Hilda, Sara Jeannette Duncan [ebook reader 7 inch TXT] 📗

torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm of her presence in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it brought to Ensign Sand and the other "officers" the divination that he was one of those shyly anxious souls who have to be enticed into the Kingdom of Heaven with wariness, and they made a great pretence of not noticing him, going on with the exercises just as if he were not there, a consideration which he was able richly to enhance when the plate came round. After his first contribution Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the gentleman attached to his situation was sufficiently testified by the "amount"; Mrs. Sand never wanted better evidence than the amount. Even Laura, acting doubtless under instructions, seemed disposed to hold away from him in her prayers and exhortations; only a very occasional allusion passed her lips which Duff could appropriate. These, when they fell he gathered and set like flowers in his tenderest consciousness, to visit and water them after the sun went down and for twenty-four hours he would not see her again. Her intonation went with them and her face, they lived on that. They stirred him, I mean, least of all in the manner of their intention. After the first quarter of an hour it is to be feared Lindsay suffered no more apprehensions on the score of emotional hypnotism. He recognised his situation plainly enough, and there was no appeal in it of which the Reverend Stephen Arnold for example could properly suspect the genuineness or the permanence.

On this Saturday night he sat through the meeting as he had sat through other meetings, absorbed in his exquisite experience, which he meditated mostly with his eyes on the floor. His attitude was one quite adapted to deceive Ensign Sand; if he had been occupied with the burden of his transgressions it was one he might very well have fallen into. When Laura knelt or sang he sometimes looked at her, at other times he looked at the situation in the brightness of her presence at the other end of the room. She gave forth there, for Lindsay, an illumination by which he almost immediately began to read his life, and it was because he thought he had done this with accuracy and intelligence that he came up behind her that evening when the meeting was over as she followed the rest, with her _sari_ drawn over her head, out into the darkness of Bentinck street, and said with directness, "I should like to come and see you. When may I? Any time that suits you. Have you half an hour to spare to-morrow?"

It was plain that she was tired, and that the brightness with which she welcomed his advance was a trifle taught and perfunctory. Not the frankness, though, or the touch of "Now we are getting to business," that stood somehow in her expression. She looked alert and pleased.

"You would like to have a little talk, wouldn't you?" she said. Her manner took Lindsay a trifle aback, it suggested that she conferred this privilege so freely. "To-morrow--let me see, we march in the morning, and I have an open-air at four in the afternoon--the Ensign takes the evening meeting. Yes, I could see you to-morrow about two or about seven, after I get back from the Square." It was not unlike a professional appointment.

Lindsay considered. "Thanks," he said, "I'll come at about seven--if you are sure you won't be too exhausted to have me after such a day."

He saw that her lids as she raised them to answer were slightly reddened at the edges, testifying to the acridity of Calcutta's road dust, and a dry crack crept into the silver voice with which she said matter-of-factly, "We are never too exhausted to attend to our Master's business."

Lindsay's face expressed an instant's hesitation, he looked gravely the other way. "And the address?" he said.

"Almost next door--we all live within bugle-call. The entrance is in Crooked lane. Anybody will tell you."

At the door Ensign Sand was conspicuously waiting. Arnold said "Thanks" again and passed out--she seemed to be holding it for him--and picked his way over the gutters to the shop of his Chinaman opposite. From there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in advance, to say that she had not expected him. "Friendly creature!" he said as he turned out the lamp, and smiled in the dark to think that already there was one who guessed, who knew.

One gropes in Crooked lane after the lights of Bentinck street have done all that can be expected of them. There are various things to avoid, washer-men's donkeys and pariah dogs, unyoked ticca-gharries, heaps of rubbish, perhaps a leprous beggar. Lindsay, when he had surmounted these, found himself at the entrance to a quadrangle which was positively dark. He waylaid a sweeper slinking out; and the man showed him where an open staircase ran down against the wall in one corner. It was up there, he said, that the "tamasho-mems"[2] lived. There were three tamasho-mems, he continued, responding to Arnold's trivial coin, and one sahib, but this was not the time for the tamasho--it was finished. Lindsay mounted the first flight by faith, and paused at the landing to avoid collision with a heavy body descending. He inquired Miss Filbert's whereabouts from this person, who providentially lighted a cigar, disclosing himself a bald Armenian in tusser silk trousers and a dirty shirt, presumably, Lindsay thought, the landlord. At all events, he had the information. Lindsay was to keep straight on; it was the third story, "and a lovelie airie flat, too, sir, for this part of the town." Duff kept straight on in a spirit of caution and just missed treading upon the fattest rat in the heathen parish of St. John's. At the top he saw a light and hastened; it shone from an open door at the side of a passage. The partition in which the door was came considerably short of the ceiling, and from the top of it to the window opposite stretched a line of garments to dry, of pungent odour and infantile pattern. Lindsay dared no further, but lifted up his voice in the Indian way to summon a servant. "_Qui hai!_"[3] he called; "_Qui hai!_"

