Read Ebook: The Flag of the Adventurer by Grier Sydney C Pearse Alfred Illustrator

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Ebook has 1702 lines and 132513 words, and 35 pages

"They were saying at Bombay that Lord Maryport consulted old Lennox before he consented--or at any rate that Lennox had given him the advice," said Richard.

"Much more likely!" said Colonel Bayard quickly. "Well, he will always have that to his credit, at any rate--that we were not left to be the laughing-stock of the East. Oh, I have nothing against the old fellow, provided he stays down where he is, and don't come meddling up here."

"But don't you like Sir Harry Lennox, Colonel Bayard?" asked Eveleen--her tone suggesting that she did.

"Don't I say I have nothing against him, my dear lady? But there's no earthly reason for the Bombay C.-in-C. to come poking about in Khemistan. It ain't his to poke about in, for one thing."

"That little difficulty wouldn't stop him," said Ambrose drily. "You should hear the Bombay people talk. He's fluttering their dovecots for 'em, and no mistake."

"Oh, well, we all know there are plenty of dark corners that want sweeping out, and he's welcome to do it. Did you get a sight of him when you were down there?"

"He happened to be in the town, so I went to pay my respects. The queerest old ruffian you ever saw--black as a nigger, with a beak like any old Jew in the bazar, and whiskers streaming every way at once."

"It's to hide the scar he got at Busaco he wears them long," broke in Eveleen indignantly. "He has been severely wounded seven times--it's covered with scars he is entirely."

"And would feel himself amply repaid if he knew Mrs Ambrose kept count of 'em, I'll be bound," said Colonel Bayard gallantly. "Is the old General a friend of yours, ma'am?"

"He is, indeed. At least, I met him when I was at Mahabuleshwar, and he was very kind. He might have been an Irishman."

"Really? Well, they say that, thanks to being born in Ireland, he has all the Irish vices without a drop of Irish blood in his veins."

"Not a bit of it!" Eveleen flashed back at him. "We are not wild Irish, don't you know--the tame kind. We were always taught to behave nicely and try to be English."

"Mrs Ambrose would jest on her deathbed, I believe," said her husband, rather uncomfortably.

"Now you see what Ambrose is in private life--always talking about deathbeds and the poorhouse and cheerful things of that sort. There! I've forgotten again. The poorhouse is a solemn subject, and not to be mentioned in the same breath with a joke."

She glanced with mock apology at her husband, but there was a touch of defiance in the tone, and Colonel Bayard hastened to smooth matters over. "Well, ma'am, I have forgot what it was I said--though I'm sure you remember it--but you'll oblige me by considering it unsaid. I'll swear Sir Harry Lennox is the greatest hero since Achilles if that will please you--provided he keeps away from Khemistan."

"Ah, but why?" with poignant reproach. "If he comes, he'll be bringing Brian with him--my brother."

"My dear, what nonsense are you talking?" interjected her husband. She drew back a little.

"It was nonsense, of course. Why would he come at all? But if he did come--why, Sir Harry loves his Irishmen, as everybody knows."

"Still I hope he won't bring 'em here. We want no more British troops in Khemistan, Mrs Ambrose. When we came here three years ago it was doing one injustice in order to do another. We wanted to use Khemistan as a stepping-stone to get at Ethiopia, and when we had done it we refused to go away. We forced a treaty upon the Khans, and we kept this place. Do you wonder that the sight of more redcoats would convince 'em that we meant to take the whole country?"

"How can you be so childish, my dear?" demanded her husband impatiently, but Colonel Bayard bent his head with a deferential gesture.

"No, my dear Ambrose, I am justly rebuked. As Mrs Ambrose sees, I am liable to grow improperly warm on this subject. But she will pardon me when she learns the nature of my charge here. I stand as guardian, ma'am, to the entire ruling family, and I swear I love 'em as if they were my own children."

"The whole lot of 'em--from frowsy old Gul Ali down to little fat Hafiz-Ullah," assented Richard.

"Your husband may laugh at me, ma'am, but I swear he values the friendship of my dear Khans as much as I do."

"Do I? Well, you know my opinion," said Ambrose dispassionately. "Good sportsmen, most of 'em, but precious tough customers."

