CHAPTER II.
Next day, ere the sun had risen, Clare Thorne, attended by Chuttur Sing, her native groom, went forth for her morning ride while the air was yet cool and delicious, and in every European she saw dreading to meet Wilmot, left the station behind her at a canter. She was clad in a light brown holland habit, trimmed with red braid; she wore a broad hat and long feather, and looked strikingly handsome.
Once or twice she looked back to the cantonment, and murmured to herself how strange it was to think that he should be there—he, after all! The civilians' bungalows were built on the little hills, where a puff of wind might be caught; but the barracks and sepoy lines occupied the centre of an arid and unsheltered plain, where never came a breath of wind to fan the withered cheek, or to drive away the fever and sickness for ever lingering there. As usual, the site of the cantonments was a blunder, and there our soldiers were doomed to languish, swelter, and perish by cholera or sunstroke, for the barracks had been built, and being so, had to be occupied.
"Poor Brown is down with cholera this morning." "Poor Brown! another told off to die. There are four doctors with him; but all in Europe couldn't give him another day in this world." Such were usually the first morning greetings in Mirzapatam when the bugles blew "the assembly." "And Smith of the 1st Bengal died about gun fire." "But that trump, Thorne, the chaplain, never left him till, with his own hands, he had closed his eyes." "When is the funeral?" "In orders, for sunset—the cool of the evening; cool at Mirzapatam!"
"Would Wilmot escape, or be going forth soon on a gun-carriage, as so many went, from that horrible barrack!" thought Clare, as she rode on towards the Jumna, where she knew the country grew beautiful; and she shivered as she thought of the life she led now.
Though her husband was chaplain to a military station, officers seldom or never, except when on duty, entered his bungalow; so the male visitors there consisted only of eurasian and native catechists, colporteurs, and teachers. To Clare it was an intolerable existence, and as she saw, when fever abated, the gay and happy lives led by the other ladies of the garrison, she repined sorely, and thinking of all these things, she rode slowly toward the Jumna.
Down from the Ghaut of Etawah the river was rolling in its beauty amid the most wondrous greenery in the world. There were oleanders (the pride of the jungles) sending forth their delicious perfumes from clusters of pink and white blossoms; the baubool, with its bells of gold, the sensation plant, and thousand others all growing together, while the byahs, or crested sparrows, looked like clouds of gold as they floated in flocks over these and the waters of the river. Yet, lovely though the scene, the English girl, as she reined up her horse, thought she would rather have looked upon the Weald of her native Kent!
The same idea was in the heart of another, who was slowly approaching her, an officer in undress, with pith-helmet and loose white patrol jacket. He urged his horse close to Clare, and a little exclamation escaped her.
"Oh, fatality!" she murmured, on finding herself face to face with Fred Wilmot; and fatality it seemed indeed, that they should by chance have chosen the same hour and the same pathway, amid the many that diverged from the breathless cantonments. He sprang from his horse, and grasping the bridle with one hand, presented the other to her.
"Mrs. Thorne—Clare!" said he, in a broken voice, and as he uttered her name there came into his face a light, an almost divine tenderness, such as she had never seen in it, even in their sweet past time—the light of love, the joy of a great passion.
"I am Mrs. Thorne, and we must remember that now, Fred," said she; but without drawing back her hand. None was near but Chuttur Sing, who certainly thought he would not have liked to have seen his wife tête-à-tête with the sahib-logue, in that solitary place, for to the Bengalees the ease of European society is an enigma they fail to understand.
"Till I saw you yesterday, I knew not in what part of India you were," said Wilmot, with his gaze fixed eagerly upon her now pallid face, "and now they tell me that you are the wife of that man—our chaplain, a morose and gloomy fellow——"
"My husband, Mr. Wilmot," said Clare, now withdrawing her hand, and shortening her gathered reins.
"Mr. Wilmot!" he exclaimed, almost reproachfully.
"My husband!" she repeated, with sorrowful emphasis.
"I beg your pardon, Clare. I am not likely to forget the fact," said he, with deep dejection; "but changed though the relations—broken the tie—between us, may I not be still your friend? I—I," he continued, in a voice so pathetic that her soul was moved, "I who was once so much dearer than any friend could be?"
"We must forget all that—friends? No, it is impossible! Better not—better not—oh, what fatality sent you here!" she added, restraining with difficulty her tears, and aware that the black-beady eyes of Chuttur Sing were upon her—Chuttur Sing of the spindle legs and huge red turban.
"You have not forgotten the past, then, Clare?"
"No—but I have sought to love my husband as a wife should."
"Sought?" he asked, inquiringly.
"Well—I have striven."
"But oh, Clare, we can neither love nor forget at will," said he. "May I come to visit you?"
"No—decidedly no!"
"Why, Clare?"
"My husband!" she replied, firmly enough.
"He knows nothing of our past—he never heard of me. Think how dear we were to each other, Clare—how much we have to remember."
"All the more reason to study the art of forgetting," replied Clare, whose hot tears were falling fast now, "and to show the necessity for your not coming near our bungalow."
"But if all our fellows, from the colonel down to the youngest sub, leave their cards for you and Mr. Thorne, save me, what will he think?"
"I cannot say," sighed Clare, wearily.
"I must come, then, to avoid remark. May I?"
"If you must, you may."
"Thanks, Clare—thanks; may I escort you home?"
"No—oh no—let us return separate," said she, nervously, and they parted, she urging her horse at a hand-gallop back to the arid plain, where the lines of Mirzapatam were now quivering, and to all appearance vibrating, in the hot rays of the uprisen sun.
So when Fred Wilmot called that evening at the Rev. Mr. Thorne's bungalow, he was cordially received by that gentleman, and by his wife politely, as a—stranger! Clad in a thin dress, through which her delicate arms and the contour of her bosom were apparent, she was reclining in a long-armed Indian cane chair, with all her dark-brown hair cast loose over her back and shoulders, just as her ayah had left it for coolness; and very charming and girlish she looked, especially when her colour heightened. The fragrant odour of the recently wetted tatties, or window-screens, pervaded a large uncarpeted drawing-room. An hour and more was passed in pleasant conversation. No reference whatever could be made to the past, so from that hour each of those two felt that the game of duplicity was beginning. The piano—which had its feet immersed in saucers of water to save it from creeping insects—was more than once resorted to; and Mr. Thorne was surprised to find how many airs and duets his wife and the new comer knew in common. He could little dream how often they had practised them together, in that sweet Kentish village so long ago, it seemed now. That night Fred Wilmot slept little. He had more than the mosquitos to keep him awake, while in the verandah without the wallah pulled drowsily at the cord of the punkah.
"Innocent, pure and artless as ever—poor Clare—poor darling!" thought he; "oh, what avail my money and position now—now that she is that sombre fellow's wife—yet all men speak well of him here. What are her dark eyes, her rich hair, her sweet English beauty to me now!"