Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society

by Sir H. S. Cunningham

Desvœux, too, was not a lover likely to be easily discouraged or to let the grass grow beneath his feet. Both from temperament and policy he pressed upon a position where advantages seemed likely to be gained. Despite the very coolest welcomes Felicia began to find him an inconveniently frequent visitor. An avowed foe to croquet, he appeared with provoking regularity at her Thursday afternoons, when the Dustypore world was collected to enjoy that innocent recreation on the lawn, and somehow he always contrived to be playing in Maud's game. Even at church he put in an unexpected appearance, and sate through a discourse of three-quarters of an hour with a patience that was almost ostentatiously hypocritical. Then he would come and be so bright, natural and amusing, and such good company, that Felicia was frequently not near as chilling to him as she wished and as she felt that the occasion demanded. He was unlike anybody that Maud had ever met before. He seemed to take for granted that all existing institutions and customs were radically wrong and that everybody knew it. 'Make love to married women? Of course; why not—what are pretty married women for? Hard upon the husbands? Not a bit; all the unfairness was the other way: the husbands have such tremendous advantages, that it is quite disheartening to fight against such odds: tradition and convention and the natural feminine conservatism all in favour of the husbands; and then the Churchmen, as they always do, taking their part too: it was so mean! No, no; if the husbands cannot take care of themselves they deserve the worst that can befall them.' Or he would say, 'Go to church! Thank you, if Miss Vernon sings in the choir and will say "How d'ye do?" to me as she comes out, I will go and welcome; but otherwise, ça m'embête, as the Frenchman said. I always was a fidget, Miss Vernon, and feel the most burning desire to chatter directly any one tells me to hold my tongue; and then I'm argumentative and hate all the speaking being on one side; and then—and then,—well, on the whole, I rather agree with a friend of mine, who said that he had only three reasons for not going to church—he disbelieved the history, disapproved the morality and disliked the art.'

Maud used to laugh at these speeches; and though she did not like them nor the man who made them, and understood what Felicia meant by saying that Desvœux's fun had about it something which hurt one, it seemed quite natural to laugh at them. She observed too, before long, that they were seldom made when Felicia was by, and that Desvœux, if in higher spirits at Mrs. Vereker's than at the Vernons' house, was also several shades less circumspect in what he said, and divulged tastes and opinions which were concealed before her cousin. More than once, as Felicia came up Desvœux had adroitly turned the conversation from some topic which he knew she would dislike; and Maud, who was guilelessness itself, had betrayed by flushing cheeks and embarrassed manner the fact of something having been concealed.

On the whole, Felicia had never found the world harder to manage or the little empire of her drawing-room less amenable to her sway. Her guests somehow would not be what she wished. Desvœux, though behaving with marked deference to her wishes and always sedulously polite, pleased her less and less, Maud's innocence and impulsiveness, however attractive, frequently produced embarrassments which it required all Felicia's tact to overcome. Her husband, laconic and indolent, gave not the slightest help. Another ground on which she distressed herself (very unnecessarily, could she only have known) was, that Sutton, among other performers on Felicia's little stage, played not at all the brilliant part which she had mentally assigned him. The slightly contemptuous dislike for Desvœux which Felicia had often heard him express, and in which she greatly sympathised, though veiled under a rigid courtesy, was yet incompatible with cordiality, or good cheer; and Desvœux, whose high spirits nothing could put down, often appeared the pleasanter companion of the two. Sutton, in fact, had on more occasions than one come into collision with Desvœux in a manner which a less easy-going and light-hearted man would have found it difficult to forgive. Once, at mess, on a Guest-night, Desvœux had rattled out some offensive nonsense about women, and Sutton had got up and, pushing his chair back unceremoniously, had marched silently away to the billiard-room in a manner which in him, the most chivalrous of hosts, implied a more than ordinarily vehement condemnation. Afterwards Desvœux had been given to understand that, if he came to the mess, he must not, in the Major's presence at any rate, outrage good taste and good morals by any such displays. Then, at another time, there was a pretty young woman—a sergeant's wife—to whom Desvœux showed an inclination to be polite. Sutton had told Desvœux that it must not be, in a quietly decisive way which he felt there was no disputing, though there was something in the other's authoritative air which was extremely galling. He could not be impertinent to Sutton, and he bore him no deep resentment; but he revenged himself by affecting to regard him as the ordinary 'plunger' of the period—necessary for purposes of defence and a first-rate leader of native cavalry, but socially dull, and a fair object for an occasional irreverence. Sutton's tendency was to be more silent than usual when Desvœux was of the party. Desvœux, on the other hand, would not have let Sutton's or the prophet Jeremiah's presence act as a damper on spirits which were always at boiling-point and a temperament which was for ever effervescing into some more or less indiscreet form of mirth. The result was that the one man quite eclipsed the other and tossed the ball of talk about with an ease and dexterity not always quite respectful to his less agile senior. One night, for instance, Maud, in a sudden freak of fancy, had set her heart upon a round of story-telling. 'I shall come last of course,' she said, 'as I propose it, and by that time it will be bedtime; but, Major Sutton, you must tell us something about some of your battles, please, something very romantic and exciting.'

Sutton was the victim of a morbid modesty as to all his soldiering exploits and would far rather have fought a battle than described it. 'Ah,' he said, 'but our fighting out here is not at all romantic; it is mostly routine, you know, and not picturesque or amusing.'

'Yes, but,' said Maud, 'tell us something that is picturesque or amusing: a hairbreadth escape, or a forlorn hope, or a mine. I love accounts of mines. You dig and dig for weeks, you know, and then you're countermined and hear the enemy digging near you; and then you put the powder in and light the match, and run away, and then—now you go on!'

'And then there is a smash, I suppose,' laughed Sutton; 'but you know all about it better than I. I'm not a gunner—all my work is above-ground.'

'Well, then,' cried Maud, with the eager air of a child longing for a story, 'tell us something above ground. How did you get your Victoria Cross, now?'

Maud, however, was not destined to get a story out of Sutton.

'There was nothing romantic about that, at any rate,' he said. 'It was at Mírabad. There was a cannon down at the end of the lane which was likely to be troublesome, and some of our fellows went down with me and spiked it. That was all!'

'Excuse me, Miss Vernon,' said Desvœux; 'Sutton's modesty spoils an excellent story. Let me tell it as it deserves.' And then he threw himself into a mock-tragical attitude.