The Great Amulet

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And at last,--despite the catastrophe of a stampede among the
ammunition and ambulance mules, which left them poorer by four thousand
rounds and their field hospital,--the preliminaries were accomplished.
Covered by the sharp rifle practice of the infantry and sowars, men,
animals, and stretchers retired, without precipitation or disorder,
along the narrow lane, bounded by stone walls and rugged hills swarming
with a jubilant enemy. For at the first signs of evacuation the
Mahsuds came out in greater numbers; harrying and pressing in upon the
dogged little column on all sides, yet rarely offering a mark for
riflemen; their lithe bodies and marvellous activity enabling them to
find cover almost anywhere.

It was heart-breaking work: for, in the soldier's vocabulary, there is
no more unwelcome word than retreat; notwithstanding the fact that a
retreat which covers all ranks with honour and glory is perhaps the
finest achievement possible in the great game of war. Certain it is
that the progress of Norton's broken escort through that veritable
death-trap, to the _kotal_ where a second stand might prove feasible,
was carried out by officers and men with the indomitable coolness and
spirit that converts failure into 'an honourable form of victory.'

It is such crises which test the mettle of our native troops: adding
fresh proof, if more were needed, of the magnificent fighting material
that India has given into our hands. For Colonel Montague had again
lost consciousness; and Martin having been shot in the calf as he
entered the lane, the task of carrying out all the details of the
retirement fell upon the senior Native officer, Subadar Hira Singh,
under Desmond's orders. He and Norton, bearing the joint burden of
responsibility, kept close together. The surface cynicism of the
civilian had been burnt up in the fire of healthy savage action; and at
odd moments, when ordinary speech was possible, his admiration for the
conduct of all concerned vented itself in disjointed ejaculations of
approval that warmed the cavalryman's heart.

"Wait till I make out my report of all this," he said on one occasion.
"Be sure you Piffers will get all the kudos you deserve."

And five minutes later, he fell--shot through the body--into Desmond's
arms.

"Nothing . . nothing serious," he protested, while his face wried with
pain. "Don't delay matters . . on my account. I can pull along
somehow, if you'll give me an arm."

But they got him on to a stretcher, none the less; and Courtenay did
all he could till a definite halt was possible.

"Bad . . is it?" the civilian asked coolly, noting the concern in the
other's eyes. "Well, a man might do worse than die . . . like a
soldier. But by God, I'll hang on to life somehow,--till I can draft
out my report."

And hang on to life he did, in defiance of mortal pain, with a tenacity
worthy of his bull-dog jaw.

At the foot of the _kotal_, Desmond called a halt; and the rearguard
under Hira Singh closed up, to hold the enemy in check, that the guns
and wounded might get over in safety before the position should be
finally abandoned.

And now began the toughest bit of fighting the day had yet seen. For
the Waziris closed with the Sikhs and Punjabis in overwhelming numbers;
exchanging the clatter of musketry for the clash of steel, the
sickening thud of blows given and received. But neither numbers nor
cold steel availed to break up that narrow wall of devoted men. With
each gap in their ranks, they merely closed in, and fought the more
fiercely: Hira Singh, with his brother the Jemadar, and a score of
unconsidered heroes, flinging away their lives with less of hesitation
than they would have flung away a handful of current coin, to gain time
for those whose safety hung upon their power of resistance.

At last,--when all had passed over the small hill behind them,--came
the order to fall back: and not till that moment had any man among them
yielded a foot of space to the persistent foe, who now pressed after
them; and, with renewed jubilations and flutterings of green standards,
occupied every available position on the surrounding hills.

For two interminable hours the dreary game went on; till six ridges,
that climbed to a commanding plateau, had been held and abandoned
through shortage of ammunition. But thanks to the steadiness of the
rearguard, and to their leader's genius for the art of war, no further
lives were lost; no further advantage gained by the Waziris; and at
length, heart-weary and leg-weary, they reached the plateau itself, to
find Brownlow,--with shot and shell, and two hundred Sikhs thirsting
for battle,--already there before them, having covered the nine miles
in one and a half hours.

