PROPER PRIDE.

A Novel.

Life may change, but it may fly not;

Hope may vanish, but can die not;

Truth be veiled, but still it burneth,

Love repulsed—but it returneth.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1882.
[All rights reserved.]

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

CONTENTS.

PROPER PRIDE.

CHAPTER I.
“THE NEILGHERRIES.”

Our hero went to the Neilgherry Hills for the remainder of his two months’ leave. It is quite beyond my pen to describe that lovely region, but in common with almost all who have ever been there I have an admiration amounting to a passion for the Blue Hills. I declare them to be the most salubrious, delightful, beautiful range in the whole world. If I were to attempt a detailed description of these most favoured hills, I should fall so far short of their perfections that I would only incur the wrath and contempt of their many devoted admirers, so I shall content myself by merely giving a description of Sir Reginald’s journey up the Ghaut.

He arrived at the foot of the hills early one morning, having spent a night of heat, mosquitoes, and consequent madness at Mettapollium. He rode up by the old road, which is nine miles to Coonor, in preference to driving up the new ghaut, a detour of sixteen miles. His thoughts were exceedingly pleasant, and he whistled uninterruptedly for the first two miles; but after a while the beautiful scenery he was passing through engaged his attention entirely, and more than once he stopped his horse and looked about in amazed admiration. “Oh, if Alice could only see it! If she were here, what ecstasies she would be in!” was his frequent thought. As he journeyed steadily up, the close tropical vegetation was gradually left behind, the trees assumed a more European aspect, the air lost its thick steamy feel, and became every instant more rarefied and pure. The path appeared to wind in and out through mountain-sides clothed with trees and foliage of every description; a foaming river was tearing headlong down a wide rocky channel and taking frantic leaps over all impediments. The scenery was splendid. In spite of hunger and fatigue, Sir Reginald felt as if he could gaze and gaze for hours, and yet that his eyes would scarcely be satisfied. Wild roses and wild geraniums abounded on all sides; enormous bunches of heliotrope were growing between the stones; lovely flowering creepers connected the trees, and as to the ferns——!

The graves of several engineers who had died when this old ghaut was being made were passed—poor lonely graves! and yet could those laid in them, so many thousands of miles away from their native land, desire to be buried in a more beautiful spot?

At one side towered the “Droog,” crowned by Tippoo’s old fortress. The “Droog” itself, a bold beetling hill facing south, and most precipitous, seemed to stand as sentry to this garden of India. From the top of it you could look sheer down into the plains. It was on the opposite side of the river to the old ghaut, and a long day’s outing from Coonor. On its summit were the gray broken walls of the fort, very old and much dismantled, and from which they say that Tippoo, when in an angry mood, used to toss his unhappy prisoners down to the plains below. There it was that the Mahrattas made their last stand against the British; and as they brought an enormous amount of treasure up from their strongholds in the plains, which treasure has never been recovered, the “Droog” is considered a highly interesting place for more reasons than one. It is said that all the gold and jewels were thrown down a well somewhere just beyond the fort walls. One very old man was supposed to know of its whereabouts, but he would never divulge the secret, as he said the spot was guarded by the ghosts—devils, he called them—of many Mahratta warriors, and he was afraid to incur their displeasure.

Sir Reginald arrived in due time at Coonor, and put up at an hotel, before the windows of which there was a hedge of heliotrope cut like box at home, and so high and so dense, that you could ride at one side of it, and someone else at the other, without either being aware of their mutual proximity. It was one mass of flowers, and smelt like ten thousand cherry-pies, and was one of the sights of the Neilgherries. Sir Reginald relaxed somewhat as regarded society, made friends with the other inmates of the hotel, and joined in picnics to all the most celebrated views. He was well known on the Toda Mund as one of the best and most inveterate of tennis-players, and carried off the first prize in a tournament which took place during his stay.

Touching the Toda Mund, there were no Todas there then; they had long removed themselves, with their black ringlets and sheet clothing, to a more remote region; but years previously the present lawn-tennis-court ground had been the home of generations of these extraordinary people.

Sir Reginald returned to his regiment much the better for his trip, and received the congratulations of his friends on his improved appearance, and also on the discovery he had made at Cheetapore; as what had been the talk of all that station naturally came to the ears of his brother-officers, and they boldly conversed of himself and his wife as if they had known all along that he had been a married man. The individual who had been so contemptuously scouted when he had declared that Fairfax was a Benedict now found himself looked upon as a man of unusual penetration—in short, a second Daniel; and for a time his opinions were quoted at at least ten per cent. above their usual regimental value.

As for Fairfax himself, a change had certainly come over the spirit of his dream. He was an altered man; no more headlong solitary rides, no more moping in his own quarters. Attired in faultless garb of undoubted “Europe” origin, he was led, like a lamb, to make a series of calls among the chief notabilities of the place. “Better late than never!” they mentally exclaimed when his card was handed in, and being assured that “Missus could see,” the hero of the hour followed. His history was now as well known as if it had been published in The Pioneer, and the ladies of Camelabad overwhelmed him with sympathy and condolence, which he accepted with the best grace he could muster; but he shrank from speaking of his wife, save in the most distant and general terms; and it was easy to see that the mock certificate was a very sore, distasteful subject.

As each succeeding mail came in he said to himself, “Surely this will bring a letter from Alice?” How he looked forward to mail-days no one knew but himself; how buoyant were his spirits every Saturday morning, how depressed that same evening, when, tossing over the newly-arrived letters on the anteroom table, he would find one from Mark Mayhew, one from his agent, and perhaps one from his tailor, but not a line from his wife. He heard from the Mayhews that Alice had received and acknowledged the confessions; and Mark, Helen, and Geoffrey each sent him a long letter full of indignation and congratulation. The burden of each of these epistles was the same, although couched in very different style and language: it said, “Come home.” “Whenever his wife endorsed their wishes, he would leave Bombay by the following mail.” This was what he said to himself over and over again. Two months elapsed and no letter came—not a line, not even a message. After making allowance for every conceivable delay, he gradually and reluctantly relinquished all hopes of the ardently-desired missive, and came to the conclusion that nothing now remained for him to think but that she wished their separation to be life-long.

One evening he mounted his horse and galloped out alone to one of his former favourite haunts, an old half-ruined temple, about six miles from the cantonment. Here he dismounted and tied his Arab to a tree, saying to himself as he ascended the steps: “There is no fear of any interruption here, and I will make up my mind to some definite plan before I return to Camelabad this evening.” As he paced up and down the empty echoing ruin, he tried to judge between Alice and himself as calmly and dispassionately as if he were a third person. His own motives and actions were easily explained, but Alice’s were not so readily understood. What could be the meaning of her extraordinary conduct? His name had been cleared, and she, who should never have doubted him, and who, at any rate now, ought to be the first to come forward, had been dumb. There was but one reasonable solution. “She did not know her own mind when she was married; she never cared two straws about me, and she seizes the first pretext to free herself from a distasteful union. So be it; she shall be free,” he muttered. “I will hold myself utterly aloof from her for the future. I shall go home and live at Looton, and surround myself with friends—shoot, hunt, and lead as gay a bachelor life as if I had no wife in existence. Why should I expatriate myself for her sake?” he asked himself aloud.

But on second thoughts this scheme did not prove so alluring. At Looton, every room, every walk, every face would only remind him of Alice.

“I could not stand it just yet,” he muttered; “it is all too fresh, too recent; one does not get over a thing like that so soon. In a year or two, when I am thoroughly hardened and indifferent, I will go; meanwhile I shall remain in the service.”

The duties of his profession had their charms for him; and the society of his brother-officers was, he reflected, more welcome and more necessary to him now than ever. Weak he had always been where Alice was concerned, but for once he would be firm and be a man, and no longer an infatuated fool, following the ignis fatuus of a woman’s caprice.

As he stood on the steps of the temple, watching the crimson sun that was slowly sinking beyond the horizon and tinting the arid plains, the distant hills, the old temple, and Reginald himself, with the gorgeous hues of its departing splendour, “That sun,” he exclaimed, as he watched the last little red streak utterly disappear, “has set on my folly and weakness; to-morrow will find me, in one respect at least, a different man. For the future I will endeavour to forget that I ever had a wife. I know it will be no easy matter to banish her from my thoughts, but I shall do my best. As a wife she is dead to me in all but name; her indifference shall be only rivalled by mine.” Query: Was he not still thinking of her as he sat for fully an hour, with his head resting in his hands? He was endeavouring to dig the grave of his love, and to bury decently all the unfulfilled hopes he had cherished for so long. The moon arose, owls and bats made their appearance and flitted to and fro, apparently unconscious of the silent figure on the temple steps. At length the pawing and neighing of his horse aroused him. He started up hastily, pulled himself morally together, and hurried down to the impatient steed, whom he unfastened and mounted, and in another moment was galloping away over the moonlit midan, leaving the old temple to the undisturbed possession of a veteran hyena and a family of jackals.

The Seventeenth Hussars had expected, as a sequel to his discovery at Cheetapore, that Sir Reginald would have returned to his ancestral halls as fast as steam could take him.

But month after month went by, and he still remained a fixture at Camelabad. He carried out his mental resolution to the letter, and left himself no leisure to think of Alice or anyone else. He returned with the greatest energy to all his bachelor amusements, kept a string of racers, hunted the regimental pack, and made constant shooting expeditions. He played whist till the small hours, and entered into everything with the greatest zeal; took a prominent if somewhat mechanical part in all the entertainments in the station, and was voted “charming” by the ladies, both young and old. Notwithstanding his bachelor pursuits, he developed a curious and Benedict-like interest in babies—a species of humanity that he had hitherto held in abhorrence. He cast more than one inquisitive glance on the smaller fry in arms as he went round the married quarters. And Mrs. Gifford, the wife of the only married captain in the Seventeenth, was amazed when her ayah informed her that “Sir Fairfax” had more than once taken notice of her baby, “asking age, asking boy or girl, how soon walking?” It was most flattering, if a little mysterious, and he became a greater favourite than ever with Mrs. Gifford. She was not aware that her boy shone with a borrowed lustre in Sir Reginald’s eyes for being almost the same age as his son, and that the toys and presents which were showered on him as he grew older were not bestowed altogether for his own sake.

A year after his visit to Cheetapore, Sir Reginald received a letter in Alice’s well-known writing. “It has come at last,” he said to himself, as with trembling hands he tore it open in his own bungalow. He drew out the photo of a sturdy dark-eyed cherub, enclosed in a sheet of blank letter-paper. At first he could hardly credit his senses; his indignation and his bitter disappointment were too great for words. His first impulse was to tear the photo into four pieces, but, mastering this rather insane idea, he took it up and looked at it closely instead. He was glad he had not obeyed his first rash notion. The boy was certainly a splendid little fellow. Written in the corner of the carte was, “Maurice E. Fairfax, aged thirteen months.” He was something more tangible now, his father thought, as he minutely studied every feature. He felt a thrill of novel and very pleasant pride as he looked at the bright eager little face, and said to himself: “This is my son. He has the Fairfax eyes and brows, I believe,” he continued, as he still studied the photo critically, “but no one will deny that he has his mother’s mouth.”

