Arundel. Benson Edward Frederic

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СКАЧАТЬ fires of the brushwood they had gathered during the day, and cooked their own food at cheaper rate than obtained in the stores. Ponies nickered and twitched at their heel-ropes, the sharp, pungent smell of the wood fires and the wreaths of aromatic smoke drifted slowly along the sluggish currents of the almost windless air, and gradually the empty space of the serai became a mosaic of sleeping men and beasts. The hills that the sunset had turned into molten tawny gold grew dark again with the gathering night, and in the depth of the velvet vault above the wheeling stars grew large.

      And behind all the various forms of life, behind the molten hills, behind the sky, behind the limbs of the bearded camels, behind the chatter and smoke of the provision booths, there lurked, so it seemed to Elizabeth, one impulse, one energy common to all. In her head lay some remembered melody of Schumann, that seemed to beat to the same indwelling rhythms to which the stars pulsated.

      Her father was standing alone beside her; a little way off the genial Commander-in-Chief was tasting the soup that bubbled in the tin-plated cauldrons, pronouncing it excellent, and bidding his aide-de-camp, a slim young, weary Englishman, translate his verdict of it to the gratified booth-keeper. Some word of the identity of this great boisterous hedonist had been passed about the serai, but the tired drovers of the caravan paid little heed. And yet, here incarnate, was the figure-head of the English power that guaranteed their safe journey through the turbulent lands of the frontier, and that would avenge with wicked little spitting guns and a troop of khaki-clad soldiers any raid that the ungoverned tribe might make. But Sir Henry, in spite of this, roused but little attention; the tired drovers slept; those who were more alert were but employed with jokes and snatches of song round the samovars and soup-cauldrons. The hills and the stars attended as little; everything and everybody was intent on his own inward calls, just as last night the Brahmin who lay by the wayside had no need of food, and but thought of the finding of that for which all his years had searched.

      And then Elizabeth's questing soul suddenly gave up the pursuit of a hidden cause, and felt content with the obvious explanation. She took her father's arm.

      "Oh, daddy, I've had such a lovely day!" she said. "What heaps of different things there are in the world, and what heaps of different businesses. And it all makes such a jumbled incoherent whole! In half an hour we shall be back home again, and it will be time to dress, and mamma will tell us all she has done to-day. After dinner I will play the piano to you till you snore, and as soon as you snore I shall wake you up again and make you write to Aunt Julia to say when I shall arrive at Heathmoor."

      He pressed her hand as it lay in the crook of his arm.

      "It is a less tragic view than that of last night," he said.

      "I know. At this moment I don't mind the least about going to England. I'm – I'm going to take things as they come."

      Elizabeth paused a moment, as with the vividness of ocular hallucination the Brahmin's face once more swam before her eyes.

      "But that doesn't mean I am not going to be serious," she said. "I want 'richly to enjoy.' Doesn't that come in the Bible somewhere? I expect there are many routes that arrive at the same place."

      To anybody unacquainted with the sum of Elizabeth's musings that day, this was necessarily a cryptic speech. It grew more cryptic yet.

      "Perhaps drink leads the drunkard there," she said, "and music the musician. Doesn't one develop, daddy, through one's passions, and not through one's renunciations? I can't see how starving your desires can possibly help one."

      "My dear, there are desires and desires," he said.

      "And where do they all come from? Surely from the search."

      He was silent a moment, and at that moment anything short of enthusiastic acceptance of her illumination was a coldness, a hand of ice to Elizabeth.

      "Daddy, you don't understand," she said. "As long as we want, it doesn't much matter what we want. Isn't it half the battle to be eager?"

      He shook his head.

      "Again I should talk nonsense if I agreed with you," he said. "Eagerness is a sword, my dear; but it is not armour."

      "I don't want armour," she said quickly. "I am not afraid of being hurt."

      "Ah, don't get hurt, my darling!" he said.

      "Not I. And if I do get hurt, daddy, I shall come crying to you, and you will have to comfort me. Oh, oh – look at all those tired men, with no beds to lie on, and no pillows and no tooth powder or sponges! Don't you envy them? They will wake up in the morning, and find themselves there, and, after all, nothing else can matter. I don't want to be bothered with possessions. I want to be – " Elizabeth suddenly broke off, interrupting her speech and thought alike.

      "Daddy, that darling Sir Henry has had soup, and now he is eating unleavened cakes, and a peculiarly murderous-looking Pathan is tempting him with a pomegranate. Do stop him; he is dining with us in an hour's time, and mamma will be so vexed if he doesn't eat the most enormous dinner."

      Colonel Fanshawe, with Elizabeth still on his arm, stepped over a couple of sleeping prostrate forms.

      "Yes, we will go to him," he said, "and you shall tell me more about the simple life afterwards. It is getting late."

      Sir Henry had just cracked a pomegranate in his enormous beefy hands.

      "God bless me!" he was saying. "I never saw anything look so good. Fanshawe, be kind enough to tell this man in your best Pushtoo, that there's a fortune in pomegranates. Why, it's quite delicious; never tasted such a fine fruit."

      Colonel Fanshawe made some amiable equivalent of all this in Pushtoo, and spoke to Sir Henry again.

      "He says that his trees will bear in greater abundance than ever now, sir. But it is rather late. I think we ought to be getting home. You won't have more than time to eat your dinner in comfort before the train – "

      Sir Henry rejected a mass of seeds.

      "Yes, yes; we'll go," he said. "Why, here's my Miss Elizabeth come to insist. I always obey the ladies, Colonel; you obey the ladies always, and you'll have a confoundedly pleasant time. Now, Miss Elizabeth, quick march, is it?"

      A sleepless day following on a dancing night, had produced in Mrs. Fanshawe that uncertainty of temper which, when it exhibits itself in children, is called fractiousness. The Commander-in-Chief, who dined with them en famille, had been obliged to leave in order to catch his train before dinner was over, and in consequence the very expensive strawberries which she had designed to form an exceptional dessert were eaten by herself and Elizabeth, while the Colonel went to the station to speed his parting chief. The chief also during dinner had paid, according to her estimate of what was proper, insufficient attention to his hostess, and more than sufficient to Elizabeth, on whom he rained showers of robust gallantries. In addition, some vague story of a dead man found in the garden had agitated her, while not a single soul from the rest of the station had called to tell her how complete was the eclipse that all other women suffered at the ball last night in consequence of her effulgence. This was enough to start a promising crop of grievances and gloomy forebodings in Mrs. Fanshawe's mind, which she served up, so to speak, young, succulent, and tender like mustard and cress. The crop was of extremely varied growth – a perfect macedoine of mixed and bitter vegetables, among which her habitual helplessness and childlike manner had been completely volatilized.

      "I think it is no wonder," she said, "that the military future of India gives politicians grave anxiety at home, when there is such a doddering old goose at the head of affairs."

      "Oh, mamma, it's СКАЧАТЬ