“Mere childishness, believe me. She has no more idea of the value of money than an infant in arms! When it’s there she spends it, and when it ain’t she writes chits! She would buy anything—a mangy starved pony, and vow it was an Arab, if you please!”
“And it was a common bazar tat?”
“Well,” reluctantly, “now that the beast’s bones ain’t coming through its skin, there’s a look of blood about it, I admit. But——”
“Trust an Irishwoman’s eye for a horse! But seriously, my dear fellow, to what better use can you put your money than allow your goodwife to make herself happy by spending it? I know if mine would do me the honour——”
“Ah, it’s the other way with you, I know. But for Mrs Bayard’s prudence, you would leave Khemistan a poorer man than you entered it.”
“She would tell you it will be so in any case,” said Colonel Bayard ruefully.
CHAPTER II.
THE RIFT IN THE LUTE.
But if a difference about money was the immediate cause of the strained relations between Major Ambrose and his wife, no one would have denied more vehemently than Eveleen herself that it was the beginning of their estrangement. That had happened long ago—even, so she sometimes thought, before their marriage. This might seem an Irish way of putting it, but at times she would tell herself that she must have been blind not to see there was something wrong with Richard then, though again the idea would look absolutely absurd. For why should he have married her unless he wanted her as she did him? She would never have lifted a finger to hold him had he wished to be free! She raged against him a little now as she stood solitary in the middle of the absent Mrs Bayard’s drawing-room, seeing nothing of her surroundings. If he must be sarcastic and cross, why try to humiliate her in the presence of a stranger, instead of keeping his horrid remarks till they were alone together, and she could answer them as they deserved? There was little of the patient Griselda about Eveleen Ambrose.
“Such an English room!” Her wrath was suddenly diverted—though rather to the general atmosphere of bleak tidiness than to poor Mrs Bayard’s treasured “Europe” furniture—and she shuddered. “Sure I’ll choke here!” She fled to the verandah. “Ah, now!” and she stood spellbound by the wonderful moonlight shining on a limitless sea that washed the very hill-top on which the house stood. A moment’s reflection assured her that the sea was a thick mist enshrouding the town and the low-lying land about it, and hiding the mud and dust and crudeness which had been so painfully evident by day, and she dropped into a chair to watch it, for there were little eddies which looked exactly like moving water. She had not meant to stay in the drawing-room; her intention had been to slip away to bed, leaving an excuse with the servants for her host’s benefit, but it was so peaceful here, and she needed a little mental refreshment before coping once more with Ketty. But her meditations hardly brought her the peace she desired, for almost at once she was involved again in the perpetual quest of When? and How? and Why?
It was twenty years since Richard Ambrose and Eveleen Delany had first met in the hunting-field—and parted almost as soon. She was a pretty girl riding as daringly as the conventions of the time and a fierce old uncle would allow her, he one of the junior officers of the regiment quartered in the neighbourhood. Two or three days’ hunting, a scrambled meal or two taken in common, sandwiches shared in the shelter of a deep lane—Richard’s fingers had actually trembled so that he could scarcely untie the string, she remembered,—such a brief and broken acquaintance to change the whole course of one life, if not two! He had nothing but his pay and his debts, she was an orphan adopted into an already overflowing and impoverished household in a spirit of mingled improvidence and charity. To do him justice, Richard had no hope of being allowed to marry her then, but he would pay his debts with the sale of his commission, and transfer to the Indian Service, and come or send for her as soon as he could see his way clear. Had he been an Irishman the engagement might have been allowed, but old General Delany discerned a calculating and parsimonious spirit in his anxious planning, and sent him about his business with slight sympathy. To this day Eveleen could not think calmly of their parting. Something of the old agony shook her again as she heard her own voice—hoarse with the strain of trying to speak bravely for her lover’s sake—assuring him again and again that she would wait any length of time, five years, a hundred years, for ever, for him to return and claim her. He had sworn to come back, sworn that her image would be ever before his eyes until that blessed moment arrived; had sobbed—Richard Ambrose sobbing!—as he tore him self away when they kissed for the last time. Thus they parted—the boy setting his face resolutely eastwards, with the safeguard of a high purpose in his soul, the girl taking up the harder task of doing nothing in particular.