Free! There was a terrible fascination in the sound. Be the bondage ever so pleasant, be it even preferable to liberty itself, the idea of freedom is irresistibly alluring. If the same bondage will be chosen again, there is a delight in the consciousness that it will be your own untrammelled choice. Frank was aware of a wild exultation when he realised the fact that he was once more a free agent. In the first flush of liberty, poor Elsie’s image faded out of sight, and that of the siren took its place. Now, without wrong, he might follow his inclinations. He determined to write to Elsie, but knew not what to say, and put it off till the morrow.
There could be no harm in going to the house of his fascinator; it was pleasant to think that he might now speak, think, look, without any mental reservations; there would be no longer any need to watch his actions, or to force back the words which would tell her that she exercised a deadly power over him. The girl received him with a winning smile, yet, when he touched her hand, he did not feel his brain throb or his blood rush madly through his veins as he had expected. He bore his part through the evening quietly, and owned that it was a pleasant one; still, the flavour was not what he had expected. He called to mind that when he was abroad for the first time, he had been served with a peculiar dish, which he remembered, and often longed for when unattainable. After several years, he had visited the same café and ordered the same dish. The same cook prepared it, and the same waiter served it, but the taste was not the same; expectation had heightened the flavour, and the real was inferior to the ideal.
So it was with Frank. Before, when the siren had seemed unattainable, he had luxuriated in her beauty, admired her grace and genius, and revelled in her wit; now, when he felt he might call these his own, his eye began to detect deficiencies. The girl noted his critical attitude, and chafed at the calmness of his keen, watchful glance. Where was the open admiration she used to read in his eyes? Piqued at his indifference, she grew silent and irritable; and when he bade her farewell, both were conscious that an ideal had been shattered.
He buttoned his overcoat, and prepared for a long walk to the lonely chambers where he lived the usual careless, comfortless life of a bachelor whose purse is limited. All the way home he submitted himself to a deep and critical examination. He felt as if he was sitting by the ashes of a failing fire which he had no means of replenishing; the night was coming, and he must sit in the cold. If passion died out, where was he to look for the sympathy, the respect, the true friendliness which alone can supply its place in married life? Then he thought of Elsie. He had made a mistake, but a very common mistake. He had thought that the excitement of his interest, the enchaining of his fancy, and the enthralment of his senses, was love, and lo! it was only passion. He analysed his feelings more deeply yet, and getting below the surface-currents which are stirred by the winds, saw that the quiet waters beneath had kept unswervingly on their course.
When he reached his chambers, he sat down by his table and drew paper and ink towards him. ‘I shall not accept your dismissal, Elsie,’ he wrote hurriedly in answer to her piteous letter: ‘I should be very shallow if I could not read the motive which prompted your letter. I shall come down as usual, and we will talk over it till we understand each other fully. Till then, you must believe me when I tell you that I love you all the more for your act of sacrifice, and that I love you more now than I have ever done before.’
Frank and Elsie have been long married, and are content. There is no fear of his swerving again; but the event described left its mark on Frank. He knows now that he was on the verge of committing a grievous mistake, and one which might have darkened all his future life. For it is not great events, involving tragedies and tears, that impress themselves most deeply upon the body of our habits and thoughts; but the tendency of our life, as in the case before us, is often most deeply affected by what is no more than ‘an every-day occurrence.’
A NIGHT IN A WELL.
The station of Rawal Pindi, in which the following incident took place, is a large military cantonment in the Punjab, about a hundred miles from the Indus at Attock, where the magnificent bridge across the rapid river now completes the connection by rail between the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay with Peshawur our frontier outpost, which, like a watchful sentinel, stands looking straight into the gloomy portal of the far-famed Khyber Pass. It was at Rawal Pindi that the meeting took place between the Viceroy of India, Lord Dufferin, and the present Ameer of Afghanistan, before whom were then paraded not only the garrison of Rawal Pindi, or, as it is more generally known in those parts, by the familiar abbreviation of Pindi—a Punjabi word signifying a village—but a goodly array of the three arms, artillery, cavalry, and infantry, drawn from the garrisons of the Punjab and North-west Provinces of India. In ordinary times, the troops in garrison at Pindi consist of four or five batteries of royal artillery, both horse and field; a regiment of British, and one of Indian cavalry; and one regiment of British, and two of Bengal infantry, with a company of sappers and miners. The barracks—or, as they are called in India, the lines—occupied by these troops extend across the Grand Trunk Road leading to Peshawur, those of the royal artillery being almost, if not quite on the extreme right, and it is here that the occurrence which gives the heading to this article took place.
In front of the lines of each regiment is the quarter-guard belonging to it, at a distance of two or three hundred yards from the centre barrack. The men of this guard are turned out and inspected once by day and once by night by the officer on duty, technically known as the orderly officer. In rear of the quarter-guard, as has been already said, are the men’s barracks; and in rear of them the cook-houses and horse-lines, amongst and behind which are large wells—‘pucka wells,’ as they are called, from being lined for a long way down and about the surface with brick-work and cement, in distinction from the ordinary ‘cutcha wells,’ which are merely circular holes dug until water is reached.
The pucka wells in the Pindi cantonments are from twelve to fourteen feet in diameter, and from thirty to forty feet from the surface to the water. They are surrounded by low parapets; and from each well extend long troughs of brick and cement, into which the water drawn from the well is conducted by channels, for the use of the horses and other cattle belonging to the artillery or cavalry. The low parapets round the wells are sufficient protection, at all events in the daytime; though instances are not unfrequent when accidents have occurred on a dark night to goats, sheep, and even bullocks straying from their tethers, especially when a dust-storm has been adding by its turmoil to the bewilderment of all so unfortunate as to be caught abroad in it, as the writer has on more than one occasion, when compelled to stand or sit for hours behind some protecting wall or tree; the darkness in noonday has been so great that his hand, though held close to his eyes, was with difficulty discernible. When to such a state of things are added the roar of the wind and the beating of broken branches of trees, wisps of straw, and other articles caught up and hurtled along, it may be easily imagined how dazed and perplexed is the condition of every creature so exposed. A dust-storm, however, had nothing to say to the accident with which we have to do.