Quita

“ In this fashion the first half of March slipped uneventfully by, each day bringing with it that imperceptible advance of heat which strikes an undernote of dread through the rose-scented languor of a Punjab March. For in the vast Northern Plains of India, it is autumn, not spring, that bears the winged word of resurrection. But Quita was still at that enviable stage in love's progress when times and seasons and places shrink to mere pin-points beside the one supreme fact. A Frontier hot weather in Eldred's company held no terrors for her. ”

“ It could thrive without much lip-service. The undefined aloofness that troubled Quita was spiritual, rather than physical. She was conscious of walls within walls, separating her from his essential self; and behind these again of an unobtrusive reserve force, whose power of endurance she could not estimate; because her dealings with Michael's shallower nature had afforded her no experience of a moral stability free from the warp of the personal equation. ”

“ The tinkling album gave Quita her cue. She insisted on hearing its entire repertoire, which was mercifully limited; and her natural ease of manner, her knack of plunging whole-heartedly into the subject of the moment, soon put Govind Singh's shyness to flight. He deserted monosyllables for clipped, hurried sentences, jerked out with an odd mixture of nervousness and self-satisfaction. Quita flashed a smile at Desmond, who stood sentry at her elbow, in seeming ignorance of the fact that Garth was making tentative attempts to usurp his place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI. "What we love we'll serve, aye, and suffer for too."
—W. Penn.
After sunset the mist came down again, thick as cotton-wool. Heaven and earth were obliterated, and a quietly determined downpour set in for the night.
Quita was still at her easel, trying bravely to disregard the collapse of her happy omen; Michael lounging in a cane chair, with Shelley and a cigarette. He had returned from Jundraghat in a mood of skin-deep nonchalance, beneath which irritation smouldered, and Quita's news had set the sparks flying. Behold him, therefore, doubly a martyr ”

“ Both he and Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a sais; and after much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.
Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,—drenched and evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide ”

“ But among a hundred dancers, not one plunged more whole-heartedly into the folly of the moment than Quita. She had stationed herself opposite the door where Lenox stood, and the very spirit of devilry seemed to have entered into her, driving her to italicise every trait in herself that must needs grate on his fastidiousness where a woman's conduct was concerned. ”

“ Quita's verdict on her visitor moved him to a smile of half-cynical amusement. He enjoyed her occasional unabashed lapses into the eternal feminine.
"I'm with you there," he answered, heartily. "The worst fault a human being can commit is to be faultless. Poor Mrs Desmond! She will have to subsist without our admiration." ”

“ A jerk, a crash, followed by darkness, and a thud that brought her half-overturned dandy into violent contact with the ground, fairly settled the matter. The "mate" had missed the path; and, but for an instantaneous counter-jerk on the part of the men behind, Quita would have been shot down the khud, instead of on to the stony roadway. ”

“ There is a great black something deep down in me, Quita, that rises up now and then, like a spiritual fog, and blots all the light and colour out of life. This, and the dread of those hideous possibilities I spoke of, made me feel, a month ago, as if it might be better for you to be left in comparative freedom, than chained to a man with a devil inside him. ”

“ For Quita Lenox, though far from beautiful, in the accepted sense, was undeniably good to look at. Coils of soft hair, golden in the sun, brown in the shade; eyes neither grey nor green, intensified by unusually large pupils, and by brows and lashes almost black; a straight nose, low at the root; a mouth too long, too mobile for beauty, its emotional quality safeguarded by an uncompromising chin, completed a face whose charm lay in no particular excellence of details ”

“ 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 ”

“ The suggestion of tenderness and companionship in their low tones seemed to accentuate the lifeless desolation through which they moved, the blankness and uncertainty of the anxious months ahead. Possibly something of this occurred to Desmond; for after the first few miles he deserted his wife now and again, and walked by Quita; exorcising the spirit of self-torment that haunts the imaginative, as he of all men best knew how to do. ”

“ To sacrifice it on the altar of a problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps, but, in the circumstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers a strain of unpretentious heroism, which delighted her in the abstract. But when the heroic puts on flesh and blood, and shoulders itself into our narrow lives, it is apt to appear a little too big for the stage; and Quita had an artist's eye for proportion, whether in pictures or in the human comedy. ”

“ With a sigh that ended in a smile, he took up his pen again: wishing her back the moment she was out of reach. For beneath his surface equanimity, the man in him was still thrilling under the emotion and astonishment of absolute possession; under the hallowing sense of permanence that at once calmed and exalted the fever heat of passion.
But Quita returned to her studio feeling more out of tune than ever. It was her own foolish fault, of course, for interrupting him: a form of knowledge that has never yet made for consolation. ”