With a sigh he pieced together the torn envelope, and looked in vain for a word; the blank sheet of paper he scrupulously turned over; it was really blank indeed. He gazed at it for some time, as if there were actually something written on it; then, suddenly gathering himself together, he carefully folded it up and put it along with the photograph into the envelope, and locked them away in his desk.

Sir Reginald had been nearly two years at Camelabad when the outbreak which had been simmering for some time in Afghanistan came to boiling-point, and the gauntlet of defiance was thrown down by the Ameer.

Captains Campbell and Vaughan were reposing in long chairs in front of their mess, much exhausted with lawn-tennis, refreshing themselves with copious iced pegs, and enjoying a delightful experience of the dolce far niente as embodied in Bombay—chairs and brandies-and-sodas.

Suddenly a solitary horseman was seen madly careering across the midan, in the direction of their lines.

“I say, just look at this fellow; his horse has bolted!” said Captain Campbell.

“Not a bit of it,” replied his companion serenely; “don’t you see that it’s Fairfax on his chestnut, riding ventre à terre, as usual?”

“Hallo, Fairfax, what’s up?” they shouted as he approached. “Are the barracks ablaze, and are you going for the fire-engine?”

“Better than that,” he cried, clattering into the compound. “I have just come up from the general’s with glorious news—we start for the front this day week.”

CHAPTER II.
AFGHANISTAN.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field,

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

The Seventeenth Hussars were duly forwarded to the frontier, and found that their final destination was Dabaule, where there was a good supply of grass and water for their horses.

Owing to the approach of winter, there was an utter stagnation of military operations, and in spite of occasional small raids on, and from, the neighbouring Afridis, the time passed monotonously enough. The weather was cold and cheerless, but the officers of the Seventeenth, headed by their junior major, did their very best to provide exercise and entertainment for their men and for the camp in general.

Football, hockey, penny readings, and theatricals were set going with remarkable success, and helped to repel the encroachments of idleness and ennui. The surrounding scenery was quite different to the tiresome succession of parallel ridges presented by the ranges near the frontier. Here hill and valley were thrown together in the most admirable confusion, and clothed with short stunted shrubs and wild olives; gloomy pine-woods marked out some of the hills in bold black relief; the distant mountains were capped with snow, and the cold at times was most intense. During the suspension of hostilities there was ample leisure for correspondence, and letter-writing was a frequent resource on a dull gray afternoon. The following is one of Sir Reginald’s contributions to the mail-bag, written on his knee by the light of a small bull’s-eye lantern in the retirement of his seven-foot tent:

“Camp Dabaule.

“My dear Mark,

“It is not my fault that there has been such a tremendous gap in our correspondence. I have written to you again and again, and I once more seize the opportunity of the mail-dâk passing through to send you a few lines, and hope they will meet with a better fate than my other effusions, not one of which appears to have reached you, judging by your incendiary letter. Doubtless they are in the hands of those beggars the Afridis, who rob the mails and cut the telegraph-wires continually. We are all flourishing—men in good spirits, horses in capital condition; the only thing we ask is to be up and doing. Cold weather has closed the passes to a great extent, and there is nothing whatever going on. To come into our camp you would never dream that you were in an enemy’s country, we have made ourselves so completely at home, although our accommodation is not magnificent. We have all small hill-tents, weighing about eighty pounds, in which there is just room enough to turn round, and no more. We all wear thick fur coats, called poshteens, and fur caps, quite the Canadian style. You would have some difficulty in recognising me, I can tell you, were you told to pick me out from among a dozen of fellows sitting round our favourite rendezvous—the camp-fire. There is snow on the ranges all round, and we have lots of ice without troubling the ice-machines, but hot grog is more the fashion than iced champagne.

“We arrived here six weeks ago, viâ the Khan Pass, and brought in, among other prisoners, Hadji Khan, a notorious robber and unmitigated rascal. We have him in camp now. He has the most diabolical expression I ever beheld; nevertheless, the length and frequency of his prayers are absolutely astounding. He spends more than half the day on his marrow-bones, no doubt consigning us, in all generations, to Gehenna, if you know where that is?

“The Afghans, take them all in all, are a fine-looking set of men, with bigger frames and fairer skins than the natives of sunny Hindostan. Their physiognomy is decidedly of the Jewish caste—piercing black eyes and hooked noses, set off by a resolute, not to say savage, expression of death and extermination to all the Feringhees!

“Now, this cold weather, they are wrapped in poshteens, with or without sleeves, of very dubious cleanliness. A good serviceable garment descends from generation to generation. An enormous dark-blue puggaree encircling a little red cap forms their turban. But the headman of a village, in a richly-embroidered poshteen, ‘the woolly side in,’ like the immortal Brian O’Lynn—magnificent gold and blue turban, and long silver-mounted matchlock, is as handsome and picturesque a looking fellow as you could wish to see.

“I have not as yet had an opportunity of beholding an Afghan lady. Some of the common women labour in the fields unveiled, a weather-beaten, bold-looking set, but the lady of the period conceals her charms behind a long white arrangement, that covers her from head to foot, like a sheet; two holes cut for her eyes, and covered with white net, give her a most ghostly and ghastly appearance. She looks like a she-‘familiar’ of the time of the Inquisition.

“We have a capital mess here, and to find such a dinner as our head kansamah serves up, after whetting our appetites by a twenty-mile ride, is a joy no words can express. After the snows break up we are sure to have a short bout of fighting, and then the campaign will be over. The English charger I got in Bombay has turned out first-class—as hard as nails and up to any amount of work. Many thanks to Helen for the Cardigan jacket and mittens. My love to her and the Limbs.

“Yours as ever,
“R. M. Fairfax.”

In April there was a general move on. The camp at Dabaule was broken up, and everyone was delighted to stretch themselves, as it were, and resume the line of march.

Very shortly afterwards a severe engagement took place between the brigade and a large body of Afghans. It resulted in the total defeat of the latter. Their loss amounted to one thousand, whilst the English force had only three hundred killed and wounded. The Afghans occupied a large plateau protected by walls of loose stones, and held an extremely strong position. The English brigade consisted of the Seventeenth Hussars, Fifth Goorkhas, Twenty-seventh N. I., Fortieth Sikhs, and a battery of artillery. The enemy behaved with the most determined courage, rabble horde as they were; some merely armed with long knives and yataghans, some carrying the dear familiar Jazail, and some—oh, proud and happy men!—the British Enfield rifle. They were led by a man on a powerful black horse, who wore a prodigious green turban, and had his face whitened with ashes or some such substance. He was a very holy moolah, and harangued the multitude with an energy and vehemence only surpassed by his wild and frenzied gesticulations. Beside him stood his standard-bearer, carrying a large green flag with a red border and red inscription; and in spite of a heavy fire from the infantry, this enormous force of undisciplined fanatics advanced with the utmost steadiness and resolution. The order to charge was given to the hussars, who bore down like a whirlwind, led by Sir Reginald Fairfax—the colonel was hors de combat with typhoid fever—who, mounted on a gallant English thoroughbred, cleared the low wall, and was soon laying about him in all directions.

He wrested the standard from the hands of its bearer, and striking him a tremendous blow with its iron pole, laid him low, but was speedily surrounded by some furious fanatics, resolved to regain their colours at any cost. His horse was shot under him; however, quickly disengaging himself, sword in hand, and still grasping the green flag, he made a valiant stand against half-a-dozen moolahs, with his back to some broken masonry. It would have gone hard with him had not some of his men charged down to his rescue and beaten off the moolahs, who in another moment would have made a vacancy in the Seventeenth Hussars and left Lady Fairfax a widow. Rid of his immediate adversaries, Sir Reginald seized a riderless horse, and making over the standard to a gunner, was soon pursuing the flying enemy, who, unable to withstand the cavalry charge, had wavered, broken, and fled; being, moreover, utterly demoralised by the loss of their standard, which they looked upon as their “oriflamme,” and as a kind of holy talisman, the very sight of which alone would make the hearts of the Feringhees quail. So much had been promised on its behalf by an aged fakir, who had delivered it over to his countrymen with many prayers and profound solemnity. And it was gone—taken from their very midst by a black-hearted Kaffir, who fought like the Prince of Darkness himself.

The flying Afghans, scattered all over the plain, were pursued and ridden down by the cavalry; but the prize all sought to capture—the fakir on the black Turcoman—set every effort at defiance, and, thanks to his magnificent horse, effected his escape with almost provoking ease. Yaboos, laden with dead Afghans, were driven off the field with miraculous celerity, and within an hour from the firing of the first shot the plain was deserted.

For the capture of the standard “and displaying conspicuous gallantry on the field of action,” Sir Reginald was recommended for the Victoria Cross, a distinction his friends granted him ungrudgingly.

He was a born soldier, that was very evident. The Fairfaxes had always had a drop of wild blood in their veins. With him it took the form of fighting, instead of—as in his ancestors’ times—dicing, drinking, and duelling. His men worshipped him, and would willingly have followed him at any time and to any place, were it to the very gates of Hades itself.

“It’s the good old blood that tells in the long run,” remarked a trooper to his comrade over his beer and pipe. “Such a glutton for fighting as this ’ere major of ours I never did see.”

At any rate, whatever was the reason, such an officer in camp and such a leader in the field inspired their utmost devotion and enthusiasm.

Although Hafiz Khan and his hordes were defeated and dispersed, they speedily rallied sufficiently to be a ceaseless thorn in the flesh to the brigade now permanently encamped within a few miles of the late scene of action. Hafiz was a striking illustration of the saying, “He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.” He was a fakir—exceptionally holy, having made the blessed pilgrimage no less than thrice—notorious alike for his zealous piety as for his abhorrence of the accursed Kaffir. Scandal whispered that he had not always been such a devoted servant of the Prophet; that for years he lived in ill-odour among his neighbours, owing to his constant appropriation of their flocks and herds. Whatever may have been the truth, he was now an ardent patriot, and preyed on the Feringhees instead of on his friends. He was a most daring and successful raider, and covered himself with glory, notably on one occasion when he carried off seven hundred head of cattle from Jellalabad.

He cut off more convoys and slaughtered more grass-cutters and camel-drivers than any other leader between Cabul and the Khyber; and his depredations were so secretly and skilfully carried out, that his very name alone inspired the stoutest-hearted camp-follower with terror.

Invariably mounted on his superb black Turcoman, he gave chase or effected his retreat with a speed that set everything at defiance. His horse was known by the name of “Shaitan,” and was supposed to be in direct communication with the Evil One, being imported expressly from the lower regions for the purpose of hunting down the infidels. The rider of this desirable mount was an elderly thick-set man, wearing a gigantic green turban, so large as almost to conceal his features. Still his hooked nose, fierce hawk eye, and bushy beard were visible; and the treacherous, cruel, malignant expression of his face was such as a devil might have envied. Armed with a pair of horse-pistols and a formidable yataghan, he headed a band of followers varying from fifty to two thousand, and infested an area of many miles in extent. His patriotic zeal had no bounds; he was known to have recently butchered an entire village, merely because the headman had supplied (under strong pressure) cattle and grain to the English commissariat; in short, his name far and near was a byword for ferocity and fanaticism.

