"No; such frivolity becomes not my wife," was the firm reply.
Repiningly she obeyed his dictum in every respect, and when other ladies ventured to remonstrate with her, Clare, to do her justice, ever upheld her husband, and treated him with respect and honour.
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!