if those who were somnolently inclined found the publicity disconcerting.

Stella Carrington, for one, infinitely preferred the new seats. Though no longer a child—seventeen last birthday—she could never quite forget the hours of misery she had endured in the old pew; the smell of dust and hassocks, the feeling of captivity, the desperate impulse that would assail her to kick open the door, to fling a prayer-book over the barrier, to jump up on the seat; only the fear of grandmamma's wrath had restrained her from such antics. This Sunday, as she stood between Aunt Augusta and Aunt Ellen, singing the hymn that preceded the sermon, recollections returned to her of her childhood's trials in the high pew, and with these, unaccountably, came the old sense of imprisonment. The feeling disturbed her; she searched her mind for the cause, and became conscious that it was somehow connected with the presence of Maud Verrall, seated with her parents in the religious preserve of the Squire and his family in the chancel. The Verralls had been absent from The Court for a considerable period, and now here was Maud, who when Stella last saw her had been in short petticoats with her hair down her back, transformed into a young lady; she had a curled fringe, bangles and puffed sleeves; her dress touched the ground, she had a waist, and her hat, of a fashionable sailor shape, was set well to the back of her head. And all this though she was no older than her former playmate, Stella Carrington, whose skirts even now barely reached her ankles, whose hair still hung in a plait, whose hat, in her own opinion, was more suited to a child in a perambulator than to a girl of seventeen. No wonder she felt stifled, cramped! She realised why the memory of her tortures in the old box-like pew had recurred to her mind; and then suddenly the hymn that she knew so well and had sung on such countless Sundays, paying no special heed to the words, struck her as the acme of hypocrisy. She ceased singing, amazed that the recognition had not come to her sooner. Surely whoever was responsible for the wording of this hymn could never have known the tedium for a young person of living with a stony-hearted grandmother and two maiden aunts in a small village where nothing ever happened; the author must have belonged to people like the Verralls, who were, of course, satisfied with their "lot," and did not want to change it; people who could "dare" do anything they pleased. If she, Stella Carrington, could choose her lot at this moment, she would change places with Maud Verrall; and she wondered how Maud would feel if she found herself forced to accept the lot of Stella Carrington! Would Maud still humbly proclaim that she would not change it even if she might?...

Only when Aunt Augusta, regarding her severely, touched her arm did Stella discover that the hymn was ended; that the congregation was settling down for the sermon. She sank to her seat, blushing, abashed.

Summer had set in early that year, and the sun poured through the stained glass window subscribed for by the parish to a former Squire Verrall, casting kaleidoscopic patterns of purple and crimson on to grandmamma's brown silk bonnet; a premature bumble-bee droned and bumped up and down the panes, the atmosphere felt airless, and Aunt Ellen sniffed elegantly at her green salts-bottle. Stella grew drowsy; she could not attend to the sermon, and her thoughts strayed on in confusion.... Would Canon Grass, the vicar, dare to change his lot if he might? Perhaps he would like to change Mrs. Grass, who was older than himself, for the pretty visitor who was one of The Court party in the chancel pew.... And how about Mrs. Daw, who was so artistic, and considered her talents wasted in her position as wife to a country doctor; who complained that no one in the village really understood or appreciated "Art".... How much happier Mrs. Daw would be in London had she the opportunity of changing her lot—of converting her husband into a West End physician. And as to the villagers; everyone knew that they were never contented, no matter what was done for them. At this point in her reflections Stella fell asleep.

The service over, she followed grandmamma and the aunts slowly down the aisle, while the school children clattered through the porch. The Court party left the building by the chancel door, and Stella saw them pace down the slope of the churchyard between the tombstones and the yew trees to where a carriage and pair of horses awaited them at the gates. Squire Verrall went first, in a black coat and a square hat like a box, his whiskers were brushed smartly aside from his ruddy cheeks, his large nose shone in the sun, he waved his malacca cane to the school children marshalled on either side of the pathway; Mrs. Verrall followed, delicate, smiling, sweet, in dark green satin, and a white ostrich feather floating from a boat-shaped hat; with her came the pretty visitor, who walked with a Grecian bend ... and Maud. Stella observed that Maud was "showing off"; that she minced and looked down her nose as she passed between the rows of bobbing, saluting children and villagers. Stella was filled with an envious contempt for such conceit; such airs and graces! Three maid-servants completed the procession; even they would drive back to The Court, on the rumble of the big carriage, while Stella Carrington would walk through the lanes to The Chestnuts pulling her grandmother's chair, Aunt Augusta pushing behind, Aunt Ellen shielding the old lady with a green-lined umbrella. They would wait on themselves at luncheon; probably there would be boiled mutton and a milk pudding....

There was: in her present rebellious mood, the sight of the plain, wholesome food was to Stella as the proverbial last straw. Aunt Augusta carved the mutton; a watery red stream issued from the joint, mingling with the caper sauce that surrounded it.

"None for me, thank you," said Stella, with suppressed fury.

"My dear, why not?" It was grandmamma who made the inquiry, and Stella thought the old lady looked like a sea-gull, seated at the end of the table in her close white cap, her snowy hair looped on either side of her curved nose.

"I hate boiled mutton!" Beneath her rising defiance the girl was conscious of amazement at her own temerity. She pushed back her chair and stood up, quivering—a slim young beauty, giving promise of fine development, though neither beauty nor promise had as yet been recognised by herself or by her guardians.

"Yes, I do hate it!" she cried, and her eyes, the colour of burnt sienna, filled with rebellious tears, "and I hate milk puddings and babyish clothes, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night with nothing in between—the same every day. How you could all stand up and sing that hymn, 'I dare not choose my lot,'" she mocked, "'I would not if I might,' as if you meant it! Why, for most of us, it was simply a lie!"

For a space there was a shocked silence. Augusta, the carving knife poised in her hand, looked at her mother; Ellen stared at her plate and extracted her salts-bottle with stealth from her pocket; Stella found her own gaze drawn helplessly to the expressionless old countenance at the end of the table, and, despite her new-born courage, she quailed.

"My dear," said grandmamma smoothly, "you had better go and lie down. The weather has upset you. I think you require a powder."

Stella burst into something between laughter and tears; she made a childish dash for the door and ran noisily up the stairs.

The meal in the dining-room continued as though nothing had happened. It was not a Carrington custom to discuss unpleasant occurrences at meals, or, indeed, at any other time, if such discussions could possibly be avoided; the Carrington elders possessed a fine faculty for ignoring difficult subjects. It was a gift that had carried them apparently unscathed through various trials. When it became imperative to speak of anything painful it was done as briefly and reservedly as possible. It was not until well on in the afternoon, when Mrs. Carrington had awakened from her nap in the drawing-room, that Stella's outrageous behaviour was mentioned.

The drawing-room at The Chestnuts was a long narrow room with three French windows opening on a little paved terrace. Formerly the house had been a farm dwelling, the last remnant of a property acquired a century ago by a Carrington ancestor with a fortune made in the East and dissipated in the West. The Court, where the Verralls now reigned, had once belonged to this magnificent Carrington, and the ladies of The Chestnuts never forgot the fact. They regarded the Verralls as interlopers, though by now the Verralls had been lords of the manor for several generations.

But though The Court and all its acres were lost to the Carringtons, they had clung as a family to Chestnut Farm, adding to it from time to time as fluctuating fortunes permitted. It was a haven for Carrington widows, unmarried daughters, retired old-soldier Carringtons; a jumping-off place for sons as they started in life, a holiday home for successions of young Carringtons while their parents were abroad; and there was still the family vault in the parish church where they could be buried if India spared them to die in England. Stella's grandfather, whom she could not remember, lay there with others of his name, and it had never entered grandmamma's mind to live or die anywhere but at The Chestnuts.

But to return to the drawing-room—a room that breathed of a people long connected with the East—here were sandal-wood boxes, caskets composed of porcupine quills, coloured clay models of Indian servants, brasses and embroideries. The warmth of the afternoon drew forth faint aromas still stored in these relics, mementoes of travel and service and adventure, the perfume that still hung in the folds of the handsome cashmere shawl draped about old Mrs. Carrington's shoulders.

It was she who opened the debate; failing her lead, neither of her daughters would have dreamed of alluding to their niece's outburst at the luncheon table.