One evening, Sir Reginald and his two friends, Captain Vaughan and Mr. Harvey, went for a short ride in the neighbourhood of their camp, the former mounted on his first charger, an unusually large, powerful Arab, the two latter on stout Yarkundi ponies. All were clad in Karki suits, and carried (a most necessary precaution) revolvers in their belts. The country around was reported clear. Hafiz and his faction were said to be miles away. Certainly nothing had been heard of them for two whole days. It was a lovely evening, and tempted by the odd wild scenery they extended their ride farther than they had previously intended. At sunset they found themselves close by a straggling Mohammedan cemetery, whose large square tombs were thickly crowded together, some of them richly carved, some of them poor and plain. The graveyard was planted with magnificent cypresses, now casting long, long shadows in the setting sun. A solemn melancholy silence hung around the place; even the mud hovel, usually inhabited by the guardian fakir, was empty—a huge Afghan dog, with closely-cropped ears and tail, lay in front of the open doorway, sleeping on his post.

“Do you know that they say there is a Christian grave somewhere quite close to this?” said Sir Reginald, looking round. “I wonder they buried him so near to these people,” nodding his head in the direction of the cemetery.

“Yes,” returned Mr. Harvey; “but it was probably done with an idea that he would like some company.”

“Defend me from the company of an Afghan, dead or alive,” returned his brother-officer, walking his horse on to where he commanded a view of the fourth side of the graveyard. His two friends followed him, and another second brought in sight a grave and plain stone cross, about a hundred yards to their right. Standing beside it was the fakir, in close and earnest conversation with no less a person than Hafiz himself—Hafiz, mounted as usual on his black Turcoman, and alone! Both had their backs turned to the cemetery, and stood facing the setting sun, deeply absorbed in conversation, which they emphasized from time to time with vehement and almost frenzied gesticulation. Evidently they were hatching some evil deed.

“Hafiz, by all that is lucky!” exclaimed Sir Reginald, drawing out his revolver and putting his horse into a sharp canter. But between him and the fakirs ran a deep nullah, and ere he reached its bank they were both aware of the presence of the three hussars.

Hafiz paused for a second to glare at the intruders, then raising one arm to heaven, with a loud invocation to Allah, he turned and spat on the cross beneath him with a gesture of the utmost abhorrence and contempt, and wheeling his horse half round, with a derisive farewell to his foes, he started off at full gallop. This outrageous insult to their faith and nation affected the three Englishmen variously. Captain Vaughan, who was of rather full habit, became absolutely purple with passion; Mr. Harvey relieved his feelings with several round oaths; Sir Reginald said nothing, but his lips tightened under his dark moustache in a way that was ominous enough. With a vicious dig of the spurs he forced his horse down the rugged sides of the nullah, up the opposite bank, and away across the plain in hot pursuit of the holy man. The two Yarkundis, urged to the very top of their speed, joined neck and neck in the chase for a short distance, but endurance, not pace, was their forte, and they soon ceased to answer to the repeated applications of their riders’ spurs and Annamullay canes, and began to lag behind the free-going Arab.

“It’s no use, Fairfax,” shouted Captain Vaughan, pulling up; “you’ll never overtake him.”

“I will!” he returned, looking back for a second. “I’ll catch him and kill him, if I follow him to Candahar.”

His friends’ remonstrances were given to the winds; he had already distanced them by a hundred yards, and soon he and the far-receding fakir became mere specks in the distance, and rounding the spur of a hill, were completely lost to sight.

The two officers waited impatiently for the sound of shots, but the silence that reigned around them remained unbroken, save for the distant cry of the jackal setting out on his nightly career, and seeming to say more distinctly than usual: “I smell dead white men, I smell dead white men.”

The whistle of a kite sailing homewards was the only other sound that broke the dead surrounding stillness. The sun had set; ten minutes previously it had vanished below the horizon in the shape of a little red speck; gray twilight was rapidly spreading her mantle over hills and plains, and our two friends, finding they had completely lost sight of their hot-headed companion, reluctantly turned their ponies’ heads homewards, and retailed their adventure to their comrades round the camp-fire. These listened to it with many interruptions of surprise and dismay.

“Fairfax was splendidly mounted; that Arab of his was one of the best horses out of Abdul Rahman’s stables, that’s some comfort,” remarked one.

“Yes, he was evidently gaining on the Turcoman when we saw the last of him,” returned Mr. Harvey; “but, for all we know, Fairfax has galloped straight into the Afghan camp.”

“I had no idea he was such a Quixotic fool,” growled a grizzly-headed colonel, angrily kicking the logs in front of him. “It would not surprise me if we never saw him again.”

Some said one thing, some another, but all agreed in feeling very grave uneasiness on behalf of their brother-officer.

The mess-bugle sounded and was responded to, dinner was disposed of, and still Fairfax did not appear. Meanwhile Sir Reginald, once lost to sight, had been, as Mr. Harvey remarked, overtaking Hafiz at every stride. The Turcoman had done a long day’s march, and, though urged by his rider to great exertions, was no match for the well-bred Arab in his wake. The distance between them diminished gradually but surely. The black horse was only leading by thirty yards when Hafiz turned and glanced over his shoulder. It was, as he had fancied, the very selfsame Kaffir who had taken the sacred standard. They were within half a mile of the Rohilla headquarters, and Allah had surely given him over for a prey into his hand. But his horse was failing, and the Feringhee would soon be at his girths. Best finish the matter at once. Reining up suddenly, he faced the approaching horseman with astonishing celerity, and drawing a pistol, which he aimed for half a second, he fired at him point-blank. The bullet missed its intended destination and buried itself deep in the brain of the Arab charger, who with one frantic convulsive bound fell forward dead on the sand, and the fakir, with drawn yataghan, charged down on the dismounted hussar, determined to have his life.

But, Hafiz, your evil star was in the ascendant. Had you but known, you would have been far wiser to have ridden off and left your foe to find his way back to camp on foot, and to take his chance of being murdered by your prowling countrymen.

With an expression of fiendish hatred the fakir rode at Sir Reginald, his uplifted weapon ready to descend with fatal effect. But he had to contend with a man of half his age and ten times his activity, who sprang at him and seized his arm, and in so doing broke the force of the blow, which, instead of sweeping off our hero’s head, as intended, merely inflicted a flesh wound in his shoulder, and before Hafiz had time to recover himself, a bullet from Sir Reginald’s revolver found a lodging in his breast. Swaying heavily backwards and forwards, his powerless hands dropped reins and weapon, and he fell from his saddle like a sack; and our hussar, catching the Turcoman by the bridle and disengaging his late master from the stirrup, sprang on his back, turned his head in the direction of the English camp, and rode off at the top of his speed.

His practised ear had caught the sounds of approaching hoofs, attracted doubtless by the shots; but still he had a start of fully a quarter of a mile, and made the very most of it. Infuriated Pathans rode hard upon his track, and it was not till he was well within the lines of the English picket, and saw their camp-fires blazing, that he ventured to draw rein and allow the exhausted Turcoman to proceed at a walk. It does not often happen to a horse to have to carry two successive riders flying for their lives within the same hour. Shaitan’s drooping head and heaving sides bore witness to a hard day’s work, as he was led by his new owner within the bright circle of light thrown by the officers’ camp-fire.

Exclamations, remonstrances, and questions were volleyed at Sir Reginald as once more he stood among his friends, bare-headed and ghastly pale, with the bridle of the notorious black charger hanging over one arm. Very brief were the answers he vouchsafed to half-a-dozen simultaneous interrogations.

“Hafiz was badly wounded, if not dead. He was not likely to trouble them for some time, if ever; his own charger was lying on the plain with a bullet in his brain, and affording a fine supper for the jackals. Yes, he had had to ride for it coming back, and the black was pretty well done.” Here, as he came nearer to the logs, it was seen that one sleeve of his Karki coat was soaked in blood. Questions were immediately at an end, and he was hurried off by the doctor to have his wounds looked to, in spite of his urgent disclaimers and assurances “that it was a mere scratch.”

The Turcoman, the sight of which acted on the Afghans as a red rag to a turkey-cock, soon became accustomed to an English bit and an English rider, and made his new master a most valuable second charger. Many were the attempts to recover him, to shoot him, to get him from his abhorred Kaffir owner at any price, but all efforts were futile, he was much too well guarded. When Sir Reginald was invalided home, he was sent down to Bombay with his other horses, and sold for a very high price to a hard-riding Member of Council; and doubtless the destination of the once feared and honoured “evil one” will be to end his days in a Bombay buggy.

CHAPTER III.
“MY CAPTAIN DOES NOT ANSWER; HIS LIPS ARE PALE AND STILL.”

Beyond constant and most wearisome convoy duty, the Seventeenth Hussars had very little to do. Afghanistan is a country more adapted for mountaineers than mounted men; and as far as downright fighting was concerned, the cavalry were, perforce, idle. Sir Reginald looked upon “baggage guard” as better than nothing. “Half a loaf was better than no bread,” and he had more than one exciting little brush with would-be marauding and murdering Pathans.

Repeatedly successful raids and small skirmishes had given him a most unenviable notoriety among the tribes of banditti who infested the various camel-roads and swarmed about the hills. To these he was a perfect scourge, and hunted them and harried them with unwearied energy. It is not too much to say that they literally thirsted for his blood. Although often warned by his brother-officers that he would be “potted,” his daring and foolhardiness knew no bounds. He would loiter behind, or canter on in advance of a squadron, as coolly as if he were riding on an English high-road, and not through a gloomy Afghan pass, among whose rocks more than one enemy was sitting patiently behind his Jazail or Snider, waiting to work off any straggling Kaffirs, and so to earn for himself an honourable name.

Sir Reginald appeared to bear a charmed life, and thoroughly to carry out the good old Irish motto, “Where there’s no fear there’s no danger;” and though he had one or two narrow escapes, he exemplified another saying in his own person, viz., “That a miss is as good as a mile.”

The tribes in the neighbourhood of the division to which the hussars belonged had been giving a great deal of trouble, and displaying their hostility in various acts, such as constantly waylaying convoys and cutting off camel-drivers and grass-cutters. Things came to such a pitch that it was determined to bring these wretches to their senses, and a small but compact body was despatched to punish them. It consisted of three squadrons of the Seventeenth, six companies of the Two hundred and seventh, about fifty sappers, and three Gatling guns. In moving a larger force there was a difficulty about supplies, and the pace had to be regulated in exact proportion to that of the yaboos with the column; and it was heart-breaking work to keep the poor beasts going.

The march lay at first through a narrow rocky gorge, which, after two hours’ steady advance, opened into a wide flat valley that showed abundant evidence of cultivation, including many fields of wheat.

