Save for the wakeful vigilance of sentries, the huddled bungalows of the cantonment lay below her empty as a handful of shells on a lone shore; and in the overpowering stillness each least sound stood out crisp and clear-cut as twigs against a winter sunset; the fitful rustle of bedclothes; Rob breathing peacefully in a distant corner; the whisper of the punkah; the querulous creaking of the rope answered by a whine from the back verandah, where a resigned coolie swayed a basket of damp straw, packed with bottles of milk and soda-water for Denvil's consumption during the night.
The reiteration of these still small voices grew distracting as the whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing thought, and compelling her to note every change in their pitiless regularity.
Resolved to break the spell by the only definite action available, she decided to prepare for the emergency which her brain refused to face. But on rising she was arrested by a voice from the bed—a voice not of speech but of song, a snatch from a burlesque the Boy had played in during the winter:
"My name it is Abanazar
If you want me you needn't go far;
I'm sure to be found, if you'll only look round,
Number Seventy, Suddar Bazaar."
Denvil's deep baritone, distorted to a guttural travesty of itself, rose to a shout on the ascending notes of the last line. Then, without pause for breath, came the voice of speech—hurried, expressionless, heartrending to hear.
"Safe for an encore, that—what? Should ha' been Desmond, though. See him in tights you'd think he could slip through a wedding-ring. Done it too, by Jove! Better than horses that, in the long-run.—How about Grey Dawn?—Confound your luck! Always a dead cert till I lay anything on. Hold hard, though.... I'm done with all that now.... Wouldn't go back on Desmond—not for a mine of gold. You don't know Desmond;—wait till you're in a hole! Eight hundred rupees, I tell you—more than his month's pay! Said I was to keep quiet about it too. Not mail-day to-morrow, is it? Where's the use of writing to her? She'd never understand. Look out—some one's coming,—there by the door. Great Scott! It's—it's mother!"
The voice broke into an unnatural sound between a laugh and a sob, and Frank, who was already praying for the lesser evil of silence, bent over the Boy, soothing him with tender words and tone, as though she were his mother in very deed.
The delusion was strong upon him. He clung to her fiercely when she would have risen to fetch milk, overwhelming her with a rush of disjointed questions varied by snatches of enthusiasm for Desmond, till exhaustion reduced him to incoherent mutterings; and she was free at last to grope for milk and brandy and a fresh packing of wet sheets.
He grew quieter after a space, and sank into a more restful sleep, leaving Frank Olliver to face another spell of whispering silence; her ears strained now to catch the dread sound of a single horseman returning from the hills.