"What do you imagine is wrong with Stella?" The old lady's sunken dark eyes, that yet were quick and bright, turned from one daughter to the other. The rest of her muscles were perfectly still.

"She is growing up," said Augusta boldly. She was the elder of the two and more nearly resembled her mother, physically and mentally, than did faint-hearted Ellen.

"She is still a child!" pronounced Mrs. Carrington, oblivious of the fact that she herself had been married at the age of seventeen, had sailed to India and returned with three children before she was twenty-one.

"Perhaps," ventured Ellen, "seeing Maud Verrall in church dressed as a grown-up young lady made her feel a little—well, I hardly know how to express myself—rather kept back?"

Ellen herself had been guiltily conscious of a vague feeling of envy caused by the sight of The Court people in all their prosperity and finery.

"Kept back from what?" demanded Mrs. Carrington. "Would you wish to see Stella trigged out like that forward monkey Maud Verrall?"

"Maud was always a most underbred child," said Augusta.

Ellen hastily took up the cue. "Yes, don't you remember the day she came to tea and broke the vase, and allowed Stella to be blamed? I saw her break it myself, but of course we could say nothing as Maud was our guest, and dear little Stella said nothing."

"But what has that to do with the way Stella behaved to-day?" inquired her sister. Ellen thought this rather unkind of Augusta.

"Oh! nothing, of course," Ellen admitted. "Only it just shows——"

"We are all aware that Stella has spirit," said grandmamma, ignoring this passage, "she is a true Carrington, but spirit in certain circumstances is a danger and not to be encouraged, just as in others it may be admirable. Now if the child had been a boy——"

The old lady's gaze turned to a portrait that hung over the mantelpiece—that of a gentleman in a blue velvet coat with lace and silver buttons, powdered hair and bold, bright eyes that seemed to smile on the little feminine conclave in amused toleration. "Spirit" in a man was to be accepted and, whatever its consequences, condoned; but in a female, particularly in a young girl, it should be guarded against, suppressed. Ellen Carrington's eyes turned also to the portrait. Long years ago she had shown symptoms of "spirit" in connection with the attentions of a dashing young cousin who had strongly resembled the portrait. Mamma was antagonistic; he had sailed for India (just as had all male Carringtons one after the other), and the ship had gone down; so that his vow to return with a fortune and claim his sweet Ellen was never fulfilled.

Augusta, so far as anyone was aware, had known no romance. The family spirit in Augusta found outlet in a fierce devotion to her mother, and in the maintenance of a pathetically pretentious sort of state in the household; the very manner in which she would ring the bell might have argued the existence of a host of retainers. Not for worlds would she have answered the front door herself, neither would she have permitted Ellen or Stella to do so. Her attitude towards the domestic staff at The Chestnuts—old Betty, with a daily slave from the village, and the aged, bad-tempered factotum out of doors—was almost that of a Royal personage, punctilious in the matter of good mornings and thank yous, yet carefully distant as became the upholding of class distinction.

"It's a pity she was not a boy," said Augusta, "then she could have gone to school—a little more discipline——"

"Yes, Stella's education——" interrupted Mrs. Carrington, and paused thoughtfully. Her daughters listened. Augusta was responsible for Stella's arithmetic, geography, history; Ellen for her progress in music, needlework, drawing. Was fault to be found with these educational efforts?—which in truth were not altogether congenial to the teachers, conscientiously though they pursued them. Stella was frequently tiresome, and she did such odd things—for example, she had "a trick," as they called it, of rising at dawn and rambling about the woods and commons and returning late for breakfast, and then she would be listless and inattentive for the rest of the day. At times she was "wild" and disobedient, although at others disarmingly docile and quick and affectionate. On the whole, the aunts were proud of their pupil; what was mamma about to say concerning Stella's education?

Mamma said: "Though unfortunately Stella is not a boy, I have lately been thinking that if a suitable school can be found—— What was the name of that friend of yours, Augusta, who years ago started a school for young ladies at Torquay?"

"Jane Ogle," said Augusta shortly. In the opinion of Augusta, Jane Ogle had lost caste when she opened a school. As the daughter of an officer, Jane should not have descended to such depths as the earning of her living when she had plenty of relations with any of whom she could have made her home in genteel idleness. Still, if mamma had any serious notion of a school for Stella it was so far fortunate that Miss Ogle had thus bemeaned herself, seeing that none of them knew anything about boarding schools for girls, institutions which were to be regarded with suspicion.

"Then you really think, mamma," said Augusta incredulously, "that Stella needs different tuition, or at least different management?"

"Her behaviour to-day would point to it," mamma replied. "Perhaps you would write to Miss Ogle, my dear, and make inquiries as to her methods and terms. I am inclined to think Stella is getting a little beyond us in every way."

Stella, after rushing from the dining-room and up the stairs in such unladylike fashion, had thrown herself on her bed and wept until her ill-humour evaporated and she began to think more kindly of milk pudding and boiled mutton. Then, feeling hungry and rather ashamed, she had bathed her eyes and "tidied" her hair, and for a while sat and gazed from the low window of her bedroom—gazed on the familiar lawn sloping to a narrow stream that had been the cause of many punishments in her childhood, what with her attempts to jump it, the catching of imaginary fish, the sailing of paper boats, all of which had involved "getting her feet wet," a crime in the view of grandmamma and the aunts. The cedar tree on the lawn had also been a source of trouble, for Stella had never fought the temptation to climb it, and the climbing of trees was forbidden as not only hoydenish but disastrous to clothes—the same with the high wall of the kitchen garden. There seemed hardly a spot in the limited domain that for Stella was not associated with punishment; yet she adored "the grounds," as Aunt Augusta entitled the garden, at all seasons of the year, and at this season she still found it heavenly to dabble in the stream, to climb the branches of the cedar tree, even to roll on the fragrant turf.... She loved the old house as well, though two of the rooms she had always avoided instinctively—grandmamma's bedroom was one; Stella felt it held secrets, there was something mysterious and "dead" in its atmosphere. The painted toy horse and the wooden soldier, the half-finished sampler, and the shabby doll enshrined on the chest of drawers seemed to her ghostly objects, sad reminders as they were of uncles and aunts who had never grown up. When, for any reason, she was obliged to enter the room it was as if these little dead uncles and aunts still hovered about the big bed with its faded chintz curtains, as if they were listening, watching, hating her for her being alive.

Aunt Augusta's room she also disliked; it might have been a spare room, so cold, so polished, so neat, and the enlarged photographs of bygone Carringtons, framed and hung on the walls, were hideous—all crinolines and strings of black beads and stove-pipe hats and long whiskers.... Aunt Ellen's room was different; it harboured an apologetic air of frivolity, imparted by gay little ornaments and a screen covered with Christmas cards and pictures cut from illustrated papers. Whenever Stella studied this screen she found something she had never noticed before. Above all, in one corner stood a cabinet containing drawers full of birds' eggs and butterflies collected by her father as a boy. Aunt Ellen was the only person who would answer Stella's eager questions about her father, and even those answers told her too little—only that he had gone to India as a very young man, like all the Carringtons; that he was brave and handsome, that he had died in battle when his little daughter was about two years old.

And concerning her mother Stella had never succeeded in extracting definite information.

"She is dead, my dear," was all Aunt Ellen would say with grave reserve, "she died when you were born—in India." Was there a picture of her? No, there was no picture. What was she like? We never saw her. What was her Christian name? It was Stella—and clearly the name itself was not approved—considered foolish, fantastic.

Indeed the child's periodical questions on the subject of her mother were torture to the three secretive, old-fashioned women, who shrank from all remembrance of the shameless being who had bewitched their "poor Charles" and led him astray, dragging the name of Carrington through the divorce court. At the time of the scandal they had blamed Charles for marrying the abandoned creature, and when she died, a year later, they were glad, though she left an unwelcome infant who was promptly sent home by the widower to The Chestnuts. The child was, of course, received, but under protest, a protest that vanished when "poor Charles" was killed in a frontier skirmish, a death (for his country) that in the eyes of his mother and sisters fully atoned for his backslidings and the disgrace he had brought on a name that had ever been associated with brave deeds in the East.