Two or three villages were reached, and proved to be empty; their inhabitants, having had timely warning, had removed themselves and their belongings, and were concealed among the surrounding hills. Late in the afternoon a march of twelve miles brought the troops to the large and important village of Ritsobi. The inhabitants had not long left; but a few sacks of bhoosa, some household cooking-pots, and one or two native ploughs were all that could be discovered; and the soldiers were forced to content themselves with their usual rations, instead of the fowls, eggs, and fruit of which they had had visions.

The two village towers were speedily mined and blown up, and the wooden houses were easily levelled, and afforded capital fuel for the camp-fires, an unusual number of which were soon blazing in all directions.

Standing at the smallest of one of these fires was Sir Reginald Fairfax, earnestly questioning two Belooch sepoys, who, got up as fakirs, had been playing the part of spies among the enemy. The latter were assembled in formidable numbers about ten miles distant, and meant to hold their ground and await the advance of the column. To look at Sir Reginald as he stood in the firelight, one spurred boot resting on a log of wood, his face and attitude indicating how wholly absorbing he found the sepoys’ information, no one would believe that he had a thought in the world apart from his profession. The bright roaring planks lit up his face, already kindled with the news, and the eager, questioning officer before us was as different to the moody, cynical Major Fairfax of Camelabad as night from day.

In spite of hard fare, no better than a trooper’s; in spite of being all day in the saddle and half the night on the alert, he had never looked better or cheerier. His constitution appeared to be of iron, and he was perfectly indifferent to cold or heat, hunger or fatigue; or if not, it was assumed that he was. His spirits and energy were untiring. The discomforts of camp life he treated as an excellent joke, and after dining heartily on ration beef and dry bread, and having kept the company entertained with his stories, sallies, and toasts, he would turn in to his seven-foot tent, wrap himself in his military cloak, and with his saddle for a pillow sleep the sleep of the just.

It was determined by the officer in command to steal a march on the enemy, and the force were under orders to set out that night. About one o’clock all the camp was astir. The moon had gone down, but the stars shone brightly—not sufficiently brightly however to make travelling pleasant, particularly for the cavalry, as the road was cut up by various watercourses and nullahs, in which more than one gallant hussar came to grief, and fished himself out with imprecations loud and deep.

After marching about eight miles the column came in sight of the enemy’s fires, and a halt was made till there was sufficient light to advance. As soon as the first streaks of dawn became visible above the horizon the cavalry were ordered to the front, and shortly afterwards shots were heard, followed by a rush of hoofs, betokening the flight and pursuit of the picket.

Two miles farther on the force reached a kotal, from whence they could see the valley beneath them. It lay before them, but not “smiling”—it was sprinkled with large bodies of the enemy, armed to the teeth, who, with standards flying and drums beating, were evidently sounding the tocsin of war. The column halted on a ridge as they saw the Ghazis slowly advancing, and bringing their guns to the front tried the effect of a few shells. The result was excellent. The enemy began to sheer off towards the hills, gradually retiring up the valley. Their movements were so rapid that the cavalry vainly manœuvred to bring them to close quarters; they continued a steady but dignified retreat until they reached a large walled village about three miles up the valley, embedded in hillocks and groves of chunar trees. From rocks and other coigns of vantage a smart fire was opened by the enemy. The Afghan Snider is by no means a bad weapon, and cartridges from the Balar Hissar are not to be despised. Numerous isolated cragsmen among the rocks around the village made very good practice, but the main body of the enemy rounded the base of a hill and completely disappeared. It was generally supposed that they had skedaddled, but this was soon found to be a mistake. It was merely a feint to draw the Feringhees nearer to the village, in order that they might have the benefit of an enormous gun, or kind of matchlock, fired from rests in the ground. The first time it was fired the proprietors set up a deafening cheer that echoed and re-echoed among the neighbouring hills in quite a startling manner. A second time it fired, a second hideous shout; then the three Gatlings were brought into play, and it was very quickly shut up. At the first two shots from these—to the Afghans, wholly novel inventions—they were too astounded to move; the next two sent them flying in all directions. They seemed to melt away like snow before the sun. Suddenly from behind a hillock a large body of cavalry appeared, and charged irregularly but at full gallop, very pluckily led by a man on a spotted horse, who cheered them on with loud shouts of “Kaffir! kaffir!” The hussars, only too delighted to respond to the call, were among them in a twinkling, and the affair was soon cut up into a series of hand-to-hand encounters, in which the irregular cavalry got much the worst of it, although they fought with the utmost fury and determination. The superior arms and weight of the hussars was more than they could contend against; they were scattered, put to flight, and for a short distance hotly pursued. The hussars had eleven men wounded and a number of horses lost or disabled; this was the extent of their casualties. The defeat of their cavalry completed the discomfiture of the enemy, and the village was our own. The whole place was strewn with property left behind by its owners in their hasty retreat. The soldiers had fine times, for each of them had at least one fowl strung to his belt and an unlimited supply of fruit and vegetables. The idea of pursuing the flying foe had to be relinquished; they had taken to the surrounding rocky hills, which they climbed with goatlike agility, and as chamois-hunting on horseback was beyond the ability even of the Seventeenth Royal Hussars, they were allowed to continue their flight unmolested. One Ghazi, however, having reached what he considered a safe elevation, turned and waved his white standard most insolently at the little force below; but a bullet from a Henry-Martini “dropped him,” and put a fatal termination to him and his evolutions. The infantry now spread all over the village and proceeded to fire it. Several of the larger buildings were already in a blaze, and many surrounding stacks of corn had been given to the flames, when an incident occurred which nearly cost Sir Reginald his life.

As he was cantering down a narrow dusty lane, he observed two men with pick-axes standing in evident hesitation before the closed door of a large square house.

Reining up his horse sharply, he asked what they were about.

“Beg pardon, sir,” replied one of them, saluting him, “but they say as ’ow the ’ouse is full of Hafghans, all harmed, and we are waiting for a party of the Two hundred and seventh before we venture inside, in case what they say is true.”

“We will soon see,” exclaimed Sir Reginald, jumping off his horse and giving the door a vigorous kick—an old rotten door it was—and another kick sent it flying open. An ill-directed volley from several Jazails greeted the intruder, and five Ghazis, armed with tulwars, made for the street.

One of the shots had taken effect in Sir Reginald’s left arm, and, parrying a desperate tulwar cut with his revolver, he closed with his assailant; but a frightful blow from the heavy stock of a native gun, delivered from behind, knocked him down insensible, and a Ghazi was just about to give him the coup de grâce with a long Afghan knife when the sappers and infantry burst in and overpowered the inhabitants, making very short work of them with bayonet and revolver.

The struggle in which Sir Reginald had been engaged had not lasted more than half a minute, and when his men came up to the scene of action and found him to all appearance dead, their fury and grief knew no bounds. Two wounded Ghazis, who had been granted quarter, relinquished all hopes of life when they saw the many fierce and murderous looks that were turned on them; and when the general, his aide-de-camp, and one of the officers of the hussars came galloping up, and they saw their faces and gestures of consternation, they felt the gratifying conviction that at any rate they had killed a Kaffir of some importance.

He certainly looked as if he was dead as he lay in the narrow little street with his head resting on the knee of his brother-officer. His eyes were closed, over his face the pallor of death seemed already to be creeping. His blue and gold uniform was torn and disfigured with dust and blood, and his left arm hung by his side in such a helpless unnatural position that it did not need a second glance to see that it was badly broken. However, he was not dead, only badly wounded and insensible. He was carried in a dhooly to the permanent camp (a two days’ march), and the several doctors with the brigade held a consultation on his case, whilst his anxious friends, brother-officers and men alike, hung round the tent waiting for the verdict. Great was their relief to hear that, if fever did not supervene, there was nothing serious to be apprehended, but that it would be many a day before Sir Reginald would again wield a sabre.

Still, for some time his state was very precarious, and many were the inquiries that beset the medical officer in attendance on the patient. He was a short, round-about, elderly man, with beetling brows and a gruff voice, but underneath his rough, rude exterior there lurked a really kind heart.

As he was leaving the hospital one morning he was accosted by two of the “boys” of the Seventeenth, who overwhelmed him with anxious inquiries.

“How is Fairfax this morning?” they asked in a breath.

The doctor rubbed his chin and looked at them reflectively; the two youths were connected in his mind with reminiscences of not an altogether agreeable nature, one of them, who bore the sobriquet of “Buttons,” being about the cheekiest and coolest young gentleman he had ever come across, and both displayed an extraordinary aptitude for practical jokes.

“He is not going to give you a step this time,” replied the doctor brusquely, preparing to pass on.

“A step! I would not take it if he did,” returned Buttons vehemently, standing right in front of the doctor.

“Oh, not you,” retorted the medico, scornfully. “Fairfax would—nay, if he has a relapse, will—give three steps. As things are now, a man must stand on his comrade’s grave for promotion, and you are just the very last young gentleman to keep yourself in the background. You would take the step sharp enough if you got the chance, and were not passed over!”

“I don’t know about stepping on Fairfax’s grave, as you call it,” replied Buttons, crimson with anger; “but I know some people’s graves I could dance on with pleasure,” accompanying the remark with a look of the utmost significance.

“Ah, you don’t really mean it? Why are you all in such a desperate state about this fellow? Why is he singled out as an object of so much anxiety and attention? Generally, when a man dies up here, it is not ‘Poor So-and-so is dead, I’m awfully sorry,’ but ‘So-and-so is dead—what kind of a kit had he?’ And away you all tear and bid for his things before the breath is hardly out of his body! Why such great concern about this young major? He has a first-class kit, as kits go, and a couple of good sound horses.”

“You are quite a new-comer, Dr. Bennett,” said the other hussar, who had not hitherto spoken.

“Only a recent arrival,” very loftily, “or you would not talk like this.”

“Fairfax keeps us all going;” then warming to his subject, “he is the best fellow in the world, always thinking for others, always doing the work of three. He looks after the men; he manages the mess; he——”

“Ah, now I can understand your anxiety,” interrupted Dr. Bennett, contracting his fierce brows. “The light breaks at last! The squalid feeding that is set before us, the horribly mysterious joints and leather steaks, are now accounted for. The mess butler has it all his own way now that the mess president is sick?”

“You are quite welcome to adopt this view of the subject if you like,” said hussar number two very angrily; “to some people their food is their only object of interest.”

“Well, well,” said the doctor, surveying the two wrathful young faces before him, and bursting into a loud laugh, “I must try and patch up this interesting patient of mine for many reasons, chiefly because he understands the art of snubbing bumptious boys and keeping them in their places. I am sure it is a mercy that someone can control them, for it is a task that is utterly beyond me,” muttered the gallant surgeon-major, as he walked rapidly away to his eagerly-anticipated breakfast.

There had been a struggle among Sir Reginald’s friends for the post of chief nurse; but his own man Cox would not yield the place to anyone, and they found their would-be office a sinecure. An excellent, firm, and gentle nurse himself, a worse patient than Sir Reginald could scarcely be found! So impatient of being kept in bed, so restless in it—tossing and tumbling to and fro, regardless of his wounded arm. Perfectly deaf to all blandishments that induced him to take proper medicine and nourishment, he would have his own way, and he had it, driving his nurses to their wits’ end and throwing himself into a fever.