"I love listening to it," she assured him truthfully, but she rose and collected handkerchief and fan. If only he would disregard her presence as completely as he did that of the silent statuesque servants behind the chairs, how much she might learn of this new life to which she had come! There was a touch of reproach in her manner as she passed him, and he saw it. Mrs Ambrose interested him. What could be the reason of the evident coolness between her and her husband? he asked himself, as he looked after the graceful figure with its pale draperies, and the crown of dark hair, insecurely fastened, as it appeared, with a high Spanish comb.

It had all passed through his mind while he turned from the door and the servants were withdrawing noiselessly, and in his impulsive way he stopped and laid his hand on Ambrose's shoulder.

"You and I are old friends, my boy--let me say one word. I don't know what tales you may have heard when you rushed off to Bombay, but believe me, they were lies. Your wife is a good woman--if ever I have met one--and she adores you."

Ambrose laughed, not very pleasantly. "You are agitating yourself unnecessarily," with some stiffness. "I am quite aware my wife adores me--worse luck! I mean she makes me a laughing-stock in company," he added hastily.

"Money, my good sir--nothing but money! She was ruining me. I swear to you, I should have been broke in another year of it."

"It was not clothes," resentfully. "The difficulty with Mrs Ambrose is to induce her to wear clothes suited to her position. But what do you say to her paying the debts of the young scamp of a brother she mentioned, who is playing the fool with the best in an Irish regiment?"

"That I should have a word to say to the brother before visiting his sins on the sister."

"I should like you to try it, and see how much Mrs Ambrose would allow you to say! And what do you think of her rebuilding the stables of the bungalow--a hired bungalow, mind you--I took for her? and saying that in Ireland they kept the horses warm and dry, however poorly they themselves were lodged?"

"An amiable weakness, surely?"

"Mere childishness, believe me. She has no more idea of the value of money than an infant in arms! When it's there she spends it, and when it ain't she writes chits! She would buy anything--a mangy starved pony, and vow it was an Arab, if you please!"

"And it was a common bazar tat?"

"Ah, it's the other way with you, I know. But for Mrs Bayard's prudence, you would leave Khemistan a poorer man than you entered it."

"She would tell you it will be so in any case," said Colonel Bayard ruefully.

/But/ if a difference about money was the immediate cause of the strained relations between Major Ambrose and his wife, no one would have denied more vehemently than Eveleen herself that it was the beginning of their estrangement. That had happened long ago--even, so she sometimes thought, before their marriage. This might seem an Irish way of putting it, but at times she would tell herself that she must have been blind not to see there was something wrong with Richard then, though again the idea would look absolutely absurd. For why should he have married her unless he wanted her as she did him? She would never have lifted a finger to hold him had he wished to be free! She raged against him a little now as she stood solitary in the middle of the absent Mrs Bayard's drawing-room, seeing nothing of her surroundings. If he must be sarcastic and cross, why try to humiliate her in the presence of a stranger, instead of keeping his horrid remarks till they were alone together, and she could answer them as they deserved? There was little of the patient Griselda about Eveleen Ambrose.

"Such an English room!" Her wrath was suddenly diverted--though rather to the general atmosphere of bleak tidiness than to poor Mrs Bayard's treasured "Europe" furniture--and she shuddered. "Sure I'll choke here!" She fled to the verandah. "Ah, now!" and she stood spellbound by the wonderful moonlight shining on a limitless sea that washed the very hill-top on which the house stood. A moment's reflection assured her that the sea was a thick mist enshrouding the town and the low-lying land about it, and hiding the mud and dust and crudeness which had been so painfully evident by day, and she dropped into a chair to watch it, for there were little eddies which looked exactly like moving water. She had not meant to stay in the drawing-room; her intention had been to slip away to bed, leaving an excuse with the servants for her host's benefit, but it was so peaceful here, and she needed a little mental refreshment before coping once more with Ketty. But her meditations hardly brought her the peace she desired, for almost at once she was involved again in the perpetual quest of When? and How? and Why?

