Book: Hilda

S >> Sarah Jeanette Duncan >> Hilda




She told Stephen so, frankly, one afternoon when he charged her with
being so unlike herself, and he heard her explanation with a gravity
which contained an element of satisfaction. "It is, of course, a
pleasure to us to meet," he said, "a pleasure to us both." That was part
of the satisfaction, that he could meet her candour with the same
openness. He was not even afraid to mention to her the stimulus she gave
him always and his difficulty in defining it, and once he told her how,
after a talk with her, he had lain awake until the small hours unable to
stop his excited rush of thought. He added that he was now personally
and selfishly glad she had chosen as she did three months before; it
made a difference to him, her being in Calcutta, a sensible and material
difference. He had better hope and heart in his work. It was the last
luxury he would ever have dreamed of allowing himself, a woman friend;
but since life had brought it in the oddest way, the boon should be met
with no grudging of gratitude. A kind of sedate cheerfulness crept into
his manner which was new to him; he went about his duties with the look
of a man to whom life had dictated its terms and who found them
acceptable. His blood might have received some mysterious chemical
complement, so much was his eye clearer, his voice firmer, and the
things he found to say more decisive. Nor did any consideration of their
relations disturb him. He never thought of the oxygen in the air he
breathed, and he seldom thought of Hilda.

They were walking toward the Institution together the day he explained
to her his gratification that she had elected to remain. Sister Ann
Frances and Sister Margaret led; Arnold and Hilda came behind. He had an
errand to the Sister Superior--he would go all the way. It was late in
May and late in the afternoon; all the tree-tops on the Maidan were bent
under the sweep of the south wind, blowing a caressing coolness from the
sea. It spread fragrances about and shook down blossoms from the
gold-mohur trees. One could see nothing anywhere so red and yellow as
they were except the long coat of a Government messenger, a point of
scarlet moving in the perspective of a dusty road. The spreading acres
of turf were baked to every earth colour. Wherever a pine dropped
needles and an old woman swept them up, a trail of dust ran curling
along the ground like smoke. The little party was unusual in walking;
glances of uncomprehending pity were cast at them from victorias and
landaus that rolled past. Even the convalescent British soldiers facing
each other in the clumsy drab cart drawn by humped bullocks, and marked
_Garrison Dispensary_, stared at the black skirts so near the powder of
the road. The Sisters in front walked with their heads slightly bent
toward one another; they seemed to be consulting. Hilda reflected,
looking at them, that they always seemed to be consulting: it was the
normal attitude of that long black veil that flowed behind.

Arnold walked beside his companion, his hands loosely clasped behind
him, with the air of semi-detachment that young clergymen sometimes have
with their wives. Whether it was that, or the trace of custom his
satisfaction carried, the casual glance might easily have taken them for
a married pair.

"There is a kind of folly and stupidity in saying it," he said, "but you
have done--you do--a great deal for me."

She turned her tired face upon him with a wistful, measuring look. It
searched his face for an instant and came back baffled. Arnold spoke
with so much kindness, so much appreciation.

"Very little," she said mechanically, looking at the fresh footprints of
Sister Ann Frances and Sister Margaret.

"But I know. And can't you tell me--it would make me so very happy--that
I have done something for you too--something that you value?"

Hilda's eyes lightened curiously, reverie came into them, and a smile.
She answered as if she spoke to herself, "I should not know how to tell
you."

Then, scenting wonder in him, she added, "You were thinking of
something--in particular."

"You have sometimes made me believe," Stephen returned, "that I may
account myself, under God, the accident which induced you to take up
your blessed work. I was thinking of that."

"Oh," she said, "of that!" and seemed to take refuge in silence.

"Yes," Arnold said, with infinite gentleness.

"Oh, you were profoundly the cause! I might say you are, for without you
I doubt whether I should have the--courage----"

"Oh, no! Oh, no! He who inspired you in the beginning will sustain you
to the end. Think that. Believe that."

