The Ruby Sword: A Romance of Baluchistan

Chapter Thirteen.

Experimental

The days had gone by, and now Campian was installed in the forest bungalow. Colonel Jermyn’s invitation had gone forth, but the missive which would have counteracted it had not, so here he was.

Not without some deliberation had he decided on accepting it. He had thought himself safe; had reckoned he had safely parted with all illusions, as conducive only to disturbance and anxiety, and the greatest of all illusions was Vivien Wymer. But the sudden and unlooked for reappearance of the latter had reopened a wound. Yet why? She was the same as before. She had failed him once. She had sacrificed him to others once, and would of course do so again unhesitatingly. Why not? There was no such thing as love as they two had once looked at it – had once imagined it. A mere illusion; pleasant while it lasted, painful when its illusoriness became evident. But then the wrench, though painful, even agonising, was over – and in its effect salutary. Five years make a difference in a man’s life. He had not been young then; he was older now. Sensibility was blunted. The capacity for self-torment was no longer his.

Love, the ever endurable! He had believed in that once. He was no misogynist, even now. His experience of the other sex had been considerable. He was ready to accord the members thereof the possession of many delightful qualities. As friends they were staunch, as companions unrivalled. Life unbrightened by feminine presence and feminine influences would be a dull affair. But as exponents of Love, the ever endurable, they were a failure; and exactly as he came to appreciate this did he come to appreciate the other sex the more because he had ceased to expect too much.

His experiences had been many and varied, and took in all types of the softer sex, and he had found them wonderfully similar. The fire and passion of to-day became chill and indifference a year hence. Then Vivien Wymer had come into his life, and lo, all was changed. Here was a glorious exception to the rather soulless rule. She met his every want; she appealed to him as he could never have believed any woman could, and by some strange, magnetic instinct, his own personality appealed to hers. They seemed made for each other – and yet – he had been sacrificed. Not even there was he to be all in all – to be first and everything.

They had seen each other again once since that chance meeting in the markhôr cave. The colonel and his niece had ridden over to Upward’s camp to tiffin, and it was on that occasion that the hearty old soldier had pressed him to come and pay them a visit. He had not even glanced at Vivien, striving to read to what extent she would second the invitation, but had accepted on the spot, yet not without a mental reservation.

For there was one point which he desired to debate within himself, and that was the very one which had occurred to Vivien. How could they two be together under the same roof, in close, daily intercourse as mere acquaintances, they two who had been so much to each other? How could they bear the strain, how keep up the rôle?

Then when his meditations had reached this point, a strange exultant thrill seemed to disturb the balance of his clearer judgment. Why should the rôle be kept up? After being parted for five years, they had met again – nay, more – had been thrown together again in this strange, wild country, that in former times had been to either of them no more than a mere geographical name. Both were unchanged. There was a softening in Vivien’s voice, when off her guard, as on the last occasion of their meeting, which seemed to point to the fact that she was. For himself – well, he had grown older, wiser – and, he imagined, harder. Still, the wound did seem to be reopening. Why, the whole was almost as though Fate had gone out of her way to bring they two together again.

Yes, he had grown harder. Love, the ever endurable! Ridiculous! She had sacrificed him before, and would do so again if occasion arose. If she did not do so it would be because occasion had not arisen, and this consideration constituted a state of potential unreliability, which was not reassuring. The idea even served to re-awaken much of the old bitterness and rankling resentment, and he decided that it would be an interesting, if coldblooded, study in character to observe how Vivien herself would come out under such an ordeal as the close, intimate intercourse which life beneath the same roof could not but involve.

Once there, he had no cause to regret his decision. The colonel was a fine old soldier of the very best type. Most of his life had been spent in India, and he was full of anecdote and reminiscence. He had served through the Mutiny, and in several frontier disturbances, and his knowledge of the country and its natives was intelligent and exhaustive. He had been a sportsman, too, in his time – and, in short, was a man whom it was a pleasure to talk with. He and Campian took to each other immensely, and the two would sit together under the verandah of an evening, smoking their cheroots and exchanging ideas, while Vivien discoursed music through the open doors, upon a cottage piano which had been lugged up, at some risk to its tuning and general anatomy, on board the hideous necessary camel.

