Agnes Castle

“ But in an instant he was before her, barring her way.
"Major Bethune," she exclaimed, "this is persecution!"
The blood rushed to her cheeks, her eyes flashed. For an instant she was roused to superlative beauty. Stronger became his conviction that here must be more than mere heartless caprice. Something of her emotion gained him.
"If you would only give me a reason!" he cried.
"It is impossible," she answered quickly. "Is it a thing to be asked for so easily, this raking up of the past? The past! is it not dead? My God—it is dead! What if I for one will keep it so?" ”

“ Runkle's here," went on Baby, ruthlessly, raising her voice as if speaking to the deaf. "Uncle Arthur is here; he has come over in a motor—a party of them. Aunt Rosamond, your husband is here."
A long shudder shook the kneeling figure. It was as if life returned to its work; and, returning, trembled in nausea from the task before it. A deep sullen colour began to creep into Lady Gerardine's white cheek. She bent over the gaping box and dropped into it her armful of papers. Then she looked over her shoulder at Aspasia, and drew down the lid.
"My husband! ... My husband is dead," she said. ”

“ The worst of it is, I feel so terribly alive; I'll take as much killing as a wild cat. I have so much to live for: I have to come back to you! I can make such a fight for it yet. Rosamond, if I have to die, I'll die hard. Now Bethune will be like an old dog fox; he'll sit on his tail and show his teeth and let them have their will at the end without a sound—but I'll fight!
* * * * *
I dream, I dream. Rosamond, you came to me last night. First I saw the grey gnarled boughs of the old orchard trees at home grow, as it were, out of the darkness, naked as in the winter time. ”

“ She reigns as a queen, she has jewels—oh, jewels—all her heart can wish."
"What then?" cried Muhammed, laughing loudly.
"The sons of the mountain have made her weep enough," cried Jani, hoarsely. She was trembling as between a terror of pleading and an impotence of anger. "Woe to you if your shadow come between her and the sunshine! The dead are dead, past and done with; but the living she shall keep—and her greatness."
"You speak in riddles," said the Pathan, coldly. "But doubtless you are a faithful servant. Faithful, but also foolish. I will not harm your mistress!" ”

“ When Aspasia returned from her ride she found her aunt seemingly in the same attitude; the long white hands folded, she could have sworn, exactly as she had last seen them; the deep-dreaming eyes still gazing out of the window.
"I declare," cried the girl, "you lazy thing!" but there was still a shade of uneasiness in her voice and in her glance. "Are not you ashamed of yourself?"
"Not at all," said Rosamond, "I've had a very happy time. And you?"
"Hot, hot," said Aspasia, flinging her Panama hat across the room and rubbing her forehead. ”

“ What, indeed, had become of the pale, gallant ghost that she had set up to worship in the shrine of her heart? Gone, gone after the way of ghosts, before the first ray of real sunshine—Bethune's hand-clasp, his softened glance, his rare smile. With the realisation of her own fickleness came another, so overwhelming in its suggestion, that all else was swept away by it. She was in love! ... In love for the first time, really, unmistakably, Aspasia Cuningham, who had meant to devote her whole life to her art. ”

“ Sir Arthur turned again, and had a moment of amazement before his fluttered wits remembered the existence of his own particular secretary.
Muhammed Saif-u-din stood filling up the doorway. His red turban nearly touching the lintel, a crusty bottle in either hand, he was staring at Sir Arthur, to the full as intently as Sir Arthur stared at him.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" then cried, testily, the mighty historian of the Northern Provinces. "What the devil is the man doing with the wine," thought he, flaming inwardly, "when he ought to be busy on—on my book?" ”

“ Aspasia dancing on the frozen grass, brown and red like a robin; Muhammed standing before him in his soldier-pride, the ironic smile on his face—son of the East, with the winter-lichened boughs of the English orchard above him!
At the end of his beat Raymond wheeled round and looked down the moss-grown avenue where that day the red-turbaned Eastern had met his gaze; and now, with the fantastic effect of a dream, he beheld the selfsame square-shouldered figure swing into sight between the grey boles with their ghostly look of age. ”