"Will He?" Her voice was neutral, as if it would not betray too much,
but there was a listlessness that spoke louder in the bend of her head,
the droop of her shoulder.

"For you perhaps," Arnold said, thoughtfully, "there is only one
assurance of it--the satisfaction your vocation brings you now. That
will broaden and increase," he went on, almost with buoyancy, "growing
more and more your supreme good as the years go on."

"How much you give me credit for!"

"Not nearly enough--not nearly. Who is there like you?" he demanded,
simply.

His words seemed a baptism. She lifted up her face after them, and the
trace of them was on her eyes and lips. "I have passed two examinations,
at all events," she informed him, with sudden gaiety, "and Sister Ann
Frances says that in two or three months I shall probably get through
the others. Sister Ann Frances thinks me more intelligent than might be
expected. And if I do pass those examinations I shall be what they call
a quick-time probationer. I shall have got it over in six months. Do you
think," she asked, as if to please herself, "that six months will be
long enough?"

"It depends. There is so much to consider."

"Yes--it depends. Sometimes I think it will be, but oftener I think it
will take longer."

"I should be inclined to leave it entirely with the Sisters."

"I am so undisciplined," murmured Hilda. "I fear I shall cling to my own
opinion. Now we must overtake the others and you must walk the rest of
the way with Sister Ann--no, Sister Margaret, she is senior."

"I don't at all see the necessity," Stephen protested. He was wilful and
wayward; he adopted a privileged air, and she scolded him. In their
dispute they laughed so imprudently that Sister Ann Frances turned her
draped head to look back at them. Then they quickened their steps and
joined the elder ladies, and Stephen walked with Sister Margaret to the
door of the Institution. She mentioned to the Sister Superior afterward
that young Mr. Arnold was really a delightful conversationalist.




CHAPTER XXVII.


They talked a great deal in Plymouth about the way the time was passing
in Calcutta during those last three months before Laura should return,
the months of the rains. "Now," said Mrs. Simpson, early in July, "it
will be pouring every day, with great patches of the Maidan under water,
and rivers, my dear, _rivers_, in the back streets," and Laura had a
reminiscence about how, exactly at that time, a green mould used to
spread itself fresh every morning on the matting under her bed in
Bentinck street. Later on they would agree that perhaps by this time
there was a "break in the rains," and that nothing in the world was so
trying as a break in the rains, the sun grilling down and drawing up
steam from every puddle. In September things, they remembered, would be
at their very worst and most depressing: one had hardly the energy to
lift a finger in September. Mrs. Simpson looked back upon the discomfort
she had endured in Bengal at this time of year with a kind of regret
that it was irretrievably over; she lingered upon a severe illness which
had been part of the experience. She seemed to think that with a little
judicious management she might have spent more time in that climate and
less in England. There was in her tone a suggestion of gentle envy of
Laura, going forth to these dismal conditions with her young life in her
hands, all tricked out for the sacrifice, which left Duff Lindsay and
his white and gold drawing-room entirely out of consideration. Any
sacrifice to Mrs. Simpson was alluring; she would be killed all day
long, in a manner, for its own sake.

The victim had taken her passage early in October, and during the first
week of that month Plymouth gathered itself into meetings to bid her
farewell. A curiously sacred character had fastened itself upon her. It
was not in the least realised that she was going out to be married to an
altogether secular young broker moving in fashionable circles in one of
the gayest cities in the world. One or two reverend persons, in the
course of commending their young sister to the protection of the
Almighty in her approaching separation from the dear friends who
surrounded her in Plymouth, made references implying that her labours
would continue to the glory of God, taking it as a matter of course.
Miss Filbert was by this time very much impregnated with the idea that
they would, she did not know precisely how, but that would open itself
out. Duff had long been assimilated as part of the programme. All that
money and humility could contribute should be forthcoming from him; she
had a familiar dream of him as her standard-bearer, undistinguished but
for ever safe.