Perhaps only a soldier who has drunk his cup of blood and fire to the
dregs, knows the strange mingling of emotions packed into that little
word 'relieved': and assuredly none but a soldier could enter into the
joy with which Lenox stood swaying dizzily beside his beloved guns,
while he and Brownlow pitched eight-and-twenty shells into the
fortified village below the last one, to their shameless satisfaction,
lighting on the mosque itself, and lifting the Mullah, with his green
flag of victory, twenty feet into the air.

It was a more or less damaged and dejected party of five which
assembled in the small mess tent that night.

So much had been lost, so little gained by the day's disaster: an
epitome of too many 'regrettable incidents' beyond the Border. The
costliest item of Frontier defence is this unavoidable waste of the
lives of picked soldiers. The Sikhs had lost heavily in Native
officers and men. Colonel Montague had succumbed to his wounds during
the retirement. Norton and Richardson, both too severely hurt to
appear at mess, were officially in hospital,--that is to say, on
stretchers in two field service tents: and three out of the five men at
the mess table had brought away superfluous mementoes of Waziri
marksmanship.

Lenox himself had suffered more from loss of blood than from the flesh
wound in his shoulder, which was not a serious affair; and to Desmond's
broken wrist had been added a disfiguring slash across his cheek. No
doubt orders and commendation awaited them: but their elation at the
prospect was hushed by the very present shadow of death. For the
soldier, inured as he is, does not count death a little thing. He
cannot, any more than the rest of us, 'go out of the warm sunshine
easily.' And the thought of Montague's wife and children, of Unwin's
'No more dancing attendance on Waziris,' intruded unsought, breaking
the thread of common speech.

No doubt, also, Desmond and Lenox were thinking, manlike, of their own
wives; and thanking God for wounds that would only let loose the
woman's divine reserves of tenderness, her passion for 'mothering' the
man she loves. Once during the evening they exchanged a glance of
comprehension,--the freemasonry of those who love,--and the same
question sprang simultaneously to their minds. "How about poor Norton?
Would the news bring that wife of his back to Dera Ishmael in the last
week of March?" And Desmond decided that if it did not, Norton must be
persuaded to put up with them, and submit to Honor's ministrations, in
whose power to soothe and bless he had the faith of a little child, or
of a great man; for the two are so nearly allied as to be almost
identical.

As for Norton himself, he was too much engrossed in the painful task of
'hanging on to life' to trouble his head about any other matter. The
news of his serious hurt spread through the neighbouring villages as
news only speeds in India, without help of post or wire: and when, on
the following morning, a deputation of friendly Khans waited upon the
Burra Sahib, to express their sorrow and shame at so flagrant a breach
of the great Border law of hospitality, and to offer help with the
bringing in of dead bodies, Norton insisted on receiving them, propped
up on a chair: a broken, but unconquered remnant of the man whom they
had feared, and loved, and obeyed, with that mixture of independence
and loyal allegiance which is perhaps England's greatest triumph in
India.

But all his courage could not conceal the truth from their eyes: and
with one accord, these hardened men--who had no regard for death in the
abstract, and an unlimited veneration for strength in any form--bowed
themselves at the Englishman's feet, and wept like children.

"Oh, Sahib, . . Father of the District, . . this is an evil thing that
hath befallen," the oldest among them wailed, in deep-toned
lamentation. "How will it be with us who have so long been ruled by
your wisdom, when the light of your Honour's countenance is withdrawn?
And whom will the _Sirkar_[6] send us in thy stead?"

"In less than a month the Sirkar will send fire and sword," Norton
answered sternly. "Smoking villages, and blackened crops. A gift for
a gift, a blow for a blow, is straight dealing. But for one life taken
yesterday the _Sirkar_ will exact ten: of that ye may rest assured."

"Nay, but let it not be forgotten, Hazur, that we, who are present, be
men of one word, true to our salt; not as those murderers, upon whom
the wrath of Allah will be poured out like water, even upon the
man-child at the breast, for yesterday's black work."

Which comfortable prediction Norton received with rather a bitter
smile. It did not square with his own experience of the ironical
tangle men call Life. But for all that, it is possible that, in his
extremity, he envied these savage Sons of the Prophet their faith in
the rough justice of Allah's dispensations.

[1] Hill.

[2] Tribal council.

[3] Meaning.

[4] Chopped straw.

[5] Fanatical slaughter.

