Chapter Twenty Three.

Light.

“After months—which seemed years—of the most abominable hardship, wearying anxiety, and constant danger, the security and restfulness of this sort of thing is simply beyond all words to define.”

Thus Campian, clad in irreproachable evening dress, with a wave of the hand which takes in the lighted table and trophy hung walls. The only other occupant of Upward’s dining room has just entered, likewise in full panoply—with opera-cloak, and fan and gloves.

“Yes. That is indeed true. Do you know, I wish we had not got to go out to-night.”

“Then why do we; for as it happens I entirely share that wish. Suppose we stay at home instead. Or are you going to say ‘Duty’?”

Vivien does not at once reply. Something in the tone, in the scarcely veiled meaning wherewith he emphasises the word, strikes home to her. The Upward party and her uncle have gone on, bound for a regimental theatrical performance at the Assembly Rooms, and they two are left to follow. Not many days have gone by since Campian’s return to Shâlalai; not many more are to go by before he leaves it—almost certainly for ever.

“Shall we stay at home then, dear?” answers Vivien, a little wave of unsuppressed tenderness in her voice. “We may throw duty overboard for once, for the sake of a poor returned wanderer. But—I have made you this, and in any case you must wear it.” “This” being an exquisite little “button-hole” which she is now carefully pinning on for him. The great tiger jaws on the walls seem to snarl inaudibly in the lamplight—as though to remind both of the multifold perils of the beautiful, treacherous East.

Now, the act of pinning on a button-hole under some circumstances is bound to lead to a good deal, therefore in this case, that an arm should close around the operatrix seems hardly surprising.

“Do you still venerate that vacant old fetish? It parted us once, Vivien.”

Again she is silent, and her eyes fill. The great black and orange stripes of the tiger skins seem to dance in angry rays before her vision. Her voice will not come to her. But he continues:

“Has it never occurred to you that you—that we—made a very considerable mistake that time? We each found our counterpart in the other. Surely such an experience is unique. Then what happened? You set up a fetish—a miserable fraud—a mere whimsical conception of an idol—and called it Duty—while I—I was fool enough to let you do it.”

“I don’t know why things were ordered that way,” he continues, for still Vivien makes no reply—“or for what purpose, of earth or heaven, five years of happiness should have been knocked off our lives. But for whatever it is, I don’t believe for a moment it was arranged we should meet so strangely and unexpectedly in this out of the way part of the world—all for nothing. We have been brought together again, and we have tried to keep up the rôle of strangers—of mere acquaintances—and the whole thing is a most wretched and flimsy fiasco. Is it not?”

“Yes.”

She is looking at him now, full and earnestly. Her fingers are toying with the “button-hole” she has pinned on his coat. Unconsciously she is leaning on him as he holds her within his embrace.

“Our love showed forth in every moment, in every word, in every action of our lives,” he continues. “The mask we tried to wear was quite unavailable to stifle the cry of two aching hearts. Listen, darling. There is no room for affectation between us now. Our love is as ever it was—rather is it stronger. Am I right?”

“Yes. You are the one love of my life, and always have been. And you know it—dearest.”

So sweet, so soft comes this reply, that the very tones are as an all pervading caress.

“Those five years are beyond our reach,” he continues. “They are gone never to return, but we can make up for them during the remainder of our lives. And—we will. Will we not?”

“Yes—we will.”

The reply, though low, is full-voiced and unhesitating. Luminous eyes, sweet with their love light, are raised to his, and the man’s head is drawn down to meet again that kiss which seemed to join soul to soul in the dread hour of peril and of bloodshed and self-abnegation. And, with the moment, the long years of desolation and heart-emptiness are as though they had never been—for after the drear gloom of their weary length—the sharp and fiery trial of their culmination, Love has triumphed, and now there is light.

And here with the doings of our two principal characters we have no further concern, and if this holds good of them, still more does it hold good of those among whom their lot has been temporarily cast. But if life, in its fatefulness, has refrained from dashing the cup of happiness—tardily yet finally grasped—from the hands of these two, its normal grimness of irony is not likely to suffer in the long run. For Umar Khan is still at large. Force and diplomacy alike have failed to bring that arch-free-booter and murderer within measurable distance of the gallows and faggot pyre, which he has so richly earned a score of times over. For the twenty-first time the wily evildoer has escaped retribution, and in all probability will continue to do so. Which—if not exactly satisfying to our reader’s sense of poetic justice—is Life.

The End.