Yet it was with qualified approval that Mrs. Simpson, amid the confusion
of the _Coromandel's_ preparations for departure at London Docks, heard
the familiar strains of the Salvation Army rising aft. Laura immediately
cried, "I shall have friends among the passengers," and Mrs. Simpson so
fair forgot herself as to say, "Yes, if they are nice." The ladies were
sitting on deck beside the pile of Laura's very superior cabin luggage.
Mrs. Simpson glanced at it as if it offered a kind of corroboration of
the necessity of their being nice. "There are always a few delightful
Christian people, if one takes the trouble to find them out, at this end
of the ship," she said, defensively. "I have never failed to find it
so."

"I don't think much of Christians who are so hard to discover," Laura
said, with decision, and Mrs. Simpson, rebuked, thought of the
mischievous nature of class prejudices. Laura herself--had she not been
drawn from what one might call distinctly the other end of the ship; and
who, among those who vaunted themselves ladies and gentlemen, could
compare with Laura? The idea that she had shown a want of sympathy with
those dear people who were so strenuously calling down a blessing on the
_Coromandel_ somewhere behind the smoke-stacks, embittered poor Mrs.
Simpson's remaining tears of farewell, and when the bell rang the signal
for the last good-bye she embraced her young friend with the fervent
request, "Do make friends with them, dear one--make friends with them at
once;" and Laura said, "If they will make friends with me."

By the time the ship had well got her nose down the coast of Spain, Miss
Filbert had created her atmosphere and moved about in it from end to end
of the quarter-deck. It was a recognisable thing, her atmosphere; one
never knew when it would discharge a question relating to eternity. And
persons unprepared to give satisfaction upon this point--one fears there
are always many on a ship bound east of Suez--found it blighting. They
moved their long chairs out of the way, they turned pointedly
indifferent backs, the lady who shared Miss Filbert's cabin--she
belonged to a smart cavalry regiment at Mhow--went about saying things
with a distinct edge. Miss Filbert exhausted all the means. She
attempted to hold a meeting forward of the smoking cabin, standing for
elevation on one of the ship's quoit buckets to preach, but with this
the Captain was reluctantly compelled to interfere on behalf of the
whist-players inside. In the evening after dinner she established
herself in a sheltered corner and sang. Her recovered voice lifted
itself with infinite pathetic sweetness in songs about the poverty of
the world and the riches of Heaven. The notes mingled with the churning
of the screw and fell in the darkness beyond the ship's lights abroad
upon the sea. The other passengers listened aloof. The _Coromandel_ was
crowded, but you could have drawn a wide circle round her chair. On the
morning of the fourth day out--she had not felt quite well enough for
adventures before--she found her way to the second-class saloon, being
no doubt fully justified of her conscience in abandoning the first to
the flippancies of its preference.

In the second-class end the tone was certainly more like that of
Plymouth. Laura had a grateful sense of this in coming, almost at once,
upon a little group gathered together for praise and prayer, of which
four or five persons of both sexes, labelled "S. A.," naturally formed
the centre. They were not only praying and praising without
discouragement, they had attracted several other people who had brought
their chairs into near and friendly relation, and even joined sometimes
in the chorus of the hymns. There was a woman in mourning who cried a
good deal--her tears seemed to refresh the salvationists and inspired
them to louder and more cheerful efforts. There was a man in a wide,
soft felt hat with the malaria of the Terai in the hollows under his
eyes; there was a Church Missionary with an air of charity and
forbearance, and the bushy-eyed colonel of a native regiment, looking
vigilant against ridicule, with his wife, whose round, red little face
continually waxed and waned in a smile of true contentment. It was not
till later that Laura came to know them all so very well, but her eye
rested on them one after another with approval as she drew near. Without
pausing in his chant--it happened to be one of triumph--without even
looking at her, the leader indicated an empty chair. It was his own
chair. "Colonel Markin, S. A.," was printed in black letters on its
striped canvas back; Laura noticed that.

After it was over, the little gathering, Colonel Markin specially
distinguished her. He did it delicately. "I hope you won't mind my
expressin' my thanks for the help you gave us in the singin'," he said.
"Such a voice I've seldom had the pleasure to join with. May I ask where
you got it trained?"

