Hilda: A Story of Calcutta

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

He was a narrow-chested man with longish sandy hair and thin features. His eyes were large, blue, and protruding, his forehead very high and white. There was a pinkness about the root of his nose and a scanty yellow moustache upon his upper lip, while his chin was partly hidden by a beard equally scanty and even more yellow. He had extremely long white hands: one could not help observing them as they clasped his book of devotion.

Laura looked at him with profound appreciation of these details. She knew Colonel Markin by reputation—he had done a great work among the Cingalese. "It was trained," she said, casting down her eyes, "on the battlefields of our Army."

Colonel Markin attempted to straighten his shoulders and to stiffen his chin. He seemed vaguely aware of a military tradition which might make it necessary for him, as a very senior officer indeed, to say something. But the impression was transitory. Instead of using any rigour he held out his hand. Laura took it reverently, and the bones shut up, like the sticks of a fan, in her grasp. "Welcome, comrade!" he said, and there was a pause, as there should be after such an apostrophe.

"When you came among us this afternoon," Colonel Markin resumed, "I noticed you. There was something about the way you put your hand over your eyes when I addressed our Heavenly Father in prayer that spoke to me. It spoke to me and said, 'Here we have a soul that knows what salvation means—there's no doubt about that.' Then when, you raised a Hallelujah, I said to myself, 'That's got the right ring to it.' And so you're a sister in arms!"

"I was," Laura murmured.

"You was—you were. Well, well—I want to hear all about it. It is now," continued Colonel Markin, as two bells struck and a steward passed them with a bugle, "the hour for our dinner, and I suppose that you, too," he bent his head respectfully toward the other half of the ship, "partake of some meal at this time. But if you will seek us out again at the meeting between four and five I shall be at your service afterward, and pleased," he look her hand again, "pleased to see you."

Laura went back to the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original place at the table and take a revolving chair at the nine o'clock breakfast, one o'clock dinner, and six o'clock tea which sustained the second saloon. Daily ascending the companion-ladder to the main-deck aft, she gradually faded from cognisance forward. There they lay back in their long cabin chairs and sipped their long drinks, and with neutral eyes and lips they let the blessing go.

In the intervals between the exercises Miss Filbert came and went in the cabin of three young Salvationists of her own sex. They could always make room for her, difficult as it may appear; she held for them an indefinite store of fascination. Laura would extend herself on a top berth beside the round-eyed Norwegian to whom it belonged, with the cropped head of the owner pillowed on her sisterly arm, and thus they passed hours, discussing conversions as medical students might discuss cases, relating, comparing. They talked a great deal about Colonel Markin. They said it was a beautiful life. More beautiful, if possible, had been the life of Mrs. Markin, who was his second wife, and who had been "promoted to glory" six months before. She had gained promotion through jungle fever, which had carried her off in three days. The first Mrs. Markin had died of drink—that was what had sent the Colonel into the Army, she, the first Mrs. Markin, having willed her property away from him. Colonel Markin had often rejoiced publicly that the lady had been of this disposition, the results to him had been so blessed. Apparently he spoke without reserve of his domestic affairs in connection with his spiritual experiences, using both the Mrs. Markins when it was desirable as "illustrations." The five had reached this degree of intimacy by the time the Coromandel was nearing Port Said, and every day the hemispheres of sea and sky they watched through the port-hole above the Norwegian girl's berth grew bluer.

From the first Colonel Markin had urged Miss Filbert's immediate return to the Army. He found her sympathetic to the idea, willing, indeed, to embrace it with open arms, but there were difficulties. Mr. Lindsay, as a difficulty, was almost inseparable to anything like a prompt step in that direction. Colonel Markin admitted it himself. He was bound to admit it, he said, but nothing, since he joined the Army, had ever been so painful to him. "I wish I could deny it," he said with frankness, "but there is no doubt that for the present your first duty is toward your gentleman, toward him who placed that ring upon your finger." There was no sarcasm in his describing Lindsay as a gentleman; he used the term in a kind of extra special sense, where a person less accustomed to polite usages might have spoken of Laura's young man. "But remember, my child," he continued, "it is only your poor vile body that is yours to dispose of. Your soul belongs to God Almighty, and no earthly husband, especially as you say he is still in his sins, is going to have the right to interfere." This may seem vague as the statement of a position, but Laura found it immensely fortifying. That and similar arguments built her up in her determination to take up what Colonel Markin called her life-work again at the earliest opportunity. She had forfeited her rank, that she accepted humbly as a proper punishment, ardently hoping it would be found sufficient. She would go back as a private, take her place in the ranks, and nothing in her married life should interfere with the things that cried out to be done in Bentinck street. Somehow she had less hope of securing Lindsay as a spiritual companion in arms since she had confided the affair to Colonel Markin. As he said, they must hope for the best, but he could not help admitting that he took a gloomy view of Lindsay.

"Once he has secured you," the Colonel said, with an appreciative glance at Laura's complexion, "what will he care about his soul? Nothing."