The Path of a Star - Sara Jeannette Duncan (digital book reader TXT) 📗

let them slowly slide out of her fingers and fall into the waves below. The moonlight gave them a divine gleam as they fell. She turned to Markin with tears in her eyes. "Now," she faltered, "I can be happy again. But not to-night."


CHAPTER XXVIII

While the Coromandel was throbbing out her regulation number of knots towards Colombo, October was passing over Bengal. It went with lethargy, the rains were too close on its heels; but at the end of the long hot days, when the resplendent sun struck down on the glossy trees and the over-lush Maidan, there often stole through Calcutta a breath of the coming respite of December. The blue smoke of the people's cooking fires began to hang again in the streets, the pungent smell of it was pleasant in the still air. The south wind turned back at the Sunderbunds; instead of it, one met round corners a sudden crispness that stayed just long enough to be recognised and melted damply away. A week might have two or three of such promises and foretastes.

Hilda Howe, approaching the end of her probation at the Baker Institution, threw the dormitory window wide to them, went out to seek them. They gave her a new stirring of vitality, something deep within her leaped up responding to the voucher the evenings brought that presently they would bring something new and different. She vibrated to an irrepressible pulse of accord with that; it made her hand strong and her brain clear for the unimportant matters that remained within the scope of the monotonous moment. There had come upon her a stimulating assurance that it would be only a moment--now. She did not consider this, she could hardly be said to be intelligently aware of it, but it underlay all that she said and did. Her spirits gained an enviable lightness, she began again to see beautiful, touching things in the life that carried her on with it. She explained to Stephen Arnold that she was immensely happy at having passed the last of her nursing examinations.

"I hardly dare ask you," he said, "what you are going to do now."

He looked furtive and anxious; she saw that he did, and the perception irritated her. She had to tell herself that she had given him the right to look in any way he pleased--indeed yes.

"I hardly dare ask myself," she answered, and was immediately conscious that for the first time in the history of their relations she had spoken to him that which was expedient.

"I hope the Sisters are not trying to influence you," he said firmly.

"Fancy!" she cried irrelevantly. "I heard the other day that Sister Ann Frances had described me as the pride of the Baker Institution!" She laughed with delight at the humour of it, and he smiled too. When she laughed, he had nearly always now confidence enough to smile too.

"You might ask for another six months."

"Heavens, no! No--I shall make up my mind."

"Then you may go away," Arnold said. They were standing at the crossing of the wide red road from which they would go in different directions. She saw that the question was momentous to him. She also saw how curiously the sun sallowed him, and how many more hollows he had in his face than most people. She had a pathetic impression of the figure he made in his coarse gown and shoes. "God's wayfarer," she murmured. There was pity in her mind, infinite pity. Her thought had no other tinge. It was a curiously simple feeling, and seemed to bring her an inconsistent lightness of heart.

"Come too," she said aloud, "come and be a Clarke Brother where the climatic conditions suit you better. The world wants Clarke Brothers everywhere."

He looked at her and tried to smile, but his lips quivered. He opened them in an effort to speak, gave it up, and turned away silently, lifting his hat. Hilda watched him for an instant as he went. His figure took strange proportions through the tears that sprang to her eyes, and she marvelled at the gaiety with which she had touched, had almost revealed, her heart's desire.


CHAPTER XXIX

"I knew it would happen in the end," Hilda said, "and it has happened. The Archdeacon has asked me to tea."

She was speaking to Alicia Livingstone in the dormitory, changing at the same time for a "turn" at the hospital. It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Alicia's landau stood at the door of the Baker Institution. She had come to find that Miss Howe was just going on duty and could not be taken for a drive.

"When?" asked Alicia, staring out of the window at the crows in a tamarind tree.

"Last Saturday. He said he had promised some friends of his the pleasure of meeting me. They had besieged him, he said, and they were his best friends, on all his committees."

"Only ladies?" The crows, with a shriek of defiance at nothing in particular, having flown away, Miss Livingstone transferred her attention.