Decidedly it was very close quarters, indeed, this party of three, isolated there in that remote forest bungalow, away among the chaotic, piled up mountain deserts of wild Baluchistan; but there was no element of monotony about it; indeed, how could there be when to two out of the three life thus represented an ordeal that meant so much, that might mean indeed so much more. Yet it spoke volumes for the self control of both that no suspicion should have entered the mind of the third that they had ever beheld each other elsewhere, and under very near circumstances. Their intercourse was free and unrestrained, but it was the easy intercourse of two people who had ideas in common and liked each other’s society, and totally devoid of any symptom of covering a warmer feeling. They would frequently take rides or walks together through the juniper forest, or to some point overlooking a new or wider view of the great chaotic mountain waste, and it spoke volumes for their self control that no allusion was ever made to the past. They would not have been human if occasionally some undercurrent of feeling had not now and then come unguardedly near the surface, but only to be instantly repressed. It was as though both were engaged in a diplomatic game requiring a high degree of skill, and in which each was watching the next move of the other with a jealous eye.

Once, in course of their rides together, the two were threading a tangi, and the sense of being shut within those high rock walls moved Vivien to broach the subject of the adventure which had so nearly ended in tragedy for her companion and his.

“It must have been a dreadful experience,” she said, looking up at the cliffs overhead.

“Yes. It was awkward. I’ve no use for a repetition of it.”

His tone was discouraging, as though he would fain have changed the subject. But she seemed to cling to it.

“I think that was a splendid feat,” she went on, looking straight at him. “I wish I knew what it was like never to be afraid.”

“So do I – most heartily. But I simply don’t believe in the existence of that enviable state; if you can talk of the existence of a negative, that is.”

“But you do know what it is. Were you ever afraid of anything in your life?”

The very words Nesta had used. Then he had not taken them in a complimentary sense. He had thought the remark a foolish one. Now coming from this woman, who had idealised him – who did still – with her wide luminous eyes turned full upon his face, and that unguarded softening which had again crept into her tone, there was a subtle flattery in it which was delicious, but enervating. As a matter of fact he really thought nothing of the feat, beyond what a lucky thing it was they should have been able to save both their lives. He answered so shortly as to seem ungracious.

“Very much and very often. I would rather run away than fight any day. Fact.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No? People don’t, I find. Some day I may do that very thing – then when everybody is howling me down I can always turn round and say – ‘I told you so, and you wouldn’t believe me.’”

“But do you want them to believe you?”

“Why, of course. You don’t know me at all, Vivien, even now.” Then, as if to hurry away from a dangerous slip. “By the by, I never can understand the insane way in which even civilised and thinking people elect to deify what they call courage or pluck. There is no such thing really. It is purely a matter of opportunity or temperament – in short, sheer accident. To get out of a tight place a man has got to do something. While doing it he has no time to think. If he had, in nine cases out of ten he’d run away.”

“Yes? And what about when he has to go into a tight place?”

“Why, then he’s got to go. And as a matter of fact it is funk that drives him in. The opprobrium and possibly material penalty, he would incur by backing out constitute the more formidable alternative of the two. So of the two evils man, being essentially a self preserving animal, instinctively chooses the least.”

“Plausible, but not convincing,” returned Vivien, with a laugh. “And is there not something of what they call a ‘crank’ underlying that philosophy?”

“‘They’ are apt to say that of any application of the principles of common sense,” – “as I have so often told you before,” he was nearly adding.

“Was Miss Cheriton very much scared that day? She says she’ll never get over it as long as she lives.”

“Poor little girl. It must have been a ghastly experience. She behaved very well; was no more scared than any other woman would have been, and a good deal less so than some.”

“What a pretty girl she is.”

“Very – of her type.”

Vivien was conscious of two emotions – swift, simultaneous as a lightning flash; first a pang over the readiness with which he endorsed her remark, then a heartbeat of relief, for those three words constituted a whole saving clause.

“You must have seen a great deal of her?”

No sooner uttered than Vivien would have given anything to recall the remark. What construction would he put upon it other than jealousy of this blue-eyed, golden-haired girl, who had several years of youth the advantage over herself?