India!—the very word held a magic fascination for the child of "poor Charles." Stella loved the smell of the curios in the drawing-room, and her "great treat" on wet days was permission to open the camphor-wood chest on the landing; fingering the contents, she would feel almost intoxicated with the sight and scent of fine muslin veils heavily embroidered, funny little caps, tinsel-encrusted; a packet of pictures painted on talc of Indian ladies, black-haired, almond-eyed, smiling, wonderfully robed. At the bottom of the chest were pistols and daggers, and swords, all chased and inlaid with ivory and gold; and there was a carved box full of tiger claws, and silver ornaments, bracelets, anklets, and necklaces that jingled.... In addition to the camphor-wood chest there was the lumber room, a low attic that ran the length of the roof; here were stacks of other interesting relics, horns and moth-eaten skins of wild animals, hog-spears and clumsy old guns shaped like trumpets. Also piles of old books and pamphlets, packets of letters and papers, yellow, crumbling, tied up with string and thrown into cardboard boxes.

On this luckless Sunday afternoon Stella's mind turned to the lumber room. As yet she had not the courage to descend and face grandmamma and the aunts after the scene she had made at the dining-table; and presently she stole into the passage, that was lined with a wall-paper depicting Chinese scenes, square bordered, then ran up the ladder-like stairs leading to the long attic in the roof.

There, poring over old papers and pamphlets and books, she forgot Maud Verrall and all that young person's advantages, forgot grandmamma and the aunts, and boiled mutton and her rebellious outburst against her own "lot"—forgot everything but India, the land of elephants and tigers, tents and palanquins, rajahs and battles, and marvels without end. She thrilled again as she read of Carringtons who had fought at Plassey and Paniput, in the Mahratta wars, and before the walls of Seringapatam. A Carrington had perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a Carrington had been the friend of Warren Hastings, in the Mutiny a Carrington had performed noble deeds; Carrington women and children had been sacrificed for the honour of their country....

To-day Stella realised for the first time that her father must have been the last male Carrington of the line. No more Carrington exploits would be recorded in the history of British India. The name of Carrington in the East belonged solely to the past. Why, oh! why—had not she been born a boy?

CHAPTER II

Maud Verrall threw down her tennis racket; she said she was tired—a polite excuse for the termination of a game that afforded her no excitement. Stella Carrington was not a stimulating opponent; if she did not miss the ball, she sent it sky-high or out of court.

Stella saw through and sympathised with the excuse. "You see," she said regretfully, "I have had so little chance of practice. Even if we had a tennis court at The Chestnuts, there is no one for me to play with."

"Let's go into the Lovers' Walk and talk till tea-time," Maud Verrall suggested; if Stella could not play tennis she might at least prove a satisfactory recipient of confidences, and Maud had much to impart that would surely astonish the unsophisticated girl from The Chestnuts.

Arm in arm they strolled up and down the shady retreat arched over with lilac, laburnum, syringa, while Maud discoursed on the charms of the latest comic opera that had taken London by storm, and sang snatches of the songs to her envious companion; from that she went on to tell of boy-and-girl dances, and bicycling parties, and this led to disclosures concerning "desperate" adorers who were "perfectly mad" about Miss Verrall. There was one in particular—his name was Fred Glossop.

"Poor dear, he is awfully gone. I feel sorry for him. Would you like to see his photograph?" She drew a folding leather case from her pocket and displayed to the other's interested gaze the portrait of a handsome youth with curly hair and a distinct shade on his upper lip.

"Are you going to marry him?" inquired Stella.

"Oh! I shan't marry just yet," explained Maud. "I have told him so frankly. Perhaps in a couple of years, if I meet no one I like better, he might do. He is quite good looking, and he's going into the Army. I let him write to me—mother never bothers about my letters; but while I was still at school he had to write as if he was my dearest girl-friend—signed himself 'Lily'—because all our correspondence that was not in the handwriting of parents was opened. I'm to "come out" when we go back to London. I shall make my people give a fancy dress ball. What do you think of a Greek dress—white, with a key pattern in gold, and a big peacock feather fan?"

Stella was ruefully silent. She felt small and humble; there were no balls, no young men, no "coming out" on her dull horizon.

"And what about you?" asked Maud with kindly, if belated, interest; "you must have a deadly time in this hole all the year round. I'm tired of it already. How can you stand it?"

"I have to stand it!" said Stella, grimly resigned. "But I'm going to school—to a school at Torquay."

"How awful—a horrible place. I went there once after I had measles; and school, too, at your age! Hasn't the term begun?"

"I suppose so, but it does not seem to matter. Anyway, it will be a change."

"It won't be so bad if they take you to concerts and lectures, and you go out riding. Our riding master was a picture; lots of the girls were mad about him; but he liked me best because I didn't take too much notice of him. Believe me, my dear, men think all the more of you if you don't run after them. There was a creature always at the lectures we went to who gazed at me the whole time and used to follow us when we went out, trying to get near enough to speak to me. The other girls were frantic with jealousy. Once or twice I gave him the chance of slipping a note into my hand; it's quite easy—you put your hand behind your back, like this, and gaze in another direction, and if a governess happens to be too close, you just speak to her and distract her attention. I only once got into a row—it was coming away from church." ...

This line of conversation was pursued whenever Stella was invited to The Court as company for Maud, and when Maud visited her friend at The Chestnuts. What, oh! what would have been the feelings of grandmamma and the aunts could they have overheard such vulgar, pernicious talk? To women of their type and upbringing this dawning of the most powerful of all instincts would have seemed a matter for the severest censure—not a natural symptom to be guided into safe and open channels, but a danger to be dealt with as sinful, corrupt. Intuitively Stella felt that Maud's enthralling confidences would be condemned with horror by her relations; and when Aunt Augusta, vaguely suspicious, inquired one day what the two young people found to talk about, self-preservation prompted a careless and misleading reply: "Oh, I don't know; Maud's school, and all that sort of thing."

Reassured, Aunt Augusta considered this perfectly satisfactory and natural, seeing that Stella was soon to begin school-life herself.

Maud Verrall's egoistical communications, innocent enough in themselves (though scarcely to be commended), led, indirectly, after the manner of trivial happenings, to far-reaching results. One of the immediate consequences of Stella's newly awakened interest in the opposite sex was her expulsion from Miss Ogle's high-principled establishment before her first term was over.

From the moment of her arrival at Greystones Stella was in constant hot water. According to the school standards she was backward, and her capabilities were hopelessly unequal; she wasted hours that should have resulted in progress over work she disliked, whereas in the subjects that attracted her she outstripped her class. Her talent for music was undeniable, but she shirked the drudgery of practice, and her fatal facility for playing by ear was ever in the way. She was not popular, for she made no concealment of her contempt for sickly adorations and fashionable fawnings on governesses and senior girls. The life irked her, and her disappointment was keen to find that at Greystones there was no question of concerts and lectures; that no finishing extras figured on Miss Ogle's programme such as might have afforded the sort of excitement described by Maud Verrall as an antidote to the monotony of school existence. She hated the daily crocodile walk; true, there was a tennis court, but the game was a monopoly of the first class, while the rest of the school marched two and two along dusty roads and uninteresting byways. Stella moped.

Then, one fatal afternoon, the daily procession passed through the town, a treat permitted once in the term, and as they all tramped the pavement of the principal thoroughfare, past fascinating shops that held the attention of governesses and girls, a flashy looking youth, loitering on the kerb, caught Stella's eye. She remembered Maud Verrall and that daring young person's adventures; what a triumph if she could tell Maud, in the summer holidays, that she had attracted the admiration of a real live young man! Maud had advocated a swift side-glance, especially if one had long eyelashes. Stella tried the experiment in passing the youth, who wore a loud waistcoat and had an immature moustache. She felt rather alarmed at her success. The young man responded with alacrity, and proceeded to follow the school at a discreet distance; followed when the "crocodile" turned to climb the hill; and was still in attendance when it reached the gate of the short drive.

Stella throbbed with excitement. She wondered what he would do now; would he linger outside; would he return to-morrow and be there when they emerged for the walk, just to obtain a glimpse of her as they passed? She thought his appearance rather dreadful; but at any rate, he was a young man, an admirer; all that she regretted was that she could not write now and tell Maud Verrall how he had followed the school on a blazing hot day up a steep hill, all on her, Stella's, account!

A game of tennis was in progress as the girls filed up the sloping drive and scattered on the edge of the lawn, and at this moment, as it happened, a ball was sent over the privet hedge into the road below. Stella saw her chance.

