"Who, indeed, Image-of-God? Such an act of folly while the tender babe lay sick is not to be forgiven. Peradventure, it was the mate-boy of the cook who is of an imbecility past understanding, owing to his extreme youth. Not even the intellect of a cow has he. Urre bap! Did he not leave at the Rest Bungalow——"
"Be silent, you talk too much," said Meredith. "Go and chastise him for his interference. If I strike him I shall break every bone in his body. Never again let ice be sent anywhere with me if it is likely to run short at the camp, remember that," he said, impressing the fact on the bearer, as he knew full well that, in the native mind, very little importance is attached to a woman's needs in comparison with her lord's,—the superiority of the masculine sex being unchallenged. When ice travelled by rail some hundreds of miles three times a week to Muktiarbad, it invariably fell short when the servants were careless or assisted to make it vanish. Every silent witness of the colloquy knew that the Sahib's bearer considered an iced whisky-and-soda his perquisite at the close of a strenuous day, and would continue to have it as long as ice came from Calcutta for the alleviation of sufferers from the climate.
"Buck up, darling," said Meredith comfortingly, "you'll have the doctor here in no time. Dalton is a clever fellow and prompt. They say he will make a name for himself some day, he's such an able physician and surgeon. What he doesn't understand concerning the ills that flesh is heir to is not worth knowing, so we are jolly lucky to have him in such a potty little station as ours. What got him sent here is a mystery; usually we get fossils of the Uncovenanted service at Muktiarbad, whereas Dalton is—" "Sorry," interrupting himself as his wife put her hands to her head. "You've a headache, sweetheart, and it's not to be wondered at."
"Is there nothing you can suggest for Baby in the meantime?" she questioned.
"I shouldn't like to experiment, knowing nothing of kids—infants, I mean," he replied with irritating cheerfulness. "Had it been a horse or a dog"—he discreetly ceased and made tender love to her instead, for his darling girl was sobbing piteously. "Don't worry," he advised with masculine lack of understanding of maternal feelings, "babies are marvellous creatures; like sponges, my dear. Squeeze them dry and they swell out again. See how the youngsters swarm in the bazaars and villages. Nothing seems to kill them," he asserted ignorantly. "They get over almost any illness without a hundredth part of the care you lavish on our little scallywag. Keep his head cool and you'll see, he'll be as right as rain in the morning."
"Cool without ice!" she said witheringly.
"Cold water on the head with a dash of vinegar in it will do to carry along with till the ice comes."
Somehow he was less concerned with the child's case than his wife's. Her distress, the added reason for her abhorrence of India, cut him to the heart and made him a coward of consequences. It was the child, that insignificant atom of indefinite humanity, that had intruded itself between them and was daily usurping his place in his wife's thoughts. At first he had been fool enough to imagine that it was going to be the link that would bind them closer together, instead of which it was the wedge that was surely driving them asunder. For its sake she was ready to put the seas and continents between them, and treat him as if he were of secondary importance in her life—the being who had to provide the wherewithal on which the human idol might be suitably reared. His own personal need of her was viewed as masculine self-indulgence and lack of spirituality.
"I don't think you half realise what a wonderful thing has happened," she had once said in the midst of her baby-worship. "Here is a miracle straight from God. A man-child who, if properly cared for, will become a useful citizen of the Empire; and he is my VERY OWN—yours, too," she condescended to add with her exquisite smile.
"But where do I come in? I, who am already a useful citizen of the Empire?" he had delicately insinuated. "With due regard to nature and the multiplication table——"