[6] Government.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"The man was my whole world, all the time,
With his flowers and praise, and his weeds to blame;
And either, or both, to love."
--Browning.

The Father of the District never saw his unruly children again; nor did
Mrs Dudley Norton ever return to Dera Ishmael Khan. The telegram he
despatched to her on arrival, made light of his wound, and its possible
result; perhaps because pride urged him to take the initiative rather
than submit to the culminating proof of her total detachment from him;
perhaps because he shrewdly guessed that she could not reach him in
time.

It had needed all the reserves of strength that are the reward of clean
and temperate living, to keep him alive throughout the return marches.
Yet the feat was accomplished, and his official report--a lucid,
vigorous bit of work--drawn up in full; with the result that, in
leisurely course of time--a mere trifle of seven months or so after the
event--there appeared in the 'Army Gazette' the names of Major Desmond,
V.C., Captain Lenox, C.I.E., and Lieutenant Richardson, as officers on
whom her Majesty had been graciously pleased to bestow the
Distinguished Service Order. The principal Native officers, whose
gallantry had been so notable a feature of that grim day's work,
received the coveted Order of Merit; Hira Singh and his brother being
gazetted, though killed, that their widows might draw a larger pension.
For England is rarely unmindful of her heroes; notwithstanding her
superb dilatoriness in honouring the men who risk death and disablement
for the maintenance of her scattered Empire.

With the completion of the report, on which his heart was set, the will
to live deserted Dudley Norton. To drop in harness was, as he had said
to Quita, a kinder fate than the dismal disintegration of a loveless
old age; and the loosening of his grip on life brought reaction sharp
and sudden, from which he never rallied again.

His death, following close upon that of the two Sikh officers, cast a
temporary gloom over the station; and on the occasion of its
announcement, the two chief papers of Upper India broke out into
journalistic eulogies on the notable qualities of the man's work and
character; extolling his strength and breadth of purpose and of view;
his daring disregard for red-tape and all the paraphernalia of
mechanical officialdom; and above all, his remarkable hold upon the
Frontier tribes; administering, too late--with true human
perversity--the praise that had been so grudgingly dealt out to him
when ambition was at its height, when a word or two of generous
recognition would have atoned in some measure for the failure and
embitterment of his private life. Finally, they commiserated with the
man on whom would devolve the insuperable task of replacing a Dudley
Norton.

He arrived in due course:--a stop-gap from an obscure down-country
station; a man of hide-bound conventionalism, who brought with him
three children and a washed-out, subdued-looking wife, and who spoke
magnanimously of Norton as "a clever fellow, of course, but deplorably
casual officially." With such haphazard shifting of pawns on the
chess-board is the momentous game of Empire played. Yet long after
Dudley Norton's name had been almost forgotten by the overtasked,
fluctuating world of Anglo-India, it still remained a household word
among the Mahsud Waziris, whose brothers in blood had so treacherously
taken his life.

And while Norton lay dying at the Desmonds' bungalow, Richardson was
established under his friend's roof as a matter of course. For this is
India: the land of the Good Samaritan, as those who have lived there
longest know best. It has been well said that "an Englishman's house
in India is not his castle, but a thousand better things--a casual
ward, a convalescent home, a rest-house for the strayed traveller; and
he himself is the steward of it merely." That this is no exaggeration
but simple fact, Quita had already seen; and now, when she herself was
called upon to obey the unwritten law of her husband's country and
service, Lenox noted, with a throb of pride, that for all her artist's
tendency to shrink from pain and suffering, she rose to the situation
like a high-mettled horse to a fence.

On their first evening together, when Dick, under the merciful
influence of morphia, had forgotten pain in sleep, Lenox spoke to her
of the thought that troubled his mind.

He was lying back luxuriously in his deep chair--the wounded shoulder
and left arm scientifically bandaged--while Quita hovered about him, or
knelt at his side; her every tone and gesture, and the misty shining of
her eyes, enveloping him in so exquisite an atmosphere of tenderness
that, like Stevenson, Lenox felt inclined to vote for separations (not
to say wounds) when they were both safely over!

"Come here a minute, darling," he said at length, drawing her down
beside him. "I want to tell you about Dick. There's no getting at the
rights of it, of course. He won't say a word himself; and I went all
to pieces for the moment. I only know that when the firing was
hottest, he managed to cross in front of me; that the bullet in his leg
ought by rights to have gone into mine; and it's quite bad enough to
know that."