"All right!" she shouted to the players. "I'll run and get it." And she raced back down the drive and through the open gate. There was the admirer lurking on the sidepath! He darted forward, an eager expression on his countenance that, even in her agitation, Stella remarked was sallow and spotty; also, as he grinned, she saw that his teeth were bad. What a pity! But it flashed through her mind that such drawbacks need not, when the time came, be cited to Maud. She would tell Maud, when they met, that he was "a picture!"

Affecting not to see him, and with a fluttering heart, Stella pounced on the tennis ball that lay in the middle of the road; and "the picture," murmuring something she could not catch, pounced also, and thrust a piece of paper into her hand. Just at that moment, by all the laws of ill-luck, Miss Ogle herself came in sight, advancing along the road, with floating veil and fringed parasol, returning from a private constitutional.

The letter that brought the appalling news to The Chestnuts of Stella's disgrace was addressed to Miss Augusta Carrington. Even the customary ignoring of unpleasant facts was not proof against such a staggering blow. Stella! the granddaughter, the niece, the child they had cherished and guarded and reared with such care—to think that she should have been detected in a vulgar intrigue, and could no longer be harboured at Greystones lest she should contaminate her schoolfellows! It was almost too terrible to contemplate, and for once the three ladies permitted themselves the freedom of natural behaviour. Augusta very nearly stormed; Ellen wept bitterly; grandmamma said: "Like mother, like daughter," in an awful voice, and "What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh." The household was steeped in gloom. They all regretted that there was no male head of the family to whom they could turn for advice in this distressing difficulty; and it was Augusta who at last suggested that Stella's godfather, Colonel Crayfield, should be consulted. Was he not an old friend of "poor Charles"? And only a few days ago there had come a letter from him saying that he was at home on short leave from India, asking for news of his little goddaughter.

Augusta had answered the letter; how humiliating now, in the light of this subsequent catastrophe, to recall the hopeful description she had given of poor Charles's child! The confession of Stella's downfall, should they decide to consult Colonel Crayfield, would be a painful undertaking; but he was such a worthy, dependable character, and who could be more fitted, as they all agreed, to give counsel in such a terrible predicament than the child's own sponsor—the trusted friend of the dead father, since there was no male member of the Carrington family to whom they could appeal?

Last time Colonel Crayfield came home, ten years ago, he had spent a couple of days at The Chestnuts—rather a trial for hostesses who were unaccustomed to the entertaining of gentlemen, but on the whole the visit was felt to have been a success. Mamma and Augusta had even suspected that he was attracted by Ellen, though, according to Carrington custom, neither had voiced the idea. Ellen, however, could have given him no encouragement, for nothing came of it, suitable as such an alliance would have seemed on both sides. Colonel Crayfield was that amphibious production of the Indian services—a military man in civil employ, holding responsible, well-paid office; on the occasion of his brief visit to The Chestnuts he had not disagreed with Miss Augusta when she expressed her admiration of missionary efforts in the East; he had only just tasted the wine that was offered him; he had not smoked in the house, though the pantry was at his disposal for the purpose. All these good points were recalled during the discussion that ensued as to whether he should be approached for advice concerning his goddaughter's future, and such recollections went far towards shaping the final decision of grandmamma and Augusta, tearfully supported by Ellen. The whole dreadful truth should be written to Colonel Crayfield, with an urgent invitation to visit The Chestnuts once more.

Meantime Stella was on her way home, shamefaced, unhappy. The fuss at Greystones had been frightful, the whole affair bewildering—the condemnation, the feeling of hopeless inability to defend herself; then the hasty packing, the self-righteous, disparaging attitude of the girls, and the stares of the servants; the humiliating departure, sentinelled to the last moment by Miss Ogle herself, wrathful and stern, who put her into a compartment for ladies only, in the care of the guard.

The time that elapsed between her return to The Chestnuts and the day of Colonel Crayfield's arrival was to Stella a species of purgatory. Grandmamma and the aunts hardly spoke to her, she was forbidden to go beyond the garden, no explanation of her conduct was invited, though, indeed, what explanation could she have given, since it was perfectly true that Miss Ogle had caught her receiving a note from a strange young man; and with it all she had not even had a chance to read the note—she would have given worlds to know what the young man had written!

The culprit was sent to the station in the village wagonette to meet her godfather, and she welcomed the distraction, awkward though it would be to face Colonel Crayfield in the uncomfortable circumstances. The situation struck her as almost grotesque; here she was, driving through the familiar lanes in the late July sunshine, as an outcast and a sinner, to meet an old gentleman who had been summoned to sit in judgment upon her! And, after all, she had done nothing worse, nothing half so bad, as Maud Verrall; and Maud had not been expelled from school as a sort of leper. She wished Maud was at The Court; but that happy young creature was disporting herself in London, and Stella had not the spirit left to write to her.

Arrived at the little countryside station, a six-mile drive from The Chestnuts, she seated herself on a bench to await the train from London, and gazed vacantly at the white palings, at the dazzling herbaceous border, butterflies floating above it. She felt sorely oppressed, but more from a sense of misfortune than from shame or repentance. How unlucky she was! The future held nothing enjoyable; she saw herself living on at The Chestnuts indefinitely. Grandmamma might die some day, but she and the aunts would grow older and older, and they would all continue to sing in church that they dared not choose their lot, and would not if they might. Stella remembered the case of Miss Spurt, the only daughter of a clergyman in a neighbouring parish, who, two or three years back, had run away with her father's groom-gardener. The scandal had petrified the county; whispers of it had reached Stella's sharp ears, though the subject was never mentioned in her presence at The Chestnuts. Now she wondered what had become of Miss Spurt, and she even began to sympathise with the poor girl's mad action.

Supposing she herself were driven to do the same sort of thing; to elope, for example, with the solitary porter who stood leaning against the waiting-room wall, should he suggest such a desperate step! She regarded him with idle attention, feeling stupefied with the prevailing somnolence of the station, the heat of the shadeless, empty platform; he was a fresh-looking boy, with a cap on the back of his head and a curl of glistening hair plastered to his forehead. Suddenly he stood erect, stretched his arms, gave a loud yawn, and seized a handbell that he rang with deafening clamour. So here was the train at last, thank goodness!

One or two people hurried, perspiring, breathless, on to the platform; a few more ran over the rails from the opposite side, there being no footbridge; the station-master emerged from his office and took up a commanding position. The train rumbled in.

During the long, hot journey from London, Colonel Crayfield had been repenting his good-natured acquiescence to what seemed to him a rather exacting, inconsiderate request. At first his fancy had been tickled by the notion that he, an elderly bachelor, should present himself in this semi-parental rôle; also he was anxious to see the little girl, his godchild, who apparently threatened to follow in her mother's footsteps, though from what he remembered of Charles Carrington, she was more likely to have inherited unstable tendencies from her father! Charles had always been foolish and weak where affairs of the heart were concerned; but in his final "affair," with the young wife of a singularly unsuitable husband, he was certainly more to be pitied than blamed. That time he had really been done for, and he had behaved well in the circumstances; he, Colonel Crayfield, had stood by the guilty pair, and helped Charles to change his regiment, had consented to be sponsor to the unwelcome child. But, with the usual result of good-natured actions, it seemed that his responsibilities were never to end; and partly for the sake of Charles Carrington's memory, partly to satisfy a newly aroused interest, here he was on his way to give counsel to three old prudes in the matter of a naughty girl who had got into a scrape at school! What form this counsel was to take he had not the remotest idea; he knew nothing about schoolgirls; probably it was all a storm in a teacup. What on earth had persuaded him to waste his time in such useless fashion!

As he stepped out of the train in company with a few women bearing market baskets and a sprinkling of farmers wearing breeches and gaiters, he wished again that he had not yielded to sentiment and curiosity; visits bored him; he had been bored on the last occasion, ten years ago, when he had gone on duty to The Chestnuts. He remembered the ordeal well: Charles's formal, austere old mother, his uninteresting sisters, the undrinkable wine, Charles's child of six or seven years old, who had sniffed and fidgeted and refused to make friends, and was no different from other children of her age; he even remembered that the village was a long distance from the station, and he hoped that neither of the Carrington spinsters had come to the station to meet him.