[Footnote 2: Festival-making women.]

[Footnote 3: "Whoever is there!"]

He heard somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door further down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with her hand upon the handle. She made a supple, graceful picture. "Good evening, Mr. Lindsay," she said as he advanced. "Won't you come in?" She clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed the door after him. "I was expecting you," she said. "Mr. Harris, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Harris."

Mr. Harris was sitting sideways on one of the three cane-bottomed chairs. He was a clumsily built youth, and he wore the private's garb of the Salvation Army. It was apparent that he had been reading a newspaper; he had a displeasing air of possession. At Laura's formula he looked up and nodded without amiability, folded his journal the other side out and returned to it.

"Please take a seat," Laura said, and Lindsay took one. He had a demon of self-consciousness that possessed him often, here he felt dumb. Nor did he in the very least expect Mr. Harris. He crossed his legs in greater discomfort than he had dreamed possible, looking at Laura, who sat down like a third stranger, curiously detached from any sense of hospitality.

"Mr. Lindsay is anxious about his soul, Mr. Harris," she said pleasantly. "I guess you can tell him what to do about it as well as I can."

"Oh!" Lindsay began, but Mr. Harris had the word. "Is he?" said Mr. Harris, without looking up from his paper. "Well, what I've got to say on that subject I say at the evenin' meetin', which is a proper an' a public place. He can hear it there any day of the week."

"I think I have already heard," remarked Lindsay, "what you have to say."

"Then that's all right," said Mr. Harris, with his eyes still upon his newspaper. He appeared to devour it. Laura looked from one to the other of them and fell upon an expedient.

"If you'll excuse me," she said, "I'll just get you that bicycle story you were kind enough to lend me, Mr. Harris, and you can take it with you. The Ensign's got it," and she left the room. Lindsay glanced round and promptly announced to himself that he could not come there again. It was taking too violent an advantage. The pursuit of an angel does not imply that you may trap her in her corner under the Throne. The place was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a mosquito curtain--she slept in there. On the walls were all tender texts about loving and believing and bearing others' burdens, interspersed with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic eyes, dressed in some strange costume of the Army in Madras, Ceylon, China. A little wooden table stood against the wall holding an album, a Bible and hymn-books, a work-basket and an irrelevant Japanese doll which seemed to stretch its absurd arms straight out in a gay little ineffectual heathen protest. There was another more embarrassing table; it had a coarse cloth and was garnished with a loaf and butter-dish, a plate of plantains and a tin of marmalade, knives and teacups for a meal evidently impending. It was atrociously, sordidly intimate, with its core in Harris, who when Miss Filbert had well gone from the room looked up. "If you're here on private business," he said to Lindsay, fixing his eyes, however, on a point awkwardly to the left of him, "maybe you ain't aware that the Ensign"--he threw his head back in the direction of the next room--"is the person to apply to. She's in command here. Captain Filbert's only under her."

"Indeed?" said Lindsay. "Thanks."

"It ain't like it is in the Queen's army," Harris volunteered, still searching Lindsay's vicinity for a point upon which his eye could permanently rest, "where, if you remember, ensigns are the smallest officer we have."

"The commission is, I think, abolished," replied Lindsay, trying to govern a deep and irritated frown.

"Maybe so. This Army don't pretend to pattern very close on the other--not in discipline, anyhow," said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. "But you'll find Ensign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you. She's a hard-working officer."

A sharp wail smote the air from a point suspiciously close to the lath and canvas partition on the other side, followed by hasty hushings and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mr. Sand seemed at present to be sufficiently engaged, at which Mr. Harris shifted one heavy limb over the other, and lapsed into silence, looking sternly at