One night, at the very height of his illness, when he was lying in a kind of stupor, the doctor came in on his way from mess and felt his pulse and temperature. Standing at the foot of the camp-bed, he eyed his patient dubiously for some moments.

“This will never do,” he said, after an ominous silence. “If he goes on like this he will slip through our fingers. His pulse and temperature are past counting. I am afraid he is in a bad way, poor fellow! Some of you had better write to his friends this mail and prepare them. He may pull through, but the chances are very much the other way. I’ll look in again in the course of an hour or two.” So saying, without waiting for a reply of any kind, he turned on his heel and departed.

Captain Vaughan and Mr. Harvey declared over and over to each other that they did not agree with the doctor, but each made a mental reservation to himself: “Their patient was certainly not mending.” As they glanced anxiously towards him, they were more than ever struck by his worn and sunken features, his hurried, laboured breathing, and the startling contrast between his dark hair and the ghastly paleness of his face. “Wali,” Sir Reginald’s Afghan dog, a great shaggy monster, something like a collie, with dark-gray coat and pointed ears, sat on his haunches, with his nose resting on the bed, surveying his master with grave inquiring eyes. To judge from his solemn sorrowful face, he thought as badly of the patient as did his human friends. The two officers had not forgotten the doctor’s injunction, and proceeded to search over the tent for keys, desk, letters, and addresses. They found a small and most unpresuming little leather desk, which they turned out and ransacked. It contained paper and envelopes, some letters, and a cheque-book, but not one of the letters was in a lady’s hand, or bore the signature of Fairfax. After some discussion they agreed to write to the Honorable Mark Mayhew, who seemed a frequent correspondent. As they were tumbling out the contents of the desk they came upon a cabinet photograph, a half-length likeness of a slender girl in a white dress, with a smile in her eyes, and a fox-terrier in her arms.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Mr. Harvey, stooping to pick up the carte from where it had fallen on the floor, face upwards. “I say, who is this?” regarding the treasure-trove with wide-open eyes.

“That is his wife!” replied Captain Vaughan, looking over his comrade’s shoulder. “Is she not lovely?”

“Lovely indeed!” replied Mr. Harvey, refusing to let the photo out of his hand, and gazing at it with the eyes of a connoisseur. “I don’t wonder now that Fairfax turned up his nose at the pale-faced beauties at Camelabad! Now I can understand his contempt for our taste, and the commiseration with which he regarded us when we talked of beauty.”

“If anything does happen to him, poor fellow,” said Captain Vaughan, nodding towards the patient, “I suppose it will be an awful blow to her; but I must confess I can’t make head or tail of his domestic affairs. You may be sure there is something queer about her, or he would never stay out here alone; and he never alludes to his wife any more than if she was dead. There is a screw loose somewhere, believe me.”

“You saw her on board the trooper, Vaughan; is she really as pretty as this?” murmured Mr. Harvey, still wholly absorbed in the photograph.

“Much prettier,” returned his companion briefly. “Here! you can’t go on staring at that all night! We must set to work and write this letter; the mails go down to-morrow morning. I don’t half like the job, I can tell you; and if anything does happen to Fairfax”—here he winked away an unusual moisture in his bold blue eyes—“I shall be frightfully cut up myself.”

The two officers having at length put their heads together, concocted the following letter to Mr. Mayhew:

“Dear Sir,

“It is with much regret that I inform you of the very serious illness of Sir Reginald Fairfax, and I have been desired by the doctor in attendance to prepare you for the gravest consequences. Sir Reginald was wounded by some Ghazis after the capture of a village, he having had the foolhardiness to enter their house alone, knowing it to be full of armed men. He has a broken arm, and is only slowly recovering from concussion of the brain, caused by a blow on the back of his head; and latterly he has had to contend with a severe attack of malarious fever. I need hardly mention that he has the best attention of my brother-officers and myself, and everything that can be done for him in such an out-of-the-way part of the world has been most carefully carried out. We can only hope and trust that his youth and vigorous constitution may yet assert themselves and shake off the fever now wasting him away. I have been unable to find his wife’s address; will you be so good as to break the news to her or forward this letter to her residence.

“Yours faithfully,
“George Vaughan.”

No sooner had the above been concluded, closed, and stamped than the patient suddenly woke up in his senses. After languidly gazing at his friends for some time, his eyes fell on his rifled desk and his wife’s photograph. To his gesture of amazement Captain Vaughan hurriedly replied:

“Fairfax, my dear fellow, I know you think we have been guilty of the greatest liberty; but we had to ferret out your friends’ address by the doctor’s orders.”

“Had you? Am I so bad as all that?” he asked in a low tone. Receiving no reply, he added, as if to himself: “I suppose I am, I feel very weak and queer; but I must write a line myself,” he said, looking at Captain Vaughan gravely.

“Nonsense! It would be sheer madness. I won’t allow it. One of us will write at your dictation.”

“No, no! Impossible!” he answered firmly. “Not to my wife. I must write to her at any cost,” he continued, raising himself feebly; and taking her photo in his hand, he gazed at it long and wistfully, then laid it down with a sigh.

“Get me a draught of that fizzing mixture, please, and fix me up so that I can write.”

Having carried his point, as usual, he commenced, with great labour, to trace a few lines, the beads of perspiration on his forehead testifying to the effort they cost him. Ere he had written twenty words the pen dropped from his fingers, and he fell back on the pillow completely exhausted.

“I see it is no use,” he muttered to himself. Then looking earnestly at Captain Vaughan, he said: “You are going home; go and see her. Take her my watch and sword, they will do for the boy.” He faltered, and his voice sank so low that his friend could hardly catch his next almost inaudible words; they were: “Tell her I forgive her; tell her I loved her always; tell——” Here his message came to an end, for he had fainted.

Great was the consternation of his friends, the wrath of the hastily-summoned doctor, the smothered indignation of Cox.

The patient remained unconscious for a considerable time, and when he came to himself he fell into a deep sound sleep which lasted for hours. The crisis was past; next morning he was a shade better, and from that day forward commenced a slow but steady recovery.

In six weeks’ time, the regiment having been ordered back to India in consequence of the treaty of Gundamuk, he was invalided home, sorely against his will. Vainly he begged to be allowed to go to Murree—to any hill station they liked; to Australia even—for a six months’ tour. But the doctors were firm—Dr. Bennett especially so—home he must go.

“There is no place that will set you up like your native land,” quoth Dr. Bennett. “That pretty young wife of yours had a narrow escape of never seeing you again. I’ve a good mind to drop her a line and tell her what a headstrong patient she will have to deal with.”

“I beg you will do nothing of the kind,” returned Sir Reginald quickly, and with visible irritation.

“Ah well! I have no doubt she has her own way of managing you, and wants no hints from me,” replied the doctor facetiously, perfectly regardless of the signs and signals that Captain Vaughan was making to warn him off such delicate ground. “She’ll never trust you back in India, I’m certain.”

Whether he was to be trusted to return or not was left an open question. One thing was plain—he must leave India now. He reached Bombay by easy stages, and completely restored by the sea voyage, landed at Southampton a month later, after an absence from England of nearly three years.

CHAPTER IV.
MONKSWOOD.

Monkswood was the original family place of the Fairfaxes. It was from Monkswood that a Fairfax sallied forth, booted and spurred, to ride with Prince Rupert; and owing to having espoused that side, many a fair acre was shorn away from him and his descendants. Nothing, in fact, was left to the next generation but the house and demesne.

A succession of lucky speculations and prudent marriages had restocked the Fairfax purse, and Sir Reginald’s grand-father, instead of gambling and squandering at Arthur’s, Crockford’s, Boodle’s, or White’s, as was the fashion in his day—being, on the contrary, of a thrifty turn of mind—purchased Looton, which a card-playing owner had brought to the hammer, and it became the family seat. Still all Fairfaxes were at least buried at Monkswood, and during the season it was generally visited for woodcock-shooting, for which its thick woods were famous.

Monkswood was a good-sized red-brick house, hideous and rambling and inconvenient to the last degree. It was a rare collection of architecture on a small scale, as a room had been added here, a window knocked out there, according to the sweet will of the reigning Fairfax. It was approached by a long drive, skirted on one side by a thick laurel cover, and on the other by a broad open demesne, dotted about with some splendid timber, oak and copper beech in particular.

The house was entered by a shallow flight of steps and heavy portico, leading into a lofty oak-panelled hall, opening on one side into the drawing-room and tea-room, and on the other into the dining-room and library.

The drawing-room side looked out on a grand old-fashioned pleasure-ground; the dining-room “gave”—oh horror!—on the yard—a yard large enough for a barrack square, with a long range of loose-boxes and deserted stalls and coach-houses. A couple of saddle-horses, and Miss Saville’s fat ponies, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, revelled at least in plenty of room. Upstairs the house was still more old-fashioned than below; fireplaces in corners abounded; cupboards broke out in the strangest places; and there were various passages leading everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, as you angrily discover when, having followed one down to its source as you flatter yourself, you open a fine promising-looking door, and find a set of empty shelves staring you in the face! On the other hand, you are disagreeably surprised when, on bursting open the door of what you take to be a cupboard, you find yourself precipitated headlong down three steps into a large room. Huge four-post beds and furniture to correspond were de rigueur, and there was an old-world feeling about the place altogether, as if it had gone to sleep one hundred years ago, and awoke, greatly surprised to find itself in the present century. Everything was antiquated, with the exception of new carpets and curtains in the sitting-room, a few fashionable chairs and tea-tables, Alice’s piano, and the furniture of her bedroom, where a modern brass construction relieved the time-honoured four-poster, and a writing-table, wardrobe, and lounge took the place of furniture that would have been the ne plus ultra of luxury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Need I here mention that the maiden monarch slept a night at Monkswood? According to the number of places which boast of this honour, her majesty can have rarely passed a night at home.

The house was overrun with old china, and there were a good many family portraits, simpering and scowling, about the walls. The best—the beauties and the handsome cavaliers—were all at Looton; but frosty-faced old divines and plain elderly matrons had been left undisturbed. There was some Chippendale furniture too, and all kinds of queer old ornaments, odds and ends, and even clothes, stowed away carefully among the venerable wardrobes; in fact, enough unappreciated bric-à-brac to turn a collector’s head.

The pleasure-grounds opened through a rustic gate into the plantations, which skirted the whole demesne inside a high wall. Through the plantations ran a walk just wide enough for two. A dense growth of underwood gave cover to thousands of rabbits, and where the ground was visible it was one mass of blue-bells and primroses in the season.

Opening also out of the pleasure-grounds was a large old-fashioned garden, chiefly devoted to fruit and vegetables, though the broad gravel walks that intersected it were lined with wallflowers, carnations, lavender, and hollyhocks. Its four gray walls did not look down upon a “wealth of flowers,” but they were covered with very excellent fruit trees, and they overlooked the best beds of asparagus within a radius of ten miles.

CHAPTER V.
WAITING FOR AN ANSWER.