Stella, standing expectant on the platform, saw a powerful-looking man, clean shaven, blunt-featured, inclined to stoutness, who moved ponderously—rather like a big Chinaman, a mandarin. As she stepped forward he stared at her, and the stare gave her an odd feeling of shyness. She would have to introduce herself; he did not know that she was to meet him at the station. He was not at all what she had expected; she had pictured a fussy old person with a protruding stomach, a beard, and spectacles!

Colonel Crayfield was equally taken aback. His experienced glance had been instantly arrested by the vision of a remarkably good-looking girl, tall and slim, who, though her skirt only reached to her ankles, whose hair was tied back with a large ribbon bow, was clearly no child; and he had gazed at the vision as he would hardly have permitted himself to gaze had he realised that the girl was his goddaughter! All the same, the situation entertained him; he no longer wished he had refused to respond to Miss Carrington's appeal.

Colonel Crayfield raised his hat. "Then you are Stella—my godchild? How d'ye do, Stella?"

The radiant brown eyes met his own. What an unnecessarily pretty creature; no wonder there had been trouble connected with boys!

"Yes, they sent me to meet you," and she flushed with the consciousness that he knew of her misbehaviour.

"Very kind of them to send you; very kind of you to come!" He looked around. "Now for my bag," he added briskly, "and then we can be off."

Stella sighed with mingled doubt and relief; instinctively she felt that to Colonel Crayfield she was no criminal. Yet the remembrance of his glance when he first set eyes upon her, not knowing who she was, still disturbed her strangely. She abandoned all attempt to understand the doubt, and allowed her relief full play. Her spirits rose. During the drive to The Chestnuts she chattered freely, pointing out landmarks, telling stories of the people and the past; and never once did her godfather allude to the reason of his coming, for which consideration she was deeply grateful.

On arrival at The Chestnuts even the solemn faces of grandmamma and the aunts could not depress her; she sprang from the wagonette and ran into the house with a gaiety most unbecoming in one who had been expelled from school on a charge that was truly shocking.

After tea she escaped, went down to the stream at the bottom of the garden and watched grandmamma pacing the terrace in front of the house on Colonel Crayfield's arm. Grandmamma wore her brown bonnet and her cashmere shawl, and carried her ebony walking-stick. Stella ached to know what they were saying; of course, it was to do with herself, and how she should be punished. If only that nice old fellow would devise some means of escape for her from her deadly imprisonment!

Mrs. Carrington was saying: "Stella is very irresponsible, and does not seem to realise how badly she has behaved. I fear she has inherited her mother's light nature, and what we are to do with her is a problem. It is not as if we could hope for a suitable marriage in the future, situated as we are."

"It is a difficult question," said Colonel Crayfield evasively. His eyes turned to the slim figure that flitted beside the stream. He knew by the weighty silence that followed that he was expected to make some useful suggestion.

At last he said desperately: "If I were not a bachelor and could offer her a chance in India——" then he paused.

Grandmamma glanced at him furtively. Was he thinking of Ellen? What an admirable solution of the difficulty were he to marry Ellen, and thereby not only secure a most suitable wife for himself, but provide an equally suitable haven for Stella till the child could be settled in life. And just at that moment, as if in response to the old lady's thoughts, Ellen herself came out of the house. Really, Mrs. Carrington reflected, Ellen did not look anything like her age, and she was dressed so becomingly—not too much in the present fashion, which all three ladies considered so ugly. Grandmamma suddenly discovered that she was fatigued; that she had taken sufficient exercise for to-day, and would step into the drawing-room for a rest before dinner. Oh, dear no!—Ellen and Colonel Crayfield must not trouble about her; no need for them to come indoors just yet on such a pleasant evening; she would prefer to be quiet, and perhaps a short nap....

So Ellen and Colonel Crayfield took a little stroll in the garden, and the gentleman also took the opportunity to make a request connected with his own comfort.

"I hope I shall not be giving too much trouble, dear Miss Ellen," he said with diffidence, "but might a tray be put in my bedroom overnight? I am afraid I am a victim to old Indian habits, and one of them is that I wake very early and long for a cup of tea. I have my own kettle and spirit stand—I never move without them in England—so that if a teapot and some tea, and a little milk——"

Ellen eagerly assented. Of course; it would be no trouble at all. She was so glad he should have mentioned it. "And I do hope you will ask for exactly what you want. I will tell Betty, and see that she arranges the tray properly."

"If it might be a fairly big teapot and a breakfast cup ..." pursued Colonel Crayfield. (What he had suffered in English households from "dainty little morning tea-sets"!—a teapot the size of an apple, a cup to match, tea so thick and strong that it might have been jam.)

Ellen wondered nervously if there would be enough milk left overnight for the visitor's tray. Betty was always so careful not to take more than was actually required for the household. "I think I will just run indoors," she said apologetically, "and tell Betty what to do, so that she will be sure not to forget anything."

"You are more than kind!" exclaimed Colonel Crayfield with fervour; but he did not add that he hoped she would speedily return and continue their stroll. And when Ellen reappeared, smiling and triumphant, he was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Stella in sight; and Ellen finally discovered the pair in the kitchen garden.

Stella had crawled beneath a net that protected the gooseberries from the birds. Colonel Crayfield was standing stolid and large on the path, and Stella was handing him berries through the meshes of the net. He was not eating the fruit, and Ellen felt that this was compatible with his dignity and his years. She could not imagine Colonel Crayfield sucking gooseberries and throwing the skins about! It seemed he was collecting them for Stella, who, bent double, was robbing the bushes—such an ungainly attitude for a young lady.

"Stella!" called Aunt Ellen in reproof, "you are tearing your frock!"

The child looked a disgraceful object as she emerged from the nets; a long rent in one of her sleeves disclosed a round white arm with a red scratch in the flesh, her face was crimson, her hair in disorder, she was covered with twigs and bits, and her mouth was sticky with gooseberry juice. Laughing, she held out her skirt, like an apron, for the fruit that filled Colonel Crayfield's large mahogany-coloured hands.

Ellen felt truly ashamed of her niece. What would Colonel Crayfield be thinking of his goddaughter, and of the way in which she had been brought up! Had Ellen observed the look in Colonel Crayfield's eyes at the moment, she would probably have mistaken it for astonished disapproval; as it was, she only observed that he gazed at Stella in silence, at the shining hair that fell over her forehead, at the wide-open brown eyes, thickly lashed and full of mischief, at the flushed cheeks and parted lips, that showed a row of faultless little teeth, and at the red scratch on the white forearm.

Stella, unabashed, proffered her skirt, full of fruit, to her aunt. "Do have some, Aunt Ellen," she cried joyously. "They're ripping, especially the big, hairy fellows."

"You will spoil your dinner," said Aunt Ellen severely, "as you have already spoilt your frock."

"Like little Miss Jane," and Stella chanted:

"Greedy, greedy little Miss Jane,

I'll never give her a present again.

She spent her sixpence on raspberry rock,

And spoilt her dinner as well as her frock."

Colonel Crayfield actually laughed; moreover, he accepted a gooseberry from Stella's grubby fingers and ate it fastidiously, burying the skin in the mould with the toe of his boot.

That evening grandmamma's hopes ran high. Augusta sent Stella to bed early, and afterwards Colonel Crayfield listened, apparently entranced, while Ellen played the piano—played "Yorkshire Bells" and "The Village Blacksmith."

CHAPTER III

Very early next morning Colonel Crayfield was awakened by a crash. His bedroom was alight with the dawn; the lemon scent of magnolia blossom floated in at the open window. What had aroused him? Involuntarily he glanced at the tea-tray, at the big teapot and breakfast cup for which he had Miss Ellen to thank; then he became aware of a curious sound, and sitting up he beheld the milk-jug in fragments on the floor and a cat complacently lapping the milk that had spread in a pool on the carpet. In a fury he sprang from the bed, clapping his hands, shouting at the thief; the cat, ears back, tail on end, made for the window and disappeared in a flash; he could hear her scrambling down the magnolia tree. What about his tea! He hated tea without milk, and probably the household would not be astir for hours. He formed a bold project—he would go downstairs and forage for more milk. No one need hear him; he could explain, relate the disaster at breakfast. Slippers on his feet, and a coat over his sleeping-suit, he crept into the long, low passage. All was still. But the stairs! The stairs might have been actually alive and the banisters too; how they did creak! It was a relief to arrive at the foot of the staircase without having aroused the household. Now there was a green baize door that evidently gave on to the kitchen quarters; it yielded silently to his push, and he was confronted with a short flight of stone steps. At any rate, they could not creak. Quickly descending them, he found himself in a large, old-fashioned kitchen, stone-paved; beyond, surely, was the larder where milk might be found, if the cat had not been there before him. How different it all was from Indian establishments; in India, whether as a guest or in one's own house, one could demand tea at any hour of the night or day, and it was forthcoming as a matter of course; in India——

"Hallo!"