“ As Lenox stood feasting his soul upon the splendour of it all, he knew that this was one of the great days of his life: that only Quita's inspiring presence was needed to crown the triumph of it. Even in the first glow of achievement, his heart turned instinctively to hers for sympathy and approval: and, could she have known it, her haunting fear that the mountains would prove too strong for her had crumbled into nothingness there and then. For if 'many waters cannot quench love,' neither can many mountains dwarf it. ”

“ Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita, sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be flung violently out of the saddle. ”

“ It was her first experience of meeting soldiers in the mass, on their own ground, and the man who has faced death and dealt it out to others appeals irresistibly to the fundamental barbaric in women. To this fascination, Quita added the artist's reverence for the men who 'do things,' as opposed to the men who record or express them.
She enlarged on the subject at breakfast one morning, in her usual direct fashion; but Desmond would have none of it.
"Remember, Quita," said he, "that an artist, in the inclusive sense, when he is worth anything, stands for the strongest thing in the world . ”

“ Three minutes later, they were swinging cautiously along the four-foot track that corkscrews down to the level of the Mall, the foremost man thrusting the lantern well ahead, with the sole result that a great white circle showed weirdly upon the curtain of mist, through which they journeyed by faith, and not by sight. With every step of the way Quita's conviction grew that she had pushed persistence to the verge of folly; and the thought of Michael, alone and dejected, tugged at her heart. ”

“ Nevertheless, human will and endeavour have small chance in a duel with that invisible Force, which men call Fate. In the language of the East, "it was written" that she should not get down the hill that night; and before they reached the Mall, Quita was compelled to own herself beaten. ”

“ You have genius, Quita. I recognise that. And I want you to think seriously over all you said this afternoon about not cramping or distorting your individuality to suit my 'prejudices.' If you feel that your art must come before everything, that marriage will only hamper its full development, without making good what you lose,—in fact, if you think that the purely artist life will be better and happier for you in the long-run, I would sooner you said so frankly, I would indeed. ”

“ Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell circling to the ground.
But for the first time Quita Maurice felt out of tune with it all. A disturbing element had thrust itself into her life, deranging its perspective, altering its values. ”

“ Arrived at her own turning, she relieved her feelings a little by getting Yorick at a canter up the twisted scrap of a path that climbed to a wooden doll's house, christened by a poetical Hindu landlord, the "Crow's Nest." Perched on an impossible-looking slope of gravel and granite, eight thousand feet above the Punjab, it seemed only to be saved from falling headlong by an eight-foot ledge of earth, which Quita spoke of proudly as her "garden," and which actually boasted two strips of border aglow with early summer flowers. ”

“ Now he drew up a chair and sat down by Honor: while Quita, pricked to a passing jealousy by his instant gravitation to her, moved off with Max Richardson, talking and laughing as if she had known him for years. It was not her habit to waste time in preliminaries.
"They'll get on splendidly, those two," Honor said, smiling as she watched them.
"I'll be glad if they do," Lenox answered without enthusiasm; and her eyes scanned his face.
"You aren't getting on splendidly, though. You look worn to a shadow. ”

“ Then Quita spoke.
"But you see, don't you, dear man, that I spoke truth. My pain was none the less sharp because you inflicted it unwittingly. It's one of the things people are apt to forget."
"Your pain? Before God I never dreamed that any act of mine could give you a minute's uneasiness; though Mrs Desmond . . ."
"Don't begin about Mrs Desmond, please!" She drew her hand away with a touch of impatience. "She is everything that is perfect, of course. But I hate her; and I believe I always shall."
Lenox turned on his elbow and looked up into her face. ”

“ Three or four unfinished pictures leaned against the easel. Quita looked through them, aimlessly, in search of a congenial subject. But they were chiefly landscape studies; and in her present mood Nature seemed a little tame, and bloodless. Her heart cried out for something human, and she wished that Michael would come back.
Then, like a ray of light, came the required inspiration, satisfying at once the counter-claims of Art and Love. She sought out a fresh canvas, set it on the easel, and plunged, forthwith, into a rough head-and-shoulder study of her husband. ”

“ The supreme art in human intercourse is the art of punctuation, and in the long pause that ensued, silence accomplished her perfect work.
Higher up they emerged on an open space of roadway, where the pines came abruptly to an end; and the path shelved sheer from its broken railing to the Visp Valley below. Instinctively Quita drew rein and drank in every detail of the vision before her with the wordless satisfaction that is the hall-mark of the true Nature-worshipper. Lenox stood quietly at her side, his gaze riveted on her face. ”

“ Breakfast was half through before Garth sauntered into the mess-tent: and Honor, who had watched for his coming, felt an unbidden pang of pity at sight of his blank face, when he beheld Quita sitting beside her husband, a bright spot of colour in either cheek, her eyes radiating a light that refused to be hidden under a bushel.
The unexpected blow roused all the devil in him. Man of prudence though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far end of the table ”