It was twenty years since Richard Ambrose and Eveleen Delany had first met in the hunting-field--and parted almost as soon. She was a pretty girl riding as daringly as the conventions of the time and a fierce old uncle would allow her, he one of the junior officers of the regiment quartered in the neighbourhood. Two or three days' hunting, a scrambled meal or two taken in common, sandwiches shared in the shelter of a deep lane--Richard's fingers had actually trembled so that he could scarcely untie the string, she remembered,--such a brief and broken acquaintance to change the whole course of one life, if not two! He had nothing but his pay and his debts, she was an orphan adopted into an already overflowing and impoverished household in a spirit of mingled improvidence and charity. To do him justice, Richard had no hope of being allowed to marry her then, but he would pay his debts with the sale of his commission, and transfer to the Indian Service, and come or send for her as soon as he could see his way clear. Had he been an Irishman the engagement might have been allowed, but old General Delany discerned a calculating and parsimonious spirit in his anxious planning, and sent him about his business with slight sympathy. To this day Eveleen could not think calmly of their parting. Something of the old agony shook her again as she heard her own voice--hoarse with the strain of trying to speak bravely for her lover's sake--assuring him again and again that she would wait any length of time, five years, a hundred years, for ever, for him to return and claim her. He had sworn to come back, sworn that her image would be ever before his eyes until that blessed moment arrived; had sobbed--Richard Ambrose sobbing!--as he tore him self away when they kissed for the last time. Thus they parted--the boy setting his face resolutely eastwards, with the safeguard of a high purpose in his soul, the girl taking up the harder task of doing nothing in particular.

Those many, many years of waiting! Eveleen could not look back on them dispassionately even now. She was again the girl who watched feverishly for the ramshackle "ass's cart" which conveyed the rural post-woman on her rounds, who manoeuvred for the privilege of asking for letters at the post-office when the family drove into town. And there never were any letters. Deeply in love as he was, Richard Ambrose had been cut to the quick by General Delany's contemptuous dismissal, and registered a vow that he would never return until he could confront the old man with abundant proof that he could keep Eveleen in proper comfort. That time did not come. Things were bitterly hard for the Company's Army in time of peace. Its officers were the unfailing victims of the constant demands from home for economy and retrenchment, until no man remained with his regiment who had influence to obtain civil employ. Richard Ambrose was uniformly unfortunate. He had no influence, and a malign fate seemed to shut him out of the little wars of the period--often lucrative enough. Once he had been mauled out tiger shooting, and was in hospital; once, after several unusually obstinate bouts of fever, he was an invalid in Australia. But his was not one of the crack regiments, and the greater part of his time was spent in one dull station or another, doing the work of two or three seconded men as well as his own. Faithful alike to his self-imposed vow and to General Delany's commands, he never wrote to Eveleen.

Eveleen gave no sign of resenting his silence. When she refused one or two good matches, her relatives were loud in scorn of her folly, but by-and-by they arrived at the comfortable conviction that all was for the best. Her cousins were marrying off or setting up homes of their own, and the General was becoming increasingly difficult to live with. It was really providential that the niece who owed him so much should be available to ride with him, to keep house for him in the scrambling style from which neither of them dreamed of departing, and in the long evenings to take a hand at whist if other players were available, join him in chess or backgammon if they were not, and at all times turn away his wrath with cheerful--if not invariably soft--answers. If her recompense seemed inadequate, there was Brian to be thought of--the young brother for whose sake Eveleen would sometimes even attempt that hardest of all tasks, saving money. "I would rob the mail for Brian!" she declared once defiantly to her uncle, and thanks to her unceasing efforts, Brian was given--and, urged tearfully by her, submitted to receive--some sort of education, sufficient at any rate to enable him to take advantage of the offer of an old comrade of the General's to attach him to his staff as a Volunteer, until he could obtain a commission. It was a difficult business to supply the young gentleman's needs while he was expected to live as an officer on the pay of a private, and the habits he picked up on the staff were not exactly such as would conduce to his efficiency in a marching regiment, but the day she first saw her boy in the uniform of the 990th Foot, Eveleen felt she could die happy.

And then Richard Ambrose came back. He had found his opportunity at last. The Ethiopian adventure, which was the grave of so many reputations, made his. He went into it an undistinguished captain, and he came out a major and a C.B., whose resolute defence early in the war of an all-important post on the line of communications had even been heard of at home. He was wounded--but the present generation would have hailed his wound as a "Blighty one"; it was just sufficiently severe to induce the surgeons to advise a voyage home and back before he took up the new post of Assistant Resident in Khemistan which Colonel Bayard promised to keep open for him. Eveleen could never quite decide whether she had been expecting him to return or not. So many years had passed, and he had never sent her word or sign. But one morning, as she sat in her saddle at the covert-side, a little removed from the throng of cheery riders, watching the meet in which she no longer took part, one figure detached itself from the rest. A gentleman dismounted, and throwing the bridle to his servant, approached her--a tall bronzed man, wearing the frogged blue coat which was the recognised dress of officers in mufti, or as they called it, "coloured clothes." He raised his hat, and the years fell from Eveleen. She was the girl of seventeen again, glowing with youth.