Quita's eyes swam in sudden tears. "I always thought him a dear
fellow," she said softly. "Just a dear fellow; not much more. But
now--one begins to admire your 'Dick.'"

Lenox nodded. "You never quite know what stuff a fellow's made of till
he gets his chance."

But Quita, crouching lower, had bowed her forehead upon his hand.

"What is it, lass?" he asked; and when she looked up, not only her
lashes, but her cheeks were wet.

"Eldred, am I hideously wicked?" she faltered. "I was--I was thanking
God that he _did_ take his chance. Think--if it _had_ been you! _Am_
I wicked?"

He drew her close, and kissed her. "Hardly that, dearest. Only very
human."

"But there's no danger, is there? No permanent damage done?"

"No. Mercifully the bullet only grazed the bone. He may have a week
of fever, and a slow convalescence; but you'll not grudge the trouble
of nursing him, after what I've told you."

"I'd never have done that. And now,"--she rose to her feet, her eyes
kindling,--"now it will be a privilege. Oh, I'll be ever so good to
him," she added under her breath.

And for the next three weeks--being, as she had said, a creature of
extremes--she was so uniformly and enchantingly 'good to him' that
those long days of fever, pain, and enforced idleness were among the
most delectable Max Richardson had ever known, or ever wished to know;
that, in truth, each landmark on the road back to health and duty could
no longer be regarded with that unmixed satisfaction common to the
masculine invalid.

But Richardson was too little capable of analysis to be troubled by
this wrong-headed state of things, or to detect the hidden seed from
which his flower of contentment sprang. Mrs Lenox was astonishingly
kind to him, and quite the most charming companion a sick man could
desire: that was all.

His sharp bout of fever once over, she sang to him, read to him, argued
with him on a quaint variety of subjects, enlarging his mental horizon,
drawing out thoughts and opinions at whose existence he had never
guessed till now. But for him the hidden charm of their intercourse
lay less in what she said or sang, than in the vibrations of her voice;
in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood;
and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the
monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light
into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the
highly specialised order. It did not inhabit an air-tight compartment
of her brain where pictures grew. It pervaded her whole personality.
It was not merely a genius for art, but for living, for being vital,
for seeing and feeling and doing all that it is possible to see and
feel and do in the sum of man's threescore years and ten. Small wonder
then if Max Richardson enjoyed his convalescence, and was in no hurry
to complete the process.

As for Quita, she was unconsciously slipping back to her favourite
pastime, to that alluring compound of friendship and etherealised
flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the buttons off the
foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened
glimmerings of caution in a less reckless offender. But Richardson was
not to be named in the same day with James Garth; and in his case it
was less a matter of fencing than of 'two heads bending over the same
board till they touch, and the thrill passes between them'; a dangerous
variation of the same amusement. The two heads had not touched as yet.
In all probability they never would. But prophecy is unsafe where the
human heart is in question: and as the month slipped by, and Eldred's
reabsorption in the Battery and the hated articles left them constantly
alone together, Quita grew genuinely fond of this big, fair man, with
his unruffled sweetness of temper, and lazily smiling eyes. He
satisfied the lighter elements in her nature as completely as her
husband satisfied its deeper needs; and in truth, so little did one
man's sphere of influence trench upon the other's, that she had almost
been capable of loving both at once; each with a different set of
faculties:--an achievement only possible to that bewildering creation,
the artist woman!

Not that Quita had yet achieved anything so remarkable. But her
feeling for Richardson, founded upon gratitude and built up by
sympathy, was a real thing; and being singularly free from the taint of
baser clay, she frankly acknowledged the fact, not only to herself but,
on more than one occasion, to her husband, thinking to please him by
her appreciation of his friend.

But man is born to perversity as the sparks fly upward; which is more
than half the reason why he is born to trouble. Also, perversity
apart, it was early days for a husband, endowed with the normal man's
desire for exclusive possession, to stand the strain of a triangular
household. Therefore, when Quita, extolling Richardson's patience and
gratitude, remarked for the second time with unguarded fervour, "One
really grows much too fond of the dear fellow," Lenox turned upon her a
straight glance of scrutiny.