“ When they got out at the little country station, in the rural heart of Dorset, the day was closing in. The vault of the heavens brooded over the earth with a cup-like closeness. November though it was, the air struck upon their cheeks as gently as a caress, all impregnated with the fragrance of wet green indefinably touched with the tart accent of decay.
Rosamond drew a long deep breath; it had a poignant pleasure in it; tears sprang to her eyes, but, for the first time in God knew how many years, there was a sweetness in them. Jani at her elbow shivered with an aguish chatter of teeth. ”

“ Lady Gerardine had seen, too; but there was no terror in her soul.
"Why should he not look alive?" said she, in a soft confidential whisper, "he's not really dead, you know."
The astounding words had scarcely fallen upon Baby's alarmed consciousness, when there was a crunching of wheels below the window, as if the night without had suddenly engendered some ghostly visitor in state. A violent peal rang through the silent house; a new but very tangible fear was upon Aspasia. With a shriek she sprang to her feet.
"As sure as eggs is eggs, it's Runkle!" ”

“ No man had ever bolder, truer eyes. Ah, and no woman but Rosamond had seen them flame into passion—passion that yet then had had no meaning for her who saw! And those lips, folded into sternness, had any one known them to break into lines of tenderness as they were used for her? None at least, not even his mother, had heard them whisper what they had whispered to the wife—to the wife whose ears had been deaf, then, as a child's, because of her uncomprehending heart!
What was it old Mary had said? "It is we who make our dead dead." ”

“ He felt as if his life had been caught up out of its own vastly different course and suddenly intertwined with that of these two women; the one whose every action, every word, was mysterious to him; and the other, clear to the eye as running water, child-heart, child-soul, impulse elemental, nature itself from her spontaneous laugh to her frank impertinence.
"Do you know," whispered Aspasia to him, as they stood side by side under the great colonnade waiting for their turn to descend to the carriage, "I have been hating myself ever since I was such a beast about poor Aunt Rosamond. ”

“ Rosamond had at last torn across the interwoven fabric of their two lives; the ugly rending sound of the parting hung in the air. These gaping edges no seam could ever join again. To the woman came a fierce realisation of freedom, a sweeping anger at the petty shackles that had held her so long.
Sir Arthur stepped back, his arms falling by his side. He, poor man, felt as if the good old world, of which he was such an ornament, had ceased to be solid beneath his feet.
"Rosamond!"
"What are you doing here?" she cried, in a panting whisper. "What do you want with me? ”

“ Then Bethune's face softened in the old, good way; and yet with something, too, that had never been there before, something which made Aspasia drop her lids.
"Well, Robin?" said he, and beckoned. She came to him sidling.
It would always be thus between them. He would beckon and she would come. Had the impossible happened, had that mistress of his hidden ideal condescended to him, he would have gone far to crave the least favour, and always with a trembling soul. But the life that touches the transcendent joy, the rare ecstasy is fated to know but little happiness. ”

“ Such as he did not die, so long as they were wanted in life.
Then it was Harry English, indeed, that looked round. If Bethune's brain had had room for any doubt, the doubt must have died at that instant. Harry English, pallid, where for years the Eastern beard had grown so close—almost as with the pallor of the cheek upon which the earth has lain—worn, not so much by these same years as by a devouring impatience sternly held: but the old leader nevertheless, with such a light in his dark eyes as had been wont to kindle there when he called his men into the heart of the fight. ”

“ Baby called out as if she had been struck, and burst into fresh tears.
The inert figure on the bed was all the girl had of home, all she had of certain love. This marble woman, no longer kin to her, had lavished on her more than a mother's care; from those lips, now so silent, except in the last sad days of trouble, Aspasia had never heard an ungentle word.
"She must not die," sobbed she.
"She will not die," said Harry English.
He shifted his hand till it rested over Rosamond's heart. Then he looked down at the face, with its faint smile of secret joy, pitifully exposed to all these eyes ”

“ And for one like myself, who has made a study of women, Lady Gerardine is a type—a type rare, fortunately, perhaps, for the peace of the world, but, heavens, of what palpitating allurement when one does come across it!"
"A type of a very selfish woman," said Bethune, shortly. And this time the physician was not far wrong in noting bitterness in his tone. "As cold as a stone, I should say, and as self-centred as a cat."
"Self-centred, I grant you. But cold?" screamed the Frenchman.
"As cold at heart as she is white in face," said Harry English's comrade. ”