"You have waited for me, Eveleen?" he asked, without any conventional greeting, and she dropped the reins on her horse's neck and held out both hands to him.

"All these years. Ah, but I knew you'd come!" she answered. For that moment, at least, she had no doubt. Richard had justified himself, had come back, famous and successful, to the woman whose welcome would have been no less warm had he been broken and penniless, and to that woman earth was heaven from henceforth. That the Richard who had come back would not be the Richard who had gone forth was unlikely to occur to her at that moment, or to commend itself to her belief when it did occur. She had not changed; why should he?

Everything was so natural, so simple. Richard never even asked her again to marry him. Why should he? he had come back for nothing else. It was necessary to ask the General for her, of course, and the General resented the request so vehemently that all his children and their respective husbands and wives had to be summoned to bear down his opposition by sheer weight of eloquence. Such ingenuity was displayed in devising schemes for his future, such amazement lavished on his selfishness in wishing to retain poor Evie, who had given herself up to him for so long, that he was dinned at last into acquiescence. He gave his consent with tolerable grace, and presented his niece with the turquoise disc, which had come into his possession after the fall of Seringapatam. It was too large even for Early Victorian taste, which liked its jewellery to be of substantial size, but the daughters and daughters-in-law agreed that it was a very handsome present, and most appropriate, as Evie was going to India. Unfortunately, the first time she wished to wear it at Bombay she learned that to wear Indian ornaments in India was to incur irretrievably the stigma of being "country-born," but the cousins did not know this. Some sort of outfit was got together for her, the cousinhood eking out an impossibly small sum of money with great goodwill and much contrivance, that she not disgrace the family; but the bride herself would have sailed for India cheerfully with what one plain-spoken "in-law" called cruelly her usual ragbag of clothes.

Had the shadow fallen even then? Eveleen asked herself the question this evening, as often before. One night--it was at a dance--she had surprised on Richard's face, as he met her in a blaze of wax-lights, a look in which she read cold criticism, even dislike. It struck her to the heart, stripping her in one moment of her new found youth and joy. They thought she was going to faint, and it was Richard himself, all compunction and anxiety, who took her out and fussed about her with water and borrowed smelling-salts and a glass of wine; and when she sobbed out something of her sudden terror, admitted that his wound had been paining him horribly all day, and cursed himself for spoiling her evening by letting her see that he was suffering. He refused angrily to let her sit out the dances with him, and happy and satisfied, she entered the ballroom again on his arm, never dreaming of doubting his assurance. But now the doubts had crept in once more, and refused to be silenced.

If the shadow had not been there before, it had certainly made itself felt on the voyage. Eveleen was not shy--she did not know what shyness was,--and in the intervals of sea-sickness she enjoyed herself like a schoolgirl. She bobbed up and down like a cork; nothing could keep her under the weather long--such was the admiring dictum of one of the youths drawn to her by her delight in new experiences, and the unfailing gusto with which she found interest and excitement in things which other people considered deadly dull. The rest of the ladies on board eyed her askance. There was something not quite ladylike about "that Mrs Ambrose"; one did not wish to be uncharitable, but really one was almost afraid she might be called just a little bit fast. No one was more surprised both by her popularity and her unpopularity than her husband, and he resented both--or rather, the personality which was their common root. That, without any effort on her part, his wife could keep every one within sound of her voice amused and interested, gave him no pleasure--it was as though a modest violet had turned into a flaunting poppy on his hands. He had had little to do with women in his hard life, but the few ladies with whom he had come in contact did not trouble themselves to amuse the men around; they left it to the men to amuse them. Richard Ambrose had never been particularly successful in this respect, but he felt the attitude was the right one. As Eveleen told herself bitterly one day on catching sight of his disapproving face on the outskirts of the circle which her hunting stories had set in a roar, it really seemed that the only person who didn't like Mrs Ambrose was Mrs Ambrose's husband!