“That depended upon circumstances. Nesta Cheriton has a great penchant for the British Army, and the British Army thoroughly reciprocates the predilection. While the British Army was represented at Chirria Bach I saw not much of her, over and above the occasions when one had to meet in ordinary life. While it was unrepresented she seemed to make herself equally happy in going chikór shooting with me. On the whole, I rather like the little girl. She is bright and amusing, and acts, I suppose, as a passing tonic to one’s jaded and middle-aged spirits.”

His tone had been that of absolute and unaffected ease, and now it occurred to him suddenly, and for the first time, that Vivien was putting him through something of a catechism. The moral dissection which he had promised himself in risking a sojourn beneath the same roof with her had already begun, and this was only a phase of it. At such times the old feeling of rankling bitterness would come upon him, and with it a wave of desolation and heart-emptiness. Why had she failed him – she his destined counterpart? Why had she proved so weak under a not very strong ordeal? He had indeed become hard, when he could go through day after day in closest companionship with her, and yet keep on the mask, never once be betrayed into letting down his guard.

One consideration had acted as a salutary cold douche in the event of the smouldering fires of his nature rising too near their restraining rock crust. One day Vivien was telling him all about her uncle and how she came to be keeping house for him. She had done so since her aunt’s death, and supposed she would go on doing so. He was such a dear old man, she said – so thoughtful and kind and unselfish, and he had no one to look after him but her. All of which her listener, even from his short opportunity of observation, was inclined to endorse; but the sting lay in the concluding consideration, for it recalled that other time. In it had lain the pretext for sacrificing him to an imaginary duty. He was not going to risk a repetition of what he had then undergone. The iron entered deeper and deeper.

Once an incident occurred which nearly availed to shatter and melt it. Vivien had gone into his room during his absence, as she frequently did, to see if there was not some little touch she could add to its comfort or attractiveness. An object on his table caught her attention. She picked it up and examined it, and her eyes filled. Yet it was only an old tobacco pouch, and a very worn and weather-beaten one at that – so worn and frayed that hardly more than a few threads of the original embroidery still hung to the cover. Then she did an extraordinary thing. Instead of replacing it she took it away with her. That night she sat up late, and lo, in the course of the day, going into his room Campian found that the old battered pouch for which he had hunted high and low was replaced by a beautiful new one, the embroidery of which was a perfect work of art.

“Why did you take so much trouble?” he said when next they met. “You could not have known I had lost the other.”

“Is that why we were so glum last night?” she returned, a glad light, struggling with a mischievous one, in her eyes. “Never mind. This is a much better one.”

“I loved that one. I would give a great deal to recover it, as you ought to know.”

“Wait a moment.” She left him and returned almost immediately.

“Here it is – or what is left of it. Now – ? What will you give?”

She held it out to him – then drew it back. Her eyes were raised to his. Her voice was soft and caressing as ever he had heard it in the old days. Just one of those trivial accidents bringing about the most crucial moment in two lives – when, as usual, the most trivial of causes availed utterly to mar its effect. That most trivial of causes was the voice of Colonel Jermyn, followed by the entrance of its jolly possessor.

“Here’s the dâk just come from Upward. They’re all going back to Shâlalai the day after to-morrow Campian, and want to know if you’ve had enough of us yet. If you have they say they are leaving early and you’d better be down at the camp to-morrow night. If you haven’t – why – all the better for us.”

“The point is whether you haven’t had enough of me, Colonel.” But while he made the laughing remark his glance travelled round to Vivien’s face. It was one of those moments when her guard was down. The interruption had come so inopportunely. Decidedly the study he had promised himself was bearing rich results.

“Pooh! Of course we haven’t. Why, you’ve only just come. Besides, you can get to Shâlalai at any time. That’s settled then. But I have an idea. We might go down to Mehriâb station and see them off. There are some things I am getting up, and that idiot of a Babu in charge can’t send an intelligent answer to any question I write him. It’s not a bad sort of ride down there, and we’ll kill two birds with one stone. What do you say, Viv?”

“I beg to second it, Uncle Edward. The idea is an extremely good one.”