The Lamp in the Desert, Ethel May Dell [the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT] 📗

and his brother left the mess together and walked back through the dripping darkness to the bungalow on the hill overlooking the river. The rush of the swollen stream became audible as they drew near. The sound of it was inexpressibly wild and desolate.
"It's an interesting country," remarked Bernard, breaking a silence. "I don't wonder she has got hold of you, my son. What does your wife think of it? Is she too caught in the toils?"
Not by word or look had he made the smallest reference to the episode at the mess-table. It was as if he alone of those present had wholly missed its significance.
Everard answered him quietly, without much emphasis. "I believe my wife hates it from beginning to end. Perhaps it is not surprising. She has been through a good deal since she came out. And I am afraid there is a good deal before her still."
Bernard's big hand closed upon his arm. "Poor old chap!" lie said. "You Indian fellows don't have any such time of it, or your women folk either. How long is she a fixture at Bhulwana?"
"The baby is expected in two months' time." Everard spoke without emotion, his voice sounded almost cold. "After that, I don't know what will happen. Nothing is settled. Tell me your plans now! No, wait! Let's get in out of this damned rain first!"
They entered the bungalow and sat down for another smoke in the drawing-room.
Down by the river a native instrument thrummed monotonously, like the whirring of a giant mosquito in the darkness. Everard turned with a slight gesture of impatience and closed the window.
He established his brother in a long chair with a drink at his elbow, and sat down himself without any pretence at taking his ease.
"You don't look particularly comfortable," Bernard observed.
"Don't mind me!" he made curt response. "I've got a touch of fever to-night. It's nothing. I shall be all right in the morning."
"Sure?" Bernard's eyes suddenly ceased to be quizzical; they looked at him straight and hard.
Everard met the look, faintly smiling. "I don't lie about--unimportant things," he remarked cynically. "Light up, man, and fire away!"
He struck a match for his brother's pipe and kindled his own cigarette thereat.
There fell a brief silence. Bernard did not look wholly satisfied. But after a few seconds he seemed to dismiss the matter and began to talk of himself.
"You want to know my plans, old chap. Well, as far as I know 'em myself, you are quite welcome. With your permission, I propose, for the present, to stay where I am."
"I shouldn't if I were you." Everard spoke with brief decision. "You'd be far better off at Bhulwana till the end of the rains."
Bernard puffed forth a great cloud of smoke and stared at the ceiling. "That is as may be, dear fellow," he said, after a moment. "But I think--if you'll put up with me--I'll stay here for the present all the same."
He spoke in that peculiarly gentle voice of his that yet held considerable resolution. Everard made no attempt to combat the decision. Perhaps he realized the uselessness of such a proceeding.
"Stay by all means!" he said, "but what's the idea?"
Bernard took his pipe from his mouth. "I have a big fight before me, Everard boy," he said, "a fight against the sort of prejudice that kicked me out of the Charthurst job. It's got to be fought with the pen--since I am no street corner ranter. I have the solid outlines of the campaign in my head, and I have come out here to get right away from things and work it out."
"Going to reform creation?" suggested Everard, with his grim smile.
Bernard shook his head, smiling in answer as though the cynicism had not reached him. "No, that's not my job. I am only a man under authority--like yourself. I don't see the result at all. I only see the work, and with God's help, that will be exactly what He intended it should be when He gave it to me to do."
"Lucky man!" said Everard briefly.
"Ah! I didn't think myself lucky when I had to give up the Charthurst chaplaincy." Bernard spoke through a haze of smoke. "I'm afraid I kicked a bit at first--which was a short-sighted thing to do, I admit. But I had got to look on it as my life-work, and I loved it. It held such opportunities." He broke off with a sharp sigh. "I shall be at it again if I go on. Can't you give me something pleasanter to think about? Haven't you got a photograph of your wife to show me?"
Everard got up. "Yes, I have. But it doesn't do her justice." He took a letter-case from his pocket and opened it. A moment he stood bent over the portrait he withdrew from it, then turned and handed it to his brother.
Bernard studied it in silence. It was an unmounted amateur photograph of Stella standing on the creeper-grown verandah of the Green Bungalow. She was smiling, but her eyes were faintly sad, as though shadowed by the memory of some past pain.
For many seconds Bernard gazed upon the pictured face. Finally he spoke.
"Your wife must be a very beautiful woman."
"Yes," said Everard quietly.
He spoke gravely. His brother's eyes travelled upwards swiftly. "That was not what you married her for, eh?"
Everard stooped and took the portrait from him. "Well, no--not entirely," he said.
Bernard smiled a little. "You haven't told me much about her, you know. How long have you been acquainted?"
"Nearly two years. I think I mentioned in my letter that she was the widow of a comrade?"
"Yes, I remember. But you were rather vague about it. What happened to him? Didn't he meet with a violent death?"
