Tired and hungry though Meredith had been, his appetite for food vanished under the lash of his wife's resentment. She once said: "If my baby is taken from me, I shall cut this country forever. I shall hate it with an undying hatred. Nothing will induce me to live in it again and risk a repetition of tonight. It is not fit for Europeans—and yet, the tragedy of it is, we can only know it by experience!"
"That is to say, if you had foreseen this, you would never have married me?" he put in sulkily.
Silence gave consent.
"Why shouldn't you give up, and find something to do at home?" she asked unreasonably.
"You don't know what you are talking about," he returned shortly. Give up the "Indian Civil" and his splendid prospects, liberal future pension, and the life of sport men loved? For what? A desk in a city office; most likely a mercantile job on a third of the pay, and a life to which he was as much suited as a square peg to a round hole. All this, that the babe might be spared the illnesses that mortal flesh, in infancy, is prone to, particularly in the East. It was utter nonsense! For the first five years there would be need for special care and intervals spent in a hill climate. In due time would come the change to England and English environment necessary for the proper physical and mental training of his child. This was the course usually followed by English families in India of any social standing, and one which involved submission on the part of the husband to short periods of separation from the wife in the interests of the absent children. Thousands of married couples faced these conditions; why not they?
He felt rebellious.
What was the matter with his luck that it threatened not to work? He had no fortune on which to retire, only a modest return from savings judiciously invested, while his wife would have nothing more than a trifle till the death of her parents; and they were still young. To give up the Service would, under the circumstances, be madness and folly.
Moreover, he loved the East. The climate had no grudge against his English constitution, and had been kind to him. He enjoyed the freedom of the life, India's great spaces; and the lurking risks made existence a great and continued adventure. In England it would be monotonous and flat. Though he loved the Motherland and was proud of her traditions, he was of the stuff that made empires, and his tact and understanding of the natives under his rule, made him an officer of exceptional ability and service to the Executive Government. Then there was big game shooting which he enjoyed, and all the happy freedom from narrow conventions. Give up, indeed!
Time enough to think of retiring when past middle age with shaken nerves and a growing appreciation of golf. Not while he could ride a buck-jumper, handle a hog spear or a polo stick, and shoot straight. The thrill of tracking a wild beast to its lair was something to live for, and the hazards of his life made up its charm.
The greatest of all hazards, had he realised it, had been his marriage with Joyce Wynthrop of Eagleton, Surrey.