Richard Ambrose was not left wholly ignorant of the Rake's Progress on which his wife was embarked. Laborious epistles from the old butler betrayed anxiety lest Master's interests should suffer, and friends coming up from Bombay brought amusing tales--amusing to them, that is--of Mrs Ambrose's open-handedness. An opportune cholera scare enabled Ambrose to issue an edict of temporary banishment from the scene of temptation. Eveleen was to go up to Mahabuleshwar with the wife of one of her husband's friends, to whom she was to pay a fixed sum monthly, and rusticate for awhile away from shops and entertainments. But temptation followed her even to the hills, though in a different guise. The place was the recognised summer headquarters of the Bombay Government, and the wife and daughters of the newly-arrived Commander-in-Chief were already in residence. To them came on flying visits Sir Henry Lennox himself, best loved and best hated of all the survivors of the Peninsula. Lady Lennox was what Eveleen characteristically called "aggressively motionless," and her step-daughters were being painfully trained to follow in her decorous footsteps; but the veteran himself had a most appreciative eye for a pretty woman, and a ready enthusiasm for one who dared to ride wherever he did. Brian had wheedled a gullible commanding officer out of a week's leave to see Eveleen comfortably settled, and the brother and sister and the scarred old soldier forgathered by some mysterious affinity, without any conventional presentation or introduction. The scandalised Military Secretary reported to the distressed Lady Lennox that it was all the fault of the Irish lady and her brother; but Lady Lennox--hearing hourly of break-neck gallops and impossible leaps--confessed in her heart of hearts that her susceptible warrior was in all probability just as much to blame. Her alarm extended merely to what Sir Harry was wont to call his "battered old carcass," for he was too chivalrous an admirer of women in general to offer compromising attentions to one in particular. Imprudent he might be, but his imprudence confined itself to regaling Eveleen with scraps of autobiography of a startling character and moral deductions drawn from them, together with lurid denunciations of such of his many enemies as suggested themselves to his mind at the moment.

They became so friendly that Eveleen was emboldened at last to confess her anxiety about Brian, and ask the Commander-in-Chief's advice. Brian was with his regiment again, and his last letter from Poonah had shown his sister that he was still taking his usual light-hearted way, undeterred by her exhortations. She did more than ask Sir Harry's advice; in all innocence she did a thing of which she failed altogether to realise the heinousness. Remembering Brian's past Staff experience, she asked the Commander-in-Chief to make him one of his aides-de-camp. Since that day she had heard such things talked of, and the recollection made her cheeks burn in her solitude to-night, but at the moment it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. It was obvious that Brian could not or would not live within his means in the regiment, and that neither public opinion there nor the influence of his commanding officer tended to urge him to do so; therefore what could be better for him than to pass his days under the eye of the stern economist whose worn blue uniform did not put to shame even Eveleen's ancient habit? Sir Harry seemed a little taken aback at first--unaccountably, she thought, but she realised now that he had probably never been asked for a highly desirable appointment so simply and directly before. But he respected Eveleen, and he liked the careless, good-natured young fellow about whom she was so anxious--and with good reason, as a few short sharp questions assured him. Then he gave his answer. If Brian could liquidate his debts and present himself before him as a free man three months hence, when it was possible an additional aide-de-camp might be required, he should have the post.

Probably the last thought in Sir Harry's mind was the first that occurred to Eveleen. Brian must realise his assets, and she would supply any deficiency. If Brian had never gone into his affairs thoroughly before, he did it the next time he saw his sister, when the details of what he could sell and which of his possessions could be returned to the vendors in lieu of paying for them were remorselessly threshed out. Eveleen declared that if it turned both their hairs grey they would do it, and rewarded him at the end with the sum which was to set him free--and incidentally to bring Richard Ambrose rushing down from Khemistan as fast as the primitive Bab-us-Sahel steamer could bring him, drawn by the alarming report of his Bombay agent. It was too late to reclaim the money--save at the cost of exposing Brian to the Commander-in-Chief, which Eveleen's tears and entreaties withheld her husband from doing,--but Brian received by letter a few home truths, which he took, until he had time to think them over, in very bad part, though Richard felt he had been criminally lenient. It was Eveleen on whom the chief punishment fell--at least, her husband regarded it as a punishment. She had to face the ordeal she had imposed upon Brian, when all the unpaid bills, the empty pages of the account book, the chits so easily signed and forgotten, were brought to light. It had never occurred to her that there was anything wrong in being in debt--she had grown up in an atmosphere of it,--and she was half alarmed and half resentful when she saw the effect of his discoveries upon Richard. But the breaking-up of the Bombay household, and her removal to Khemistan, where she would have no opportunity for extravagance, did not strike her as a punishment at all, and it made her indignant that her husband should so regard it. The one thing she feared was that he should learn the secret of Brian's sudden elevation--which he ascribed carelessly to an idle whim on the part of a man too old for his high post,--and while that remained unknown she was happy.

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