Alice had found all prepared for her reception at Monkswood. A moderate staff of servants, culled from Looton, was awaiting her arrival. They accorded her a cold, not to say sullen, welcome; as they unanimously blamed her, and her alone, for their master’s sudden freak of shutting up Looton and sailing for India. Their attitude of dignified disapproval was entirely thrown away on their young mistress, who spent most of her time out of doors, and quickly accustomed herself to a life of complete solitude. In company with her dog Tory, a fox-terrier, given her by her husband before she was married, she would spend hours roaming through the garden and pleasure-grounds, and, above all, the woods. They had a special attraction for her—she liked their aromatic piny smell, and they were leafless, deserted, and dreary, and seemed exactly to match her own frame of mind. Here, in utter solitude and silence, only broken by the snapping of a twig beneath her feet, the flutter of a falling leaf, or the short sharp barks of Tory in hot pursuit of a rabbit, she could think without interruption.

To Tory these woods were Elysium itself, and his most happy hunting-grounds. Although always baffled by the agile bunny, he returned to the chase each day with renewed enthusiasm. As he sat, much out of breath, on his haunches directly in front of his mistress, seated on a log, his eyes rolling, his tongue lolling, and his sides palpitating, perhaps he wondered in his own mind what could be the matter with her. Why did those great round drops roll down her cheeks and go splash on her sealskin coat and small clasped hands? Why did she take him up, and hug him, and kiss him, and say: “Tory, no one in all the world loves me as well as you do”?

Although Alice had spoken to Geoffrey of her husband’s departure with easy indifference, her indifference was assumed. Her heart quailed when she thought of India, sickness, and the field of action. Each day, instead of deadening, only intensified her grief. It will be seen that her feelings towards her husband had undergone a revulsion, and since she had been out of the hearing of Miss Fane’s oracular sayings, her opinion of his misdeeds had become greatly modified. If he was utterly innocent, as in her secret heart she began to believe, what was to be her fate? Twice he had given her an opportunity to make amends, and twice she had declined the olive branch. She would never have another chance, that was very certain.

As she looked down the dreary path before her, strewn with fallen leaves and branches, at the bare, gaunt, gray and brown trees interlaced overhead, it was not a cheerful prospect; and yet a far more dismal vista presented itself to her mind’s eye. A long, solitary, monotonous life at Monkswood, where youth and beauty would alike fade away unnoticed and unregretted; her husband implacable, following with ardour his beloved profession; her friends indifferent and forgetful; what a miserable existence seemed to be in store for her! Could the haughty stern man, who had so bitterly upbraided her on Southsea Pier, and bidden her such a cold and almost contemptuous farewell, have been the bridegroom who had sauntered by her side through the deep green glades of the forest of Fontainebleau? It seemed impossible. What delightful mornings they had spent among those old trees—she with her work, he lying at her feet reading aloud Tennyson, Punch, Galignani, whatever came first; what rambles they had taken among French farms and fields, exchanging tastes, opinions, confidences; what delightful drives and excursions they had made in the neighbourhood, exploring the country in every direction, losing their way, stopping to dine at little out-of-the-way villages, and meeting with numerous amusing adventures.

Then there had been that short trip through Normandy, and home by the Channel Islands; and what a welcome she had received at Looton!—rich and poor testified their regard for its master by the reception they gave his bride. How proud he had seemed of her in those days, as, dressed in one of Worth’s gowns, which he had helped to choose in Paris, he led her up to the Duchess of Dover, who was giving a ball in their honour—the very last she had been at. How she had enjoyed it too, although Reginald never danced with her once, telling her, when she remonstrated with him as they went home in the brougham, “That he did not approve of bride and bridegroom dancing together, as they had quite enough of each other’s company, and might spare a few hours to the claims of society;” and he had cut short all her arguments with a kiss. She remembered saying to him the day that Geoffrey had been expected: “I suppose we may consider our honeymoon over now?” “No,” he had replied, “I hope ours will last as long as we live, and that, no matter what happens, we shall never love each other less than we do at present. I can answer for myself, at any rate,” he had said emphatically.

Rash promise! Three months of unutterable happiness, and all was over! That he had loved was certain. Never a very demonstrative lover; yet a look, a word, a caress from him were ten times more precious from their rarity, and because they bore the stamp of a tender, almost reverent affection, than if another man of more shallow feelings had overwhelmed her with perpetual adoration.

Such thoughts as these, and such happy recollections, only made the contrast between past and present trebly painful. Day by day, Alice became more miserably unhappy. She spent her time aimlessly wandering about the woods or sitting indoors before the fire, with Tory on her lap, talking half to him and half to herself. Society she had none: with the exception of the clergyman’s family, the neighbours and county held completely aloof, and left her entirely to her own devices. They knew that Sir Reginald had gone abroad, that Looton was shut up. “There is something very mysterious about the whole thing,” they said, “and we will not be in a hurry to call on Lady Fairfax.”

Consequently Lady Fairfax was left entirely to herself.

At last Alice made up her mind to write to her husband. She could no longer believe in that false marriage certificate; it was all a wicked lie from first to last. Oh that she had thought so before! She had determined to abase herself before him and entreat his pardon. These feelings came to a climax one dim spring afternoon, and, hastily glancing at the paper, she saw that it was mail-day. She had just half an hour before post time, and so she hurriedly sat down and wrote a short but truly penitent and loving letter to Sir Reginald (the fate of which will afterwards be disclosed).

“What a change in her life that single sheet of foreign paper might make,” she thought, as she kissed it and folded it, and enclosed in it two or three violets taken from a little bunch in front of her dress. Ere the letter had gone out of the house a load seemed lifted off her mind. In eight weeks at most the answer would come back; and the foolish girl sat down on the hearth-rug and began to reckon up the days!

“He will come back himself,” she whispered to Tory, as he laid his head on her arm and blinked his eyes sagaciously. “And how glad we shall be to see him, Tory, you and I! He will sit between us here, at the fire, and he will scold me. He will lecture me dreadfully, Tory, but he is sure to be very pleased with you. I will tell him what a good boy you have been, and how you have kept me company.”

In vain she watched and waited for an answer to her letter. Every morning, wet or dry, accompanied by Tory, she walked to the avenue-gates, and herself received the post-bag. How she looked out for the arrivals of the mails viâ Brindisi, and reckoned up the days and hours till her much-desired letter could come! When the allotted two months had elapsed, and it did not appear, hope, instead of being silent, told a still more flattering tale.

“He is coming himself; he may be here any day,” it said. For days, and even weeks, Alice deluded herself with this idea. A step, the sudden opening of a door, made her start and flush crimson. But time went on, her boy was born, and still no letter; so her heart hardened once more. Not only was she herself slighted and despised, but what outraged her feelings in their most sensitive point, her child was ignored. “He might have sent me even one little line; he is barbarous, cruel, unnatural,” were some of her bitter reflections.

Miss Saville, a good-tempered, sensible, elderly lady, very fond of her niece, had come to Monkswood, and with her a new régime commenced; no more untouched meals, no more “moping,” as she called it, permitted. But now that Alice had her baby to engross her mind, she was not so much inclined to live in the past as in the present. When she did think of her husband, it was with an indescribable mixture of remorse, indignation, and regret. The “confessions” from Cheetapore were duly forwarded to Alice, and were safely locked up in her dressing-case; but as he had not deigned to take any notice of her abject apology before the matter had been cleared up, it was unnecessary to trouble him with another appeal, even supposing her own pride would have permitted a second abasement, which it would not.

When not occupied in the nursery, Alice spent a good deal of time in taking long rides in the neighbourhood. In company with Martin, the old family groom, she scoured the country for miles far and near, very much to her own enjoyment and greatly to the indignation of the surrounding élite, who had no idea that a young woman sent to Monkswood by her husband in the deepest disgrace should be permitted so much relaxation and amusement. Her horses were first-rate, her riding undeniable, and once in the saddle she half forgot her troubles, and seemed more like herself once more. The perfect equanimity with which she met the cold hard stare of the county people, and the inimitable grace with which she managed her thoroughbred, made them feel—the ladies especially—more wickedly disposed towards her than ever.

The whisper of scandal was busy with her name in a way that she, poor girl, had little idea of; and stories were circulated that would have made her absent husband’s blood boil had he only known. The accepted legend was, “that she had been on the point of eloping with her cousin, Mr. Saville, during her husband’s temporary absence; that he had fortunately returned just in time to frustrate their plans, and, to save a public ésclandre and the Fairfax good name, had relegated his erring wife to Monkswood, and had himself volunteered for the East.”

“But she is all the same as a divorcée. He has left her for ever,” her kind neighbours whispered over their five-o’clock tea; “and she is not to be tolerated in Steepshire society.”

The Mayhews occasionally sent Sir Reginald’s missives to his wife, and she observed that, although her boy was often alluded to with interest and affection, her own name was never mentioned. She had done violence to her pride in sending him Maurice’s photograph, and he had treated it with the same disdain as her letter.

When the Afghan war broke out, all his epistles to Mark or Helen were regularly forwarded to her, and she received the news of his having gained the Victoria Cross with a pride that she did not attempt to conceal; but her fears and anxieties far outweighed any pleasure the intelligence afforded her. It did not delight her to hear that he had gained the sobriquet of “Fighting Fairfax”—far from it; and when Captain Vaughan’s letter arrived her agony was beyond description. How she bore the miserable week that intervened before the next mail was only known to herself. She endured in silence, opening her heart to no one—taking no one into her confidence; not shedding a single tear, but going about her usual duties with a white set face that fairly frightened her aunt. “If he is dead,” she would say to herself as she paced her room, “he has gone without forgiving me. As I stand here he may be already weeks in his lonely foreign grave, and I, without knowing it, am his widow. If this is the case, I believe it will kill me.” Never very robust at any time, she looked now so worn, so thin, so altered, even with the suspense of less than a week, that it seemed as if it would not take much to snap her hold on life.

She heard from the Mayhews of her husband’s approaching return, and saw by his letters how very reluctant he was to come home.

He little knew that his wife’s eyes would rest on the lines he was penning when he said:

“I have no wish to return to England; I am ten times happier out here than I shall be at home; and excepting to see you and Helen, and my son and heir, I do not wish to set foot in my native land for years. All my interests and all I care about most are bound up in the fortunes of the Seventeenth Royal Hussars. I hope to get command of the regiment ere long, and if I do I would not change places with any king or emperor you could name.”

Alice read the above with apparent composure and handed it back to Helen, to whom she was paying a short visit. Indignation and disappointment were depicted in her face, in spite of her heroic efforts to appear indifferent. She went and stood at the window, to hide the tears that would come into her eyes.

“He does not mean it, Alice,” said Helen soothingly.

“It is nothing to me whether he does or not,” replied Alice hotly, “but he does mean it; at any rate we will not talk about him.” Then continued, with womanly consistency: “I can read between the lines of that letter. I am the cause of his reluctance to come home; he does not wish to be in the same country with me; he hates to remember that he is a married man; he is afraid that we shall meet; but he need not be. England is wide enough for both of us, and I have no wish to see a husband who has completely ignored me for nearly three years.” So saying, and rapidly collecting her hat, umbrella, and gloves (having just come in from the park), she swept indignantly out of the room.