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."

Their enthusiasm had ample opportunity to expand, their mutual bond to
strengthen, in the close confines of life on board ship, and as if to
seal it and sanctify it permanently, a conversion took place in the
second saloon, owning Laura's agency. It was the maid of the lady in the
cavalry regiment, a hardened heart, as two stewards and a bandmaster on
board could testify. When this occurred, the time that was to elapse
between Laura's marriage and her return to the ranks was shortened to
one week. "And quite long enough," Colonel Markin said, "considering how
much more we need you than your gentleman does, my dear sister."

It was plain to them all that Colonel Markin had very special views
about his dear sister. The other dear sisters looked on with pleasurable
interest, admitting the propriety of it, as Colonel Markin walked up and
down the deck with Laura, examining her lovely nature, "drawing her out"
on the subject of her faith and her assurance. It was natural, as he
told her, that in her peculiar situation she should have doubts and
difficulties. He urged her to lay bare her heart, and she laid it bare.
One evening--it was heavenly moonlight on the Indian Ocean, and they
were two days past Aden, on the long southeast run to Ceylon--she came
and stood before him with a small packet in her hand. She was all in
white, and more like an angel than Markin expected ever to see anything
in this world, though as to the next his anticipations may have been
extravagant.

"Now I wonder," said he, "where you are going to sit down?"

A youngster in the Police got up and pushed his chair forward, but Laura
shook her head.

"I am going out there," she said, pointing to the furthermost stern,
where passengers were not encouraged to sit, "and I want to consult
you."

Markin got up. "If there's anything pressin' on your mind," he said,
"you can't do better."

Laura said nothing until they were alone with the rushing of the screw,
two Lascars, some coils of rope, and a couple of brass compasses. Then
she opened the packet. "These," she said, "these are pressing on my
mind."

She held out a string of pearls, a necklace of pearls and turquoises, a
heavy band bracelet, studded, Delhi fashion, with gems, and one or two
lesser fantasies.

"Jewelry!" said Markin. "Real or imitation?"

"So far as that goes, they are good. Mr. Lindsay gave them to me. But
what have I to do with jewels, the very emblem of the folly of the
world, the desire that itches in palms that crucify Him afresh daily,
the price of sin?" She leaned against the masthead as she spoke. The
wind blew her hair and her skirt out toward the following seas. With
that look in her eyes she seemed a creature who had alighted on the ship
but who could not stay.

Colonel Markin held the pearls up in the moonlight.

"They must have cost something to buy," he said.

Laura was silent.

"And so they're a trouble to you. Have you taken them to the Lord in
prayer?"

"Oh, many times."

"Couldn't seem to hear any answer?"

"The only answer I could hear was, 'So long as you have them I will not
speak with you.'"

"That seems pretty plain and clear. And yet," said the Colonel, fondling
the turquoises, "nobody can say there's any harm in such things,
especially if you don't, wear them."

"Colonel, they are my great temptation. I don't know that I wouldn't
wear them. And when I wear them I can think of nothing sacred, nothing
holy. When they were given to me I used--I used to get up in the night
to look at them."

"Shall I lay it before the Almighty? That bracelet's got a remarkably
good clasp."

"Oh no--no! I must part with them. To-night I can do it, to-night----"

"There's nobody on this ship that will give you any price for them."

"I would not think of selling them. It would be sending them from my
hands to do harm to some other poor creature, weaker than I!"

"You can't return them to-night."

"I wouldn't return them. That would be the same as keeping them."

"Then what--oh, I see--" exclaimed Markin. "You want to give them to the
Army! Well, in my capacity, on behalf of General Booth----"

"No," cried Laura, with sudden excitement, "not that either. I will give
them to nobody. But this is what I will do!" She seized the bracelet and
flung it far out into the opaline track of the vessel, and the smaller
objects, before her companion could stop her, followed it. Then he
caught her wrist.

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