"Great luck for him. Have you ever told him so, I wonder?"

The undernote of sarcasm in his half-bantering tone brought the blood
to her cheeks. But her manner froze in proportion to her inward heat.

"Am I given to making promiscuous declarations of that sort?"

"Not that I am aware of. But you have rather original ideas on the
platonic question; and one can never quite tell where you draw the
line."

"I draw it at telling a man I am fond of him," she answered, with a
slight lift of her head. "Even a man so little likely to misunderstand
one as your Dick."

"Is _that_ what you call him now?"

"I won't answer such a question. You may think what you please."

Then, in defiance of dignity and pride, her lip quivered, and she came
closer to him.

"Eldred, what makes you say such detestable things? I thought you
wanted me to be good to him. Are you--angry with me about it now?"

The touch of hesitancy, so rare in her, disarmed the man, reawakened
his better self; and slipping an arm round her, he crushed her against
him with a force that took away her breath.

"I'm a selfish brute, Quita. That's all about it," he said bluntly.
"And Dick's the best chap in the world."

She hid her eyes a moment against his coat. Then straightened herself,
and stood away from him. "You exaggerate the selfishness, I assure
you," she said, smiling at his gravity of aspect. "And even if you
didn't, I could forgive that; but not that you should so misunderstand
my whole nature. Honestly, Eldred, I would almost rather you struck
me."

"Struck you? Great Scott!"

The amazement in his eyes brought a sparkle into her own.

"Yes, exactly. That's so like a man! D'you fancy I don't know that if
you laid your littlest finger on me roughly, in a moment of heat, you'd
never forgive yourself? Yet you struck something much more sensitive
than my mere body, when you said you couldn't tell where I drew the
line. I may not have been reared upon copy-book maxims, but I have my
own ideas about the fitness of things; even if they don't coincide with
yours, at least I think I may be trusted not to disgrace you."

"Do you really need to tell me that, Quita?"

"It seems so--after what you said just now."

He frowned. "You can wipe out what I said just now, lass. It was
spoken in annoyance."

"Well, please don't say such things again, even in annoyance; or there
will never be any peace between us. Besides, my dear, they are quite,
quite unworthy of you, and no one knows that better than yourself."

She came closer now, and laying both hands upon him, lifted her face to
his. Then she left the study, with the seal of reconciliation upon her
lips, and revived assurance in her heart.

But Lenox, drawing out pipe and tobacco-pouch, as he watched her go,
was discomfortably aware that his first attempt at remonstrance had
ended in strategic surrender. Not only had he failed to dispel the
nameless cloud that hung upon him, but he had managed matters so ill
that now the whole subject must be labelled 'dangerous'; not to be
reopened except under special stress of circumstance.

"She needs riding on the snaffle," was his masculine reflection,
arising from the natural conviction that in all matters of moment the
mastery must rest with him; which was not Quita's view by any means;
and her husband was just beginning to recognise the fact. He noted, in
spite of her genuine devotion, a curious detachment, mental and moral,
a certain airy evasion of common, womanly responsibility, the free
attitude of the good comrade rather than the wife; inherent tendencies,
fostered and established by the dead years that took their toll at
every turn.

Each week of living with her deepened his conviction that the winning
of the entire woman would be a matter of time and trouble; of acquiring
knowledge in which he was still sadly deficient. And how infinitely
she was worth it all! He reminded himself that the first year of
marriage was proverbially difficult; that two pronounced
individualities could not be expected to fuse without a certain degree
of turmoil; and having lighted his pipe, he flung himself into a chair,
and closed his eyes.

For his trouble of mind had a physical basis of which his wife knew
nothing. His wound, though only keeping him on the sick-list a week,
had given him a good deal of pain, intermittent fever, and broken
nights, which he had made light of that Quita might feel free to devote
herself to Richardson, whose first bout of fever had been severe. But
when pain and heated blood had subsided, the broken nights remained. A
crushed habit--let it be never so sternly trodden under--retains its
vitality for an amazing length of time. Lenox fought the threatened
return of insomnia with every legitimate weapon; spent the greater part
of each night in his study, writing doggedly, or pacing the long room
with mechanical persistence,--to no purpose.

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