CHAPTER VI.
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE.

Three years had made a wonderful change in Alice: she was a very different Alice to what she had been when we first saw her at Malta. Her naturally high spirits and elastic temperament had been almost totally subdued and crushed by the life of retirement and isolation she had led. She felt, although barely twenty-one, as if she had already lived her life: the happiness, gaiety, and domestic sunshine, the common lot of girls of her age, was not for her, an outcast from society, a deserted wife. Sometimes her youth and natural buoyancy would assert themselves, and she would find herself singing and laughing as of old, especially as she played with Maurice, and allowed him to drive her as his willing steed up and down the passages and round the garden; but such were rare occasions.

The mistress of Monkswood was a tall, slight, dignified young lady, who often inspired her aunt with awe by the gravity of her demeanour, and who found it hard to realise that she and the madcap child of former years were one and the same individual. She utterly refused to leave Monkswood, and, with the exception of a flying visit to the Mayhews, had never been away from home for one night. Nor did she encourage people to stay with her, saying she had no inducement to offer, and that it was much too stupid at Monkswood to repay anyone the trouble of coming so far.

At length her aunt, Miss Saville, greatly concerned by her niece’s listlessness and dejection, took upon herself to invite Miss Ferrars, one of Alice’s former companions, on a long visit. “The young,” she rightly argued, “like the young; her former schoolfellow will cheer her up. After all, an old woman like myself is no companion for a girl from one year’s end to another.”

Miss Ferrars duly arrived at Monkswood. She was a year older than Lady Fairfax, a clever, warm-hearted girl, with untiring spirits and energy. She was tall and well developed, and looked twice as much the matron as her slim girlish hostess. She had a pleasant, intelligent, rather than handsome face, with sparkling brown eyes, and quantities of beautiful bronze-coloured hair. She was unaffectedly surprised at the change in her former schoolfellow. Could this silent, grave, melancholy-looking young lady be indeed the bright Alice of Rougemont, who used to keep them all alive with her bright face and gay sallies?

Soon they relapsed into their old groove, however, going over their former experiences with mutual pleasure. Professors, schoolfellows, examinations, places, and people were reviewed and discussed, and Alice took her friend into her confidence on every subject save one. Her Bluebeard’s closet, her sealed book, was her husband’s name, and that she always most scrupulously avoided. To her friend’s inquiries about him her answers were cold and brief; her short married career she never touched upon, and Mary Ferrars having indirectly heard that Sir Reginald did not “get on” with his wife, and was anything but a highly-domesticated animal, seeing that he had been abroad for nearly three years, never alluded to him again.

Miss Ferrars and Alice shared the same room, and though they would lie awake talking for hours in the most approved young-lady fashion, nothing had escaped Alice’s lips that gave her friend any clue to the mystery which enshrouded her husband. She roused herself for the entertainment of her schoolfellow, and became every day more like her old self. She purchased a tame sedate steed for her use, and gave her riding lessons, and together they explored the neighbourhood. They got up a lawn-tennis in the pleasure-grounds, where they played half their mornings, making Maurice very useful in fetching the balls.

Maurice was now a young gentleman in belted blouse, sturdy and well-made. He had a fair broad forehead, dark eyes, dark lashes, and dark curls. He already possessed a very decided will of his own, and was absolute master of all the womenkind on the premises, from Alice to the cook inclusive.

The two young ladies had effected a great change in the interior of the house. The drawing-room was now a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. They had routed out old pictures and hung them on the walls; the Chippendale furniture had been brought to the front, and some beautiful old china had been arranged on a venerable black buffet that had been discovered in the laundry; more plates and dishes were affixed to the walls on velvet shields; in fact, the drawing-room and tea-room were their mutual hobby, and became two of the most charming apartments possible to see, with polished floors and Persian rugs.

June and July passed—a vision of hot, sweet-scented, languid summer days. Then came August; and August brought a visitor to Monkswood.

Meanwhile Sir Reginald had landed at Southampton and made his way to London, where he was rapturously received by the inmates of Wessex Gardens. They thought him graver, thinner, and very much sun-burnt from the voyage, but otherwise he was the same as ever. The day following his arrival he produced presents for all the Mayhew family—an Afghan matchlock and knife for Mark; a Cashmere tea-set and shawl for Helen; toys, puzzles, and sweetmeats for the children.

Helen, having tried on her shawl and viewed herself with much complacency in all the mirrors and from every point of view, came over to where Sir Reginald was explaining a puzzle to the children, and, throwing herself into a chair opposite, said abruptly:

“And what have you brought Alice?”

“Alice!” he stammered, reddening even through the sunburn to the roots of his crisp dark hair. Then immediately recovering himself, replied, as he stooped to pick up a piece of the puzzle which had fallen on the floor: “Oh, nothing.”

“Has he not brought her himself and his V.C.?” said Mark, giving him a tremendous slap on the back. “What more could she desire?”

“I am not so humble as to consider myself nothing, whatever you may think of me, Mark,” he returned, without raising his eyes from the puzzle, which he had just completed in the neatest manner; and, holding it out on the palm of his hand, he said: “Now, Hilda, if you put this together before dinner this evening I’ll give you the biggest box of chocolate you ever saw. I’m off to the club now,” he added, standing up and preparing to depart, cleverly eluding the fire of cross questions with which Helen was preparing to attack him.

For several days he evaded all her attempts to inveigle him into a tête-à-tête; his engagements were so numerous that he was seldom at home, for all his old friends flocked round him, and he was the hero of the hour. Dozens of invitations came daily pouring in, and he seemed to be fairly launched in London society, and carried away by its current. Helen, like the hen whose duckling had taken to the water, looked on in impotent despair. The highest in the land, the beauties of the season, were all equally ready to engage his time. As she saw him in the Row, the centre of a circle of former brother-officers, then beckoned to the carriage of one of the belles of the season, who engaged him in most animated and empressé conversation, she said to herself: “This will never do; has he forgotten that he has a home and a wife, or does he mean to ignore both completely?” She sought in vain for opportunities to sound him on the subject; he never was with her alone. All her little hints about Alice, all her endeavours to bring her name into conversation, were completely fruitless; he exhibited a skill in avoiding this one particular theme, a dexterity that irritated and amazed her. At length, after he had been nearly a fortnight in London, Helen made up her mind to stand this state of affairs no longer. Accordingly, the evening when he was dining at the Guards’ Club, she waited up for him in her boudoir. Hearing him leisurely ascending the stairs between one and two o’clock, she went out into the corridor and beckoned him into her room, saying:

“Come in here, Regy; I want to speak to you.”

Strangling a yawn, and laying down his candlestick, he flung himself into the nearest arm-chair with a mock tragic gesture, and said: “Say on.”

It was all very well to say “Say on,” but how was she to begin? Now that she had caged her bird she began to realise the delicate task that lay before her. She well knew that it was a proverbially thankless and dangerous mission to interfere between husband and wife; and Regy, although he had often stood a little boy at her knee, and come to her with all his grievances, was now a man, known to be clever, distinguished, and thoroughly able to think and act, not only for himself but for others. How well he looked in his mess-dress, so bronzed, soldierlike, and handsomer than ever! He was leaning back with his arms clasped behind his head, regarding her with lazy amusement.

She must begin, she thought, somehow, and forthwith broke the ice clumsily enough by saying: “Had you a pleasant evening, Regy?”

“A pleasant evening!” he echoed. “Why, you foolish old lady, you never mean to say that you have sat up till nearly two o’clock to ask me such a question?”

“No, not quite,” she replied, laughing nervously. “The truth is, Regy—and don’t think I am inhospitable, or want to turn you out, or anything——” And she paused.

“Well, and what is the truth, as you call it?” he asked brusquely.

“When are you going to Monkswood?”

“To Monkswood!” he repeated, suddenly sitting erect and looking at her fixedly. “That is easily answered——never!”

“Oh Reginald, you can’t mean it! Do you not wish to see Alice or your boy?”

“We will not speak of Alice, if you please,” he said gravely. “I have nothing to say to her; but you must manage that I shall see the boy somehow, Helen,” he added eagerly. “Could you get him up here for a few days? I’m off to Norway with Fordyce the end of the month.”

“I am quite sure that Alice would never allow him out of her sight, and I will never have him here without his mother. Do you mean me to understand that you will not suffer me to speak to you about her?” she asked hotly.

“I do. Not even with you, Helen, my more than sister, will I discuss my wife—that was.”

“Then,” exclaimed Helen with rising indignation, “things are at a deadlock. Alice will not speak of you to anyone, you will not suffer me to mention her name, and neither of you will have anything to say to the other. I know I could reconcile you both, were you not so inconceivably proud and stiff-necked.”

“Look here, Helen,” he said, rising and beginning to pace about the room, “I know you mean well and kindly, but take my advice and leave us alone. We get on best apart. Our marriage was a tremendous blunder; we both know that now. I have endeavoured to forget that I have ever had a wife. Alice and I are utter strangers. As her guardian, I have taken excellent care of her interests, and studied her comfort and happiness as far as it is in my power; but as her husband” (and he emphasized the word), “I have done with her.”

Hitherto he had been walking up and down the room, but as he concluded he came to a full stop before Mrs. Mayhew, who, rising and stretching out her plump white hands towards him with a gesture of dismay, said:

“Are you mad, Reginald, to talk like this? You do not know what you are saying. It is very easy to repudiate your wife to me; but when you do it publicly what will people say? Have you thought of that? What would you yourself say of a young couple who married for love, separated almost in their honeymoon, the husband to go to India, the wife to shut herself up in the country?”

“I would say nothing,” he interrupted. “Why should I?”

“Wait! I have not finished,” she continued hastily. “The husband, after an absence of three years, returns; comes to London, mixes freely in society, but never goes to see his young wife. You must remember,” she pursued, literally button-holing him by his mess-jacket, “that you are Alice’s guardian as well as her husband; she has no father or mother, nor any relation in the world to protect her good name except yourself and Geoffrey, and he is only a boy.”

“Geoffrey!” he exclaimed contemptuously.

“You don’t know what you are doing, Regy,” she pleaded. “If you go abroad, as you have arranged, without seeing Alice, you will do her a great injury in the eyes of the world. Your friends know that there is an estrangement between you; at least for the sake of appearances, patch up a truce at any rate.”

“I am not a hypocrite, and I will do nothing of the kind,” he muttered angrily, drawing back and endeavouring to release himself from his cousin’s grasp.

It was useless; she was a pertinacious woman, and she would be heard.

“Do not go,” she entreated. “I never see you alone now, and I must gain my point—I must indeed. You will hear me. It is all very well to say you have ceased to think of Alice as your wife—which I do not believe—but, at any rate, you cannot forget that she is the mother of your child, can you?” she asked, with an air and emphasis that would not have disgraced Mrs. Siddons.

No reply. “Silence gives consent, I see,” she nodded triumphantly as she continued; “and as the mother of your child, surely you would wish her to be honoured and respected, if not for her own sake at least for his?”