Colonel Crayfield jumped ingloriously, and only just saved himself from swearing aloud. His goddaughter was standing in the larder doorway, a cup in one hand, a crust of bread in the other. She had the advantage of him in the matter of toilet, being fully dressed in a blue washing frock that fell in straight lines from her neck to her ankles, and a wide straw hat bound with a ribbon of the same colour.

They looked at each other, amazed. Colonel Crayfield drew his coat closer about him, and passed his hand mechanically over his hair.

"Good gracious!" he said resentfully.

"Did you hear me go down?" she inquired.

"No; but I wonder you didn't hear me! The stairs made such a confounded noise."

"Yes, I know; aren't they awful! I always expect Aunt Augusta to burst from her room with a poker in her hand. Were you looking for something to eat?"

"I was looking for some milk," he admitted; "a cat got into my room and knocked down the milk-jug. I don't like tea without milk."

"I expect it was Granny."

"Granny?" repeated Colonel Crayfield, mystified.

Stella laughed. "Not my grandmother! Was it an old black-and-white cat with a very long tail?"

"I really did not notice. Anyway, the brute broke the jug and was drinking the milk——"

"Here you are then," she handed him a jug.

He took it. "But have you all you want yourself?" he inquired politely.

"Heaps," she replied, munching her crust. "Have a piece of bread? It's lovely—home made. I only wish I had an onion, too. Don't you love onions?"

"I don't object to them——" he began; then suddenly the unfitness of the situation came home to him with something of a shock. Here was he, the ruler of a vast area in India, accustomed to ceremony and circumstance and state, pilfering a larder with a chit of a girl—discussing onions, of all things; and further than that he was not dressed! It might have been a silly dream.

"And what are you doing down here at this extraordinary hour?" he asked of his goddaughter with what dignity was left to him.

"Eating and drinking, as you can see," was her flippant reply. Then, as though conscious that she was perhaps not treating Colonel Crayfield quite with the respect that was his due, she added primly: "I often get up very early and go for a ramble"; she hesitated, and continued with diffidence, "would you care to come for a walk instead of going to bed again?"

"Well, I can't come as I am; but if you will wait till I've had my tea and dressed——"

"Of course I'll wait! I'll leave the side door open and you'll find me outside."

Later, when he joined her, his self-respect as Commissioner of Rassih restored, he said: "Indian life would suit you, since you are so fond of early rising. In India I am nearly always out soon after daybreak."

Stella sighed. "Oh! India—how I should love to go there!"

"Really? What about the heat and the exile and the insects?"—and he added playfully—"not to speak of snakes and tigers!"

"I'm not afraid of anything!" bragged Stella, and with the elimination of grandmamma this was true enough. "If it comes to exile, what could be worse than life at The Chestnuts—where nothing ever happens, and nothing will ever happen!"

Now they were out of the garden, out on a common that was ablaze with gorse—the spongy turf was silvered with dew, the air fragrant and fresh; birds' voices, the distant lowing of cattle, echoed in the sweet stillness.

"But some day you will marry," prophesied Colonel Crayfield, in a tone of encouragement.

"Marry!" derided Stella. "Who is there for me to marry?" She thought of Miss Spurt and of the young porter at the railway station.

He made no answer; he was appraising the slim, young form beside him, marking the grace of her limbs, the poise of the little head on the long, round neck, the clean turn of ankle and wrist—every point was good; in a couple of years she must be a magnificent woman.

"What are you thinking about?" inquired Stella. "Here we are at the end of the common and you've hardly spoken a word. Are you tired?"

"Tired? Certainly not! It would take rather more than a walk across a common to tire me!" He stepped out with vigour.

"What long strides you are taking. Hadn't we better have a race while we are about it? See that oak tree over there—at the edge of the wood? I bet you I'll get there first. One, two, three—off!"

And the Commissioner of Rassih, who could still hold his own at tennis and rackets, accepted the challenge. The race ended in a dead heat.

Stella flung herself down beneath the oak tree, and Colonel Crayfield took a seat, formed by the roots, beside her. The fact that he was scarcely out of breath pleased him.

"Anyway, you can run!" pronounced Stella.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Oh, I don't know." She was politely evasive; it would hardly do to explain that such agility in anyone of his age and bulk had surprised her, and she hastened to change the subject. "Now, do let us talk about India"—she looked up at him with eager, bright eyes—"you don't know how I long to see India. I suppose it's in my blood; all the Carringtons did things in India, and if I had been a boy I should have gone out to do things, too. I am the last young Carrington left—and I am only a girl!"

Colonel Crayfield took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick, grey hair; he was proud of its thickness; most men of his age in India were hopelessly bald.

"India isn't what it was; the spirit of romance and adventure has gone, the pagoda tree is dead, prices are rising, and exchange is falling——"

"But haven't you lovely big houses?" interrupted Stella, "and heaps of servants and horses, and the sun and gardens and fruit? What is your bungalow like in India?"

He checked his inclination to grumble. "It isn't a bungalow. It's part of a Moghul fort, built on the walls of the old city; the wall goes right round the compound; a compound is——"

"Yes, I know what compound means! I know compound, and tiffin, and chuprassee, and peg, and lots of words. I find them in all the old family letters put away in the lumber room. Do go on!"

"Well, I believe the city in the old days used to come close up to the wall, but it has gradually been moved farther away. The back of the house looks on to a desert that stretches for miles——"

"Is it a big station?"

"No; it's a small civil station; too small considering that it's the headquarters of a big charge."

"It must be ripping to feel you are ruling, governing all the time! Don't you love power—spelt with a capital P?"

"Who doesn't? But there are definite drawbacks as well as compensations in Indian service."

She sighed. "I shall never see the country; never feel the Indian sun, or smell an Indian bazaar. I shall never hear a tom-tom or the frogs' chorus in the rains, or even see a snake, except in the Zoo or in a bottle!"

Colonel Crayfield gazed at the child in astonishment. He guessed nothing of the grip that the old letters and memoirs, stored in the lumber room, had on her imagination; he had no conception of the strength of hereditary memory, of the spell bequeathed by a long line of forbears whose lives had been spent in the East, whose hearts and minds and souls had been bound up with India—their mighty relentless mistress. He met, in puzzled silence, the frank gaze of the lovely limpid eyes that stirred his blood, tempting him in all opposition to his reason and foresight; yet, just as his activity in the race to the oak tree had pleased him, flattered his pride in his physical preservation, so did this amorous thrill.

Stella looked away, disconcerted; something in his expression reminded her of his first glance on the platform the previous afternoon; she did not understand it, and it made her vaguely uneasy. She rose, brushing her skirt, uttering hasty little remarks—it was getting late, they ought to go back, breakfast would be ready, look at the sun!

Yes, the sun by now was well up in the sky; a hot summer sun that sucked the dew from foliage and turf, creating a mist, like smoke, dispensing strong perfumes of earth, promising great heat for the day. To the man whose youth lay behind him, it strengthened his ardour, tempting him to take possession of this exquisite child by means of her mania for India, her boredom with her present life and surroundings. Then, suddenly, he remembered that his mission to The Chestnuts was to administer reproof; to give profitable advice! As they re-started across the common he said abruptly: "You know why I have come to The Chestnuts?"

The girl flushed. "Yes," she said reluctantly; here it was at last, the lecture, the blame, just when she had almost forgotten. It was beastly of her godfather. "Need we talk about it now?"

"We shall have to talk about it some time, I suppose." His tone reassured her; it sounded as if, after all, he was rather more on her side than on that of grandmamma and the aunts. Still she felt suspicious.

"What did you do, exactly?"