“ Aspasia one day averred in an irrepressible burst of frankness, "is the sort of man the more you know him, the less you like him."
No one would have been more surprised than Sir Arthur himself had he been told that he was a tyrant. Yet very soon those who were brought into contact with him discovered what a domineering spirit dwelt behind that sweet smile; how, without ever departing from a form of speech and manner that, with his own family was almost always caressing, with the rest of the world affable, no human being had ever been able to move him from the prosecution of his own purpose. ”

“ If sleep came at all to Rosamond that night, it came with no refreshment of forgetfulness, but rather with an increase of inner struggle. Hour merged into hour until even the noisy Indian town fell into some kind of silence; but the voices in her troubled soul ceased not their clamour.
Why should she be made to do this thing, she who had asked so little of life; who had, indeed, deliberately fashioned life for herself so that it should give her but one boon—quietude? Her pulses throbbed as if with that fever which the solicitous husband had prognosticated. ”

“ The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank, dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege. He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night, there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages, the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. ”

“ When Rosamond and she, in the marshalled palace of Sir Arthur, had planned this homely occupation, it had seemed an almost deliriously joyful prospect of freedom. Now, such is the futility of the granted wish, Aspasia, as she flicked with impatient fingers among the wet foliage, was a prey to that abandonment of melancholy which is rarely known in its perfection after twenty. Indeed, poor Baby's outlook upon the world that December noon was a pitiable one. The only man she could have loved was dead before she had even known him! ”

“ In his left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:
"Raymond," he said.
For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of men's lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other.
"My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"
A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given out a living man. ”

“ As Bethune looked at her, he thought she was as pretty as a winter robin in her brown furs. Her eyes glistened as she flung quick glances at him; her dimples came and went; her teeth flashed as she chattered at headlong speed. They were going to Sunday service at the village church, a couple of miles away, and Baby was setting forth with a delightful sense of vigour and freedom.
Those whose fate binds them to cities can have no idea of the delicate joys of the country walk, with the beloved one—him or her—who fills the thoughts. ”

“ I saw the dawn break over the water out on the sea bastion of this old fort. The sea was quite wrapt in mist, and I and my heart seemed first alone high up in the air, with the wash of the invisible waters below and the restless tapping of the flag line on the staff over my head. And then the dawn came. It seemed to me the first dawn I had ever beheld, I, who have marched through many an Indian night and seen such fires as England never dreams of. But I look upon the world with new eyes. The meaning of things has become clear to me. I never saw beauty before I saw you ”

“ Sir Arthur's fond and proud look at his beautiful consort struck the old love with a stab. She was not even regretted!
"My dear," said Sir Arthur, one of his wife's cold hands in his, "here is Lady Aspasia, of whom you have heard so much."
Then Lady Aspasia remembered her manners, and rose to greet her hostess. As she did so, she caught the reflection both of herself and of Lady Gerardine side by side in the mirror over the chimney-piece. Both tall women, their heads were nearly on a level; but between the two faces what a chasm! How could the old love be regretted? ”

“ Through the door left open by Sir Arthur the sound of the fountain playing in the great inner baths fell soothingly on the ear. A breeze gently swayed the scented matting blinds to and fro and brought in gusts of Eastern airs to their nostrils, spiced, heavy, dreamy. From below, where lay the town, rose rumours of revel—the poignant twang of the ghitern, the plaint of the reed, the dry sob of the tom-tom. The whole atmosphere within and without was an appeal to the emotions, to the senses; the very touch of the night wind a velvet-soft caress. ”

“ With her hand on the door handle, Jani shook her head till the monstrous gold ear-rings waggled against her cheeks.
"Missie Sahib, no more disturbed to-night," she repeated emphatically. Her opaque eyes were fixed with triumphant resentment upon Aspasia's countenance. Aspasia, the off-hand young lady, who flouted old Jani's vested right, who had taken upon herself to do Lady Gerardine's hair this very night, must learn that her presence was not always desirable.
"Who is there?" cried Rosamond's voice, high and strained, from within. "I can see no one. Jani, you must let no one in." ”