An impatient gesture of assent was all his reply.

“Think of the life of retirement and seclusion she has led; surely that has been punishment enough?”

“Who is talking of punishment?” he exclaimed, forcibly removing Helen’s hand. “Alice is her own mistress, to come and go as she pleases.”

“She has never left home nevertheless, in spite of all our invitations, with the exception of a short visit this spring. You don’t know the furore she created; we used to be quite mobbed walking in the Row.”

A very unamiable scowl was the only notice he deigned to this remark.

“You have no idea how lovely she is,” she urged impressively.

“Have I not?” he replied dryly.

“No; how can you?—you have not seen her for ages. She is greatly changed in every way; no longer the giddy, impulsive girl you remember. If you only knew how distracted she was when you were so dangerously wounded!”

“Pray how can you tell?” he asked with raised brows and a certain amount of sarcastic incredulity in his expression.

“I know all about it from Miss Saville. She told me that during the week that followed Captain Vaughan’s letter Alice fretted away to half her size, and that her grief and misery were painful to witness.”

Perceiving that he was gradually wavering, she urged:

“You will have to go down to Monkswood, my dear Regy, if only for the sake of public opinion. Go as her guardian at any rate; putting your wife aside, it is your duty to go and see your ward. You will go, if only for a few days,” she entreated anxiously.

“Yes, I will go,” he replied slowly and with an evident effort. “I never looked at the subject from your point of view before. I see that it is necessary for me to study appearances, but I only go as her guardian, recollect. You are very eager in the matter, Helen, and very pressing,” he added with a smile, “but Alice is by no means so anxious to see me as you imagine.”

“She is! she is!” cried Helen, in whose case the wish was father to the thought. “And as for you,” laying her hand affectionately on his shoulder, “you know you are very fond of her all the time, and that in your heart you are dying to see her; now are you not?”

“What would be the good of telling you?” he replied evasively. “At any rate, Alice does not care two straws about me. I know her far better than you do, Helen, wise as you think yourself. I know her private opinion of me; but confidences between married people are sacred,” he added with a bitter smile. “I suppose she knows that I have come home? he asked abruptly after a short silence.

“Oh yes; I wrote and told her of your safe arrival.”

“And what did she say?” he inquired with unconcealed eagerness.

“Well, strange to say, Regy, she never answered my letter. But then, you know,” she added with an awkward laugh, “what a very bad correspondent she is.”

“A very bad correspondent as you say,” he replied, with such emphasis that Helen looked at him amazed.

“Tell me, Regy, has she never written to you?” she inquired with solemn eyes.

“Then to-morrow or next day I shall start for Monkswood,” he observed, coolly ignoring her question.

“Do, my dear boy,” returned Helen with effusion; “you don’t know how glad I am to hear you say so. Mark and Geoffrey and I will follow you the end of the week and pay a visit to Alice, which your arrival has somewhat postponed.”

“Well, now I suppose I may go to bed?” said Reginald, taking up his candle and looking at his cousin interrogatively. “You have said your say, and carried your point, have you not? I am not at all sure that you are not sending me on a fool’s errand, Helen.”

“I am very sure that I am not, Regy. You will be grateful to me some day, though now I daresay you think me a meddlesome, tiresome busybody. You look awfully tired and fagged, so I won’t keep you up any longer. Good-night!” she concluded, holding up her cheek to be kissed.

As the door closed on him, a triumphant smile broke over her face. “He is all right, at any rate. If Alice were as easily managed or talked over all would be as it ought to be in no time. I am only sorry I did not make this opportunity before,” said Mrs. Mayhew aloud, as she turned to seek her well-earned repose, firmly persuaded that she had achieved a triumph of finesse.

Sir Reginald kept his promise, and went down to Monkswood “solely in the character of Alice’s guardian,” he kept telling himself. “Perverse girl, never would he own her as his wife, until she had made complete submission,” and yet in his heart of hearts how ardently he longed to see her! How he recurred again and again to what Miss Saville had told Helen! If they met alone, who could tell but that she would encircle his neck with her slim fair arms and whisper a petition for forgiveness, for pardon—if she only knew how readily, how eagerly he would grant it!

The nearest station to Monkswood was Manister, a cathedral and garrison town five miles off. Here he procured a fly, and with Cox and a portmanteau started without delay. Arrived at Monkswood, he told the driver to go round to the yard and get refreshments for man and beast, and desiring his servant to see that his old room was got ready, he sprang up the steps. The hall-door was wide open, and he met Miss Saville sallying forth in a large garden-hat, her hands protected by chamois-leather gauntlets and her dress tucked up in a businesslike manner. She was exceedingly astonished, and beckoning her nephew-in-law into the library, overwhelmed him with questions. In reply to one of his, she said that Alice was still far from robust, or as gay and happy as she could wish to see her, but that she was wonderfully improved since Miss Ferrars had been with her. “They were both in the grounds, drinking tea under the cedar; should she go and prepare them?”

“No, certainly not; unless it would give Alice a shock; and he supposed she knew that he was in England?”

“Yes, she heard of your arrival some days ago; but I think she scarcely expected to see you here,” replied Miss Saville.

“Did she not? And why not, may I ask?”

“Do not inquire from me, Reginald; you and Alice are the best judges of your own affairs. I have never interfered in any way, as you are aware. Alice is the proper person to answer your question. Naturally, she is deeply hurt; I can see that. You have never sent her one line since the birth of your son; but I am not in her confidence.” A footman, who had just entered, was quietly motioned away during this conversation, and went downstairs in great excitement.

“Well, I’m blessed, Mrs. Morris, if there isn’t a strange young man in the library, and the old lady a-holding forth to him like one o’clock, and he signs me out of the room as cool as you please!”

“What is he like?” inquired a chorus of maid-servants.

“Oh, he’s a tall dark swell, that looks as if the whole place belonged to him.”

“And so it does,” said Cox, his man, coming in and banging down his dressing-case. “If he is not master here, I’d like to know who is?”

“Lor’, Mr. Cox, what a start you have give us! And is it really Sir Reginald himself?” cried Mrs. Morris, rising.

“You can use your eyes, Mrs. Morris; there he goes down the steps.”

An immediate rush was made to the window to catch a glimpse.

Yes, sure enough there he was, walking towards the pleasure-grounds with Miss Saville.

“Thank God, he looks well and strong!” said Mrs. Morris with fervour, following his retreating figure with tears in her eyes.

“My! what a handsome gentleman!” exclaimed an enthusiastic housemaid. “If he does not suit her she is hard to please, isn’t she, Polly?”

“Brown, please to remember yourself,” said Mrs. Morris sharply.

“Not but that,” she added, relaxing, “all the Fairfaxes are good-looking. Many a time I carried him in my arms, the same as I do Master Maurice. Ay, it seems but the other day.”

“I little thought you would ever see him again alive, ma’am; it was touch and go with him once, I can tell you,” observed Cox gravely.

“I must go now and see about dinner,” seizing her keys and bustling about, “but you will tell me all about it when you dine with me by-and-by, Mr. Cox,” said Mrs. Morris, as, followed by the footman and housemaid, she hurried from the room.

CHAPTER VII.
“MARY, IT IS MY HUSBAND!”

Alice and Mary were to be found under the cedars, a very favourite resort of theirs those August evenings. A round wicker table stood between them, upon which were all the requirements of afternoon tea. Alice, leaning back in a low garden-chair, was reading to Mary, who was knitting, “A Princess of Thule.” How pretty she looked! The sun, glancing through the sombre branches, fell in stray flecks on her hair and dress—a white cambric trimmed with quantities of lace and knots of pale-blue ribbon. She was twirling a carnation in her fingers as she read. But there was a grave melancholy expression in her downcast face, sad to see in one so young. Coming to the end of a chapter, she paused and exclaimed, looking up:

“Well, I must confess, the Princess of Thule ran away from her husband on very small provocation. Don’t you think so, Molly?”

Molly, instead of replying, said, as she gazed intently over Alice’s head:

“Why, who is this young man coming over here with Miss Saville?”

“Young man?” echoed Alice indifferently, and without turning her head; “oh, it must be the postmaster. Auntie promised him a quantity of geranium and carnation cuttings.”

“Does the postmaster wear well-cut clothes and a dark moustache? Is the postmaster a gentleman?”

“No, you ridiculous girl,” turning and looking over her shoulder. After a minute’s dead silence, “Mary,” she gasped, “it is my husband!”

Her face was deadly pale as she raised it to her friend’s, and letting the book slip from her knees, she rose and leant against the tree with both her hands pressed to her heart. The cedar was between her and the house, and she had time to recover herself a little before her husband joined them. As he approached she looked at him keenly. Had he borne the traces of his recent wounds and fever, and looked a war-worn invalid, her woman’s heart would have melted instantly, but as he came across the grass his step was as buoyant, his eyes as keen, and his bearing as gallant as ever. A thousand thoughts seemed to crowd to her brain, her heart beat as though it would choke her, she was trembling from head to foot; as, with all the composure she could muster, and without meeting his glance, she gave him her hand in silence.

Miss Saville promptly introduced Mary Ferrars.

“You and I ought to be friends, Miss Ferrars; I was your brother’s fag at Eton, and many a thrashing he gave me. Don’t you think that that constitutes a tie between us?”

He made the above speech in order to give Alice time to compose herself; and self-possessed as he seemed, his heart was bounding wildly too.

“I hope you are now quite strong, Alice,” he said, looking at her with evident concern, for her face was as pale as ashes.

“Quite, thank you,” was her laconic reply as she seated herself. Her knees were trembling so that she dared not, and could not, stand any longer.

“Give us some tea, my dear,” said Miss Saville, who fortunately appeared to grasp the situation, and tea was made; and as it was handed about a certain amount of conversation began to circulate. London, and Reginald’s visit to the Mayhews, his passage home, the latest news from the East, formed in turn topics of discourse. Alice scarcely opened her lips. Sir Reginald might have been a casual visitor, who had just dropped in, for all the warmth, sympathy, or interest displayed by his wife. A more uncomfortable quartette seldom took tea together. No one would suppose that the pale haughty-looking girl and the dark bronzed young man, so leisurely sipping his tea, were husband and wife, and had only met within the last ten minutes after a separation of years. Mary Ferrars gazed from one to the other in silent amazement. Although outwardly calm, conflicting emotions were waging war in their bosoms.

She was thinking: “If I don’t manage to get away I shall disgrace myself—I shall burst out crying. This lump in my throat will choke me.” He was thinking: “Helen was dreaming. This notion of hers was one of her most superb flights of imagination. I was a fool to listen to her. She was dreaming,” he repeated, as he looked at his wife; and certainly in that pale set face there was no sign of either welcome or repentance.

These thoughts were interrupted by their merry bold-faced boy, who, trotting past Sir Reginald, far ahead of his grave and stately nurse, rushed up to Alice, saying: “I’ve come for cake.”

“Yes, yes, my darling!” replied his mother, stooping over his dark curls. “Presently. Go over first and speak to that gentleman, and give him a kiss.”