"Well, I made eyes at an awful young man when we were out for a walk in the town," she blushed deeper at the recollection; "it was just to see what would happen more than anything else—like pulling a dog's tail. Oh! I can't explain. Nobody will ever understand——"

"And what did happen?"

With difficulty she told him, and awaited his censure. To her astonished relief he said: "Bad luck! You see the wicked don't always prosper!"

"But was I so wicked?" she asked defensively. "A girl I know told me she had done the same kind of thing often; she didn't think it was so dreadful. It seems to me an awful fuss about very little, and I don't know why you should have been bothered, even though you are my godfather. What shall you advise them to do?"

"At present," he said cryptically, "I am not quite sure."

She glanced at him half-alarmed. He laughed. "How would you like it if I advised them to send you out to India?"

Stella gasped. "Oh! would you? But how? As a missionary, a companion, a governess—what?"

Again he laughed. "As a companion, perhaps. I'm afraid you would not be much good as a missionary or a governess. What do you think yourself?"

"I shouldn't care. I'd do anything to get to India."

"Well, we shall see. Don't be too hopeful," he looked at his watch. "What time is breakfast?"

"Half-past eight—prayers first."

"Then step out!" Enough had been said for the moment.

"Oh! dear," complained Stella, "what a bother things are; you are as bad as Aunt Augusta about being in time. Why don't you marry Aunt Augusta?"

"She mightn't appreciate India," he said with a grin.

Grandmamma seldom came down to breakfast. Augusta read prayers, fiercely, glaring at her congregation as though to remind them of their unworthiness. Ellen kept her eyes shut and responded with fervent contrition. Neither sister was as yet aware of the guest's early expedition with their niece, and, as Stella made no mention of it during the meal, Colonel Crayfield preserved a discreet silence on the subject. There was a letter for Stella on the breakfast table. The aunts eyed her with suspicion as she read it and then hastily consigned it to her pocket. The letter was from Maud Verrall; it contained wonderful news:

"My dear, what do you think? I am engaged to be married in spite of all my resolutions not to commit myself in a hurry. No, it is not poor Fred Glossop, who is wild with despair, but a Captain Matthews in the Indian Cavalry. He is a positive picture, if you like; rather in the style of the riding-master I told you about, but much, much handsomer. My people aren't pleased, but that only adds to the excitement. There is nothing they can object to definitely; he has a little money of his own, and isn't badly connected. Of course, they expected me to choose a lord, or a baronet at least; but I am very unworldly. I am awfully happy, and frightfully in love. I am sure I shall enjoy myself hugely in India. Don't you wish you were me?"

Stella groaned over this letter in the privacy of her bedroom. Indeed, how she wished she were Maud!—who was going to India, not as a missionary, or a governess, nor in any other servile capacity; but as the wife of a cavalry officer! Colonel Crayfield was wrong; it was the wicked who prospered. As compared with herself, Maud had certainly been wicked, and now here was Maud rewarded with all that Stella would give her ears to attain. She wept with envy; felt convinced that her godfather had overrated his power to lighten her "lot"; and in any case grandmamma and the aunts would oppose whatever plan he might suggest. She was doomed to grow old at The Chestnuts; she was never to marry, never to enjoy herself, never to reach India—the Mecca of her dreams. If only that beast Maud had not been going to India! Stella felt bitterly jealous; it was all so cruel, so hopeless....

Reluctant to appear with swollen eyelids, she remained in her room for the rest of the morning; also because she wished to allow her godfather every chance of imparting his advice, however fruitless it might be, to her guardians. She presented herself at luncheon, but the atmosphere seemed unchanged. Evidently nothing had happened, for she was still ignored by her relations, and Colonel Crayfield, purposely, she suspected, though not with unkindly intention, paid small heed to her presence.

After luncheon she was dispatched by Aunt Augusta on household errands.

"I am being got out of the way," said Stella to herself as she set off with a can of soup for old Mrs. Bly, and an order for bacon and rice at the post office—the postal department being a sort of incidental appendage to the only shop of the village; stamps and post cards were also required. Then she was to call for eggs and butter at a farmhouse quite a mile and a half away. She made no haste; the longer the palaver concerning her future, that she hoped was taking place during her absence, the better. The farmer's wife, Mrs. Capper, made her welcome, gave her tea with honey and fresh-baked bread, told her "what a fine growed young lady she was getting"; all of which was pleasant and consolatory for the time being, especially when young Capper came in, looking quite gentlemanlike in a tweed coat with leather patches on the shoulders, and breeches and gaiters; he betrayed unmistakable admiration for his mother's guest—Stella could hardly prevent him from escorting her home to carry the basket; not that she would have objected to his company, but somebody would be sure to espy them and tell old Betty, and old Betty would tell Aunt Augusta, and it would all be attributed to her own fast and unladylike tendencies, and add to her present disfavour. The risk was not good enough; young Capper would keep till she knew the result of Colonel Crayfield's intercession on her behalf. Despite the little distraction she strolled home listless and depressed.

CHAPTER IV

Tea in the drawing-room was over. Mrs. Carrington sat erect, motionless as usual. Augusta and Ellen were pretending to knit; in reality their whole attention was given to Colonel Crayfield, who perambulated about, large and imposing, his hands in his pockets, a disturbance in the old-world atmosphere. Augusta noticed with irritation how he scuffled up the edge of the Persian rug spread in the centre of the room each time he walked over it. Ellen suspected that he wanted to smoke, but she dared not suggest the permission. The Carrington ancestor, gaily indifferent, gazed down at the little conclave that was concerned with the misdeeds of his young descendant.

"It is a difficult question," repeated Colonel Crayfield; he had said the same thing already, several times.

"Would you recommend another school?" asked Augusta. "Some stricter establishment, perhaps, if one could be found, that would receive a girl under the painful circumstances?"

Colonel Crayfield halted beside a table. He picked up a long, narrow scent-bottle, and appeared to examine it closely. Augusta hoped he would not let it fall; the bottle had come from Delhi, was said to have been the property of a Moghul princess, and once to have contained attar of roses.

"Well, on the whole, no," he said presently. "We don't want to break the child's spirit."

"Spirit!" echoed old Mrs. Carrington. "She has the evil spirit of her mother, not the spirit of her father's people, which I foolishly imagined might have counteracted failings inherited from the other side."

To Augusta's relief, Colonel Crayfield replaced the precious scent-bottle, and addressed himself to the three ladies. "If you will pardon my plain speaking, I think you are making too much of this—this indiscretion of Stella's. I had a talk with her this morning——"

"This morning?" cried Augusta and Ellen together, and the three pairs of eyes were fixed on him in amazed curiosity.

"Yes; this morning, before breakfast," he confessed calmly, "and my opinion is that Stella meant no harm. She is growing up, is no longer a child, and she needs more outlet. School is hardly the place for her now."

"But what would you suggest?" came faintly from Ellen.

Mrs. Carrington shot a quick glance at him. She was recalling their conversation on the terrace the previous afternoon; he had said, "If I were not a bachelor, and could offer her a chance in India——" Then he had strolled in the garden with Ellen, and had enjoyed Ellen's music after dinner. Was it in his mind to seek the hand and the heart of her younger daughter?

"A plan has occurred to me," he continued, with caution; "but I am not at all sure—in fact, subject to your permission," he bowed slightly to the trio, "I should prefer to wait a little before saying anything further."

Mrs. Carrington smiled, and at the moment she resembled a hawk more than a sea-gull. With a gracious gesture of assent she rose. "Augusta, my dear," she said suavely, "will you assist me upstairs? I feel rather fatigued. This discussion has been trying, and I think"—again she shot a sharp glance at Colonel Crayfield—"we may leave the solution of our unhappy difficulty with every confidence to our poor dear Charles's old friend."

Augusta dutifully supported her mother from the room; but, to Mrs. Carrington's exasperation, the tiresome Ellen must needs come too, instead of allowing Colonel Crayfield this obvious opportunity of paying his addresses.

Therefore Colonel Crayfield found himself alone in the drawing-room, and he was only too thankful for the relief. Now he could think connectedly. In no way had he committed himself, so far, to any suggestion. Should he ultimately decide that to marry the girl was too serious a step to take, he could still advise something quite different from the idea that was so strongly seductive.... He might suggest that Stella should be sent to some Anglo-Indian friends of his own in London as a paying guest, he being financially responsible; or he could offer to find some family in India, when he returned there, who would be willing to take charge of a girl as a matter of business, he, as her godfather, paying expenses. The money was nothing.