“ Sir Arthur was in his element. To condescend, to demonstrate, to instruct, was to the Governor as the breath of his nostrils; he prided himself upon the Attic character of his French; he was justly conscious that, judged even by the Parisian standard, the urbanity of his manners was beyond criticism. And to have the opportunity of displaying to the intelligent foreigner the splendours of a quasi-regal position, filled to the utmost capacity; the working of a superior mind (not unleavened by sparks of English wit that again need, certes, fear no comparison with French esprit) ”

“ The logs from the Dorset beech-woods flamed in the queer corner chimney-piece of Harry's attic room. The light flickered on the scattered papers in Rosamond's lap and threw illusive ruddy gleams on the pale hands, on the pale cheek that turned to the glow, yet felt it not.
When she had sat down to read, it was some time still before noon. The December sun crept out between two rain-storms, threw a yellow circle on the boards, marked the shadow of the ivy spray, then paled and passed. The merry logs grew red, grew grey; they fell together with sighs into white ash ”

“ Again Aspasia's head flew from side to side in violent negation.
"Oh, I could not! Aunt Rosamond, she's a darling, she is more than good to me; I love her, but—it would seem such horrible impertinence. I cannot explain, Major Bethune, but I never feel as if I knew her really, nor as if she wanted me to know her. She always seems to me to be all outside, somehow."
He reflected a moment; then he suddenly held out his hand to her, with that softening of the countenance she had already noted—and noted to approve. ”

“ The Englishman's heart kindled as the unconquered spirit of the Pathan seemed to rear itself to meet the cold domination of the conquering race. There was nothing of revolt in the man's look, yet something untameable, he thought. And it pleased him hugely. His mind leaped back to his own "devils of boys" on the mountain sides—eagles and leopards of humanity, as compared with the domestic animals. He ran a loving glance over the Indian's muscular yet lithe proportions: built for strength—for endurance—for the strenuous side of life. ”

“ Old Mary smiled again. She bent over the chair.
"Why, ma'am," she said, as if speaking to a frightened child, "you don't need to be told, a good lady like you: to those that have faith, there is no death."
"No death!" echoed Rosamond. "All life is death. Everything is full of death."
There was a strangling bitterness in her throat that broke forth in a harsh laugh. ”

“ But the pain-life is too strong for human will, and the time comes when the only fight the will can make against it is that of silent endurance.
As Bethune sat by his hostess to-night, he was feeling, inarticulately, according to his nature, but acutely, not only the pain of her own situation as he dimly guessed it, but the actual physical pain of her suffering, her sick recoil from meat and bread, almost the spasm in her beautiful throat that would not let her swallow one drop of the water her fevered lips yearned for. ”

“ Some such room, dignified with the consciousness of a rigid selection, reticent to primness in its simple yet distinguished art, fragrant with the potpourri of English gardens, fragrant too with memories of generations of wholesome English gentlefolks, you may meet with any day in some old manor-house of the shires. To transport the complete illusion to the heart of India, Bethune knew well must have cost more labour and money than if the neighbouring palaces had been ransacked for their treasures. ”

“ But Sir Arthur had staggered and reeled, and Lady Aspasia, ever practical, had to postpone thought for action. She caught him firmly by the elbow:
"Hold up, Arty; be a man."
The Lieutenant-Governor's first impulse had naturally been to deny the monstrous thought, to wither Aspasia for her impious suggestion. Then a look at the black and white portrait over the dressing-table, fitfully but vividly illumined by the flames of the draught-blown candles—a look from that strong presentment to the pallid-faced, black-haired man by the bed, brought an overwhelming conviction. ”

“ She watched the dawn wax as on one memorable morning in her far-off Indian palace; not here on beetle's-wing green and eastern glow of carmine and purple, but upon brown of wainscot oak and dim rosebud of faded chintz. And, as the lights spread between the gaps of the shutters, there grew upon her from the panelled wall a strong young face with bold wide-open eyes—eyes very young, set under brows already thoughtful. A very English face, despite the olive of the cheek, the darkness of the hair, close-cut, that still had a crisp wave under the cock of the Sandhurst cap. ”