There was a pause. Everard was still standing with his eyes fixed upon the photograph. His face was stern.
"What was it?" questioned Bernard. "Didn't he fall over a precipice?"
"Yes," abruptly the younger man made answer. "It happened in Kashmir when they were on their honeymoon."
"Ah! Poor girl! She must have suffered. What was his name? Was he a pal of yours?"
"More or less." Everard's voice rang hard. "His name was Dacre."
"Oh, to be sure. The man I wrote to you about just before poor Madelina Belleville died in prison. Her husband's name was Dacre. He was in the Army too, and she thought he was in India. But it's not a very uncommon name." Bernard spoke thoughtfully. "You said he was no relation."
"I said to the best of my belief he was not." Everard turned suddenly and sat down. "People are not keen, you know, on owning to shady relations. He was no exception to the rule. But if the woman died, it's of no great consequence now to any one. When did she die?"
Bernard took a long pull at his pipe. His brows were slightly drawn. "She died suddenly, poor soul. Did I never tell you? It must have been immediately after I wrote that letter to you. It was. I remember now. It was the very day after.... She died on the twenty-first of March--the first day of spring. Poor girl! She had so longed for the spring. Her time would have been up in May."
Something in the silence that followed his words made him turn his head to look at his brother. Everard was sitting perfectly rigid in his chair staring at the ground between his feet as if he saw a serpent writhing there. But before another word could be spoken, he got up abruptly, with a gesture as of shaking off the loathsome thing, and went to the window. He flung it wide, and stood in the opening, breathing hard as a man half-suffocated.
"Anything wrong, old chap?" questioned Bernard.
He answered him without turning. "No; it's only my infernal head. I think I'll turn in directly. It's a fiendish night."
The rain was falling in torrents, and a long roll of thunder sounded from afar. The clatter of the great drops on the roof of the verandah filled the room, making all further conversation impossible. It was like a tattoo of devils.
"A damn' pleasant country this!" murmured the man in the chair.
The man at the window said no word. He was gasping a little, his face to the howling night.
For a space Bernard lay and watched him. Then at last, somewhat ponderously he arose.
Everard could not have heard his approach, but he was aware of it before he reached him. He turned swiftly round, pulling the window closed behind him.
They stood facing each other, and there was something tense in the atmosphere, something that was oddly suggestive of mental conflict. The devils' tattoo on the roof had sunk to a mere undersong, a fitting accompaniment as it were to the electricity in the room.
Bernard spoke at length, slowly, deliberately, but not unkindly. "Why should you take the trouble to--fence with me?" he said. "Is it worth it, do you think?"
Everard's face was set and grey like a stone mask. He did not speak for a moment; then curtly, noncommittally, "What do you mean?" he said.
"I mean," very steadily Bernard made reply, "that the scoundrel Dacre, who married Madelina Belleville and then deserted her, left her to go to the dogs, and your brother-officer who was killed in the mountains on his honeymoon, were one and the same man. And you knew it."
"Well?" The words seemed to come from closed lips. There was something terrible in the titter quietness of its utterance.
Bernard searched his face as a man might search the walls of an apparently impregnable fortress for some vulnerable spot. "Ah, I see," he said, after a moment. "You must have believed Madelina to be still alive when Dacre married. What was the date of his marriage?"
"The twenty-fifth of March." Again the grim lips spoke without seeming to move.
A gleam of relief crossed his brother's face. "In that case no one is any the worse. I'm sorry you've carried that bugbear about with you for so long. What an infernal hound the fellow was!"
"Yes," assented Everard.
He moved to the table and poured himself out a drink.
His brother still watched him. "One might almost say his death was providential," he observed. "Of course--your wife--never knew of this?"
"No." Everard lifted the glass to his lips with a perfectly steady hand and drank. "She never will know," he said, as he set it down.
"Certainly not. You can trust me never to tell her." Bernard moved to his side, and laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. "You know you can trust me, old fellow?"
Everard did not look at him. "Yes, I know," he said.
His brother's hand pressed upon him a little. "Since they are both gone," he said, "there is nothing more to be said on the subject. But, oh, man, stick to the truth, whatever else you let go of! You never lied to me before."
His tone was very earnest. It held urgent entreaty. Everard turned and met his eyes. His dark face was wholly emotionless. "I am sorry, St. Bernard," he said.
Bernard's kindly smile wrinkled his eyes. He grasped and held the younger man's hand. "All right, boy. I'm going to forget it," he said. "Now what about turning in?"
They parted for the night immediately after, the one to sleep as serenely as a child almost as soon as he lay down, the other to pace to and fro, to and fro, for hours, grappling--and grappling in vain--with the sternest adversary he had ever had to encounter.
For upon Everard Monck that night the wrath of the gods had descended, and against it, even his