As he roamed round the room, doubtful, undecided, his eyes fell on the group of coloured clay models of Indian servants set out on a papier-mâché bracket, and he paused, for they recalled the existence of Sher Singh, his Hindu bearer, who for the past twenty-five years had been his right hand and chief of his domestic staff, and who perhaps knew more about Robert Crayfield than any other living being. Sher Singh would not welcome a memsahib. At the same time, the fellow would hardly be such a fool as to jeopardise his own valuable position by making trouble; the almighty rupee would soon settle Sher Singh's objections, and Stella must be made to understand that interference with the head servant's authority in the household could not be permitted.... Thus the Commissioner of Rassih endeavoured to exorcise the inopportune vision of his confidential retainer, who, he was aware, bore a faint, fantastic likeness to himself. People would sometimes remark, laughing, "Like master, like man."

He looked out of the window to see Stella crossing the lawn, a basket on her arm; and he noted afresh the splendid promise of her young form, the grace of her proportions, the perfection of feature and colouring. Truly she was well worth a drastic upheaval of his mode of life, a price that was hardly too high, all things considered. Involuntarily as he watched her, he began to make plans for the future. The big bedroom that overlooked the gardens at Rassih? No, it was not so cool in the hot weather as the one he had hitherto occupied himself, which gave on to the vast desert area at the back of the house. True, his present room held tragic associations; his predecessor in the appointment had committed suicide from the balcony, throwing himself over the parapet down on to the rubbish and scrub far below, where in the night time hyenas and jackals yelled and fought and made diabolical merriment.... And then there was the bathroom door, scarred with sabre cuts and bullet holes, hideous reminders of a mutiny massacre where women and children—— But that all belonged to the past. Stella need never be told of such horrors, nor of the stories of footsteps, and cries, and unaccountable noises—servants' superstitious nonsense that, of course, he scoffed at and suppressed, though sometimes, when the heat kept him awake at night, he had even imagined that he heard them himself.... The drawing-room should be renovated; he had never used it; he would order a piano from Calcutta.

Stella disappeared round the corner of the house, and Colonel Crayfield realised with a sense of mingled triumph and incredulity that he had actually made up his mind, that he had done with all hesitation. And when Robert Crayfield once made up his mind he did not alter it.

A timid cough in the doorway disturbed his reflections. It was Ellen Carrington, driven back to the drawing-room by her mother under pretext that good manners did not permit of a guest being left solitary, unentertained. She fluttered to a seat, prepared to make polite, impersonal conversation; but Colonel Crayfield trampled on the intention.

"Well, and what do you think of it all, Miss Ellen?" he inquired confidentially; at any rate, she seemed to him the most human of the three females. His tone gave her a nice little sense of importance.

"I expect you are right. We may have taken things too seriously. But Stella's conduct did seem very—rather——"

He broke in abruptly. "Can you keep a secret?" And as his companion looked up alarmed, he added, smiling, "Only for a short time?"

"I—I hope I can." She had so little experience of secrets, and the very word "secret" savoured of deceit!

"Well, it's this. I intend to take Stella back with me to India. I intend to marry her."

Ellen gasped. Totally unprepared as she was for such a disclosure, it left her dumbfounded, also vaguely shocked. To her maidenly mind there was something indelicate in the notion of Stella, who was little more than a child, married, and to a man so very much her senior. Oh, dear! In all her bewilderment Colonel Crayfield's voice sounded oddly distant.

"I'm so—so surprised!" she faltered.

"I admit that she is young enough to be my daughter, but surely the drawback goes for nothing if I am prepared to accept it. Consider the advantage for Stella!"

It was beyond Ellen's power to voice her feelings. She was only aware of a nebulous resentment that she could not define even to herself, much less aloud to the man who had caused it.

"As my wife," he went on, glad to give utterance to his arguments, "she will have an assured position, she will be suitably provided for, and she will be well looked after—I can promise you that!"

The last sentence sounded to Ellen more like a threat than a promise. Her silence puzzled Colonel Crayfield, annoyed him. He had anticipated expressions of delight, of gratitude; he felt he had every reason to expect them; yet this limp, bloodless old maid appeared totally unimpressed by the benefits he proposed to shower upon her niece, seemed even to disapprove of the whole business. He brushed from his mind the impatience her odd behaviour had aroused.

"I am in no doubt as to Stella's reception of my purpose," he could not resist telling her, with pointed satisfaction; and had Miss Ellen been capable of such vulgarity she would have sworn that she saw him lick his lips.... She shrank, instinctively disgusted, and gathered up her knitting with trembling hands.

"Will you excuse me?" she stammered; even her mother's orders could keep her no longer in the room; she felt as if Colonel Crayfield had suddenly turned into a sort of ogre. "I—I have a letter to write that must catch the post." And with this, one of the few lies she had ever told in her life, she sidled past him to the door.

He looked after her in contemptuous wonderment; then stepped out of the window in search of his future bride. Probably she was eating gooseberries, and the kitchen garden had this advantage, that it was not overlooked by windows, though it was hardly the spot he would have chosen for love-making. But Stella was nowhere to be found, and returning at last to the house, he had no better luck: the place seemed deserted. Where had they all hidden themselves?

He could not know that Stella was an unwilling prisoner upstairs, helping Aunt Augusta to sort household linen; that Mrs. Carrington, still resting, believed him to be enjoying the society of Ellen, whereas Ellen had locked herself into her bedroom, helplessly perturbed.

Only just before dinner did he have the chance of speaking to Stella without being overheard. "I saw you come back," he said to her, a tender inflection in his voice. "Were you tired? Was the basket heavy?"

"Oh, no," she replied mischievously; "I only felt overburdened with virtue. A handsome young man wanted to carry the basket for me, and I would not let him!"

"Thought you might be found out?" he suggested with a chuckle.

"That was about it!" she said, recklessly candid. "Oh, do tell me: was anything settled this afternoon? I know you were all talking me over. Am I to stay here for the rest of my life?"

"Have a little patience," he teased, finding a subtle pleasure in her obvious disappointment with his reply.

That evening, after dinner, he discovered that Stella had a voice. She sang a little song, something about a star, to Aunt Ellen's accompaniment, and though Stella herself was clearly bored by the words of the song, and despite lack of training and feeling, her voice was deep and sweet—well worth cultivation, as he quickly decided. She should have singing lessons before they sailed for India.

The song ended, he found an opportunity to whisper: "That was delightful. Stella—a star! Some day perhaps a star of India?"

"But that's a decoration, isn't it?" she asked, pleased and eager. "And not for women? Have you got it?"

He looked at her intently, narrowing his eyes. "No, I haven't got my star—yet."

"But you will have it—soon?"

"Yes, very soon."

Stella felt mystified. Had she said the wrong thing? Perhaps it was a sore point with him that he had not received the distinction earlier?

"Can you sing?" she inquired quickly, to change the subject.

"Well, I used to," he admitted.

"Oh, do let us see if we have any songs you know. Aunt Ellen, Colonel Crayfield will sing if we can find something he knows."

There followed much turning over of music, but without success. Then Stella lifted the lid of the small ottoman that served as a piano-stool, disclosing several bound books of music; she dragged them forth; beneath them lay a number of songs in manuscript. Ellen intervened.

"You will find nothing among those; they are so old," she said hastily, as again her niece delved, and produced "Wings," "Adieu," "The Arab's Farewell to His Favourite Steed."

Colonel Crayfield shook his head at them all, but he laid his hand on the next sheet of music that, in spite of Aunt Ellen's unaccountable obstruction, was excavated by Stella.

"That!" he exclaimed, mingled recognition and reluctance in his tone. Forthwith Stella placed it on the stand and began to read the accompaniment, that might have been transcribed with a pin.

"Now?" She looked up at her godfather, gaily insistent.

And Colonel Crayfield, with an air of amused capitulation, sang in a good bass voice that was not so very rusty:

"I gave my love a little rose,

A little rose of red and white,

Because her colour comes and goes

Whene'er I dawn upon her sight.

I gave my love a little key,

A little key of yellow gold,

Because she locks her sweets from me,

And will not her dear heart unfold.