"Bless me, yes. What Archdeacon has dear men friends! And lesquelles pense-tu, mon Dieu!"

"Lesquelles?"

"Mrs. Jack Forrester, Mrs. Fitz--what you may call him up on the frontier, the Brigadier gentleman--Lady Dolly!"

"You were well chaperoned."

"And--my dear--he didn't ask a single Sister!" Hilda turned upon her a face which appeared still to glow with the stimulus of the archidiaconal function. "And--it was wicked considering the occasion--I dropped the character. I let myself out!"

"You didn't shock the Archdeacon?"

"Not in the least. But, my dear love, did you ever permit yourself the reflection that the Venerable Gambell is a bachelor?"

"Hilda, you shall not! We all love him--you shall not lead him astray!"

"You would not think of--the altar?"

Miss Livingstone's pale small smile fell like a snowflake upon Hilda's mood, and was swallowed up. "You are very preposterous," she said. "Go on. You always amuse one." Then, as if Hilda's going on were precisely the thing she could not quite endure, she said quickly, "The Coromandel is telegraphed from Colombo to-day."

"Ah!" said Hilda.

"He leaves for Madras to-morrow. The thing is to take place there, you know."

"Then nothing but shipwreck can save him."

"Nothing but--what a horrible idea! Don't you think they may be happy? I really think they may."

"There is not one of the elements that give people, when they commit the paramount stupidity of marrying, reason to hope that they may not be miserable. Not one. If he were a strong man I should pity him less. But he's not. He's immensely dependent on his tastes, his friends, his circumstances."

Alicia looked at Hilda; her glance betrayed an attention caught upon an accidental phrase. "The paramount stupidity." She did not repeat it aloud, she turned it over in her mind.

"You are thinking," Hilda said accusingly. "What are you thinking about?"

"Oh, nothing. I saw Stephen yesterday. I thought him looking rather wretched."

A shadow of grave consideration winged itself across Hilda's eyes.

"He works so much too hard," she said. "It is an appalling waste. But he will offer himself up."

Alicia looked unsatisfied. She had hoped for something that would throw more light upon the paramount stupidity. "He brought Mr. Lappe to tea," she said.

The shadow went. "Should you think Brother Lappe," Miss Howe demanded, "specially fitted for the cure of souls? Never, never, could I allow the process of my regeneration to come through Brother Lappe. He has such a little nose, and such wide pink cheeks, and such fat sloping shoulders. Dear succulent Brother Lappe!"

A Sister passed through the dormitory on a visit of inspection. Alicia bowed sweetly, and the Sister inclined herself briefly with a cloistered smile. As she disappeared Hilda threw a black skirt over her head, making a veil of it flowing backward, and rendered the visit, the noiseless measured step, the little deprecating movements of inquiry, the benevolent recognition of a visitor from a world where people carried parasols and wore spotted muslins. She even effaced herself at the door on the track of the other to make it perfect, and came back in the happy expansion of an artistic effort to find Alicia's regard penetrated with the light of a new conviction.

"Hilda," she said, "I should like to know what this last year has really been to you."

"It has been very valuable," Miss Howe replied. Then she turned quickly away to hang up the black petticoat, and stood like that, shaking out its folds, so that Alicia might not see anything curious in her face as she heard her own words and understood what they meant. Very valuable! She did understand, suddenly, completely. Very valuable! A year of the oddest experiences, a pictorial year, which she would look back upon, with its core in a dusty priest....

A probationer came rapidly along the dormitory to where Hilda stood. She had the olive cheeks and the liquid eyes of the country; her lips were parted in a smile.

"Miss Howe," she said, in the quick clicking syllables of her race, "Sister Margaret wishes you to come immediately to the surgical ward. A case has come in, and Miss Gonsalvez is there, but Sister Margaret will not be bothered with Miss Gonsalvez. She says you are due by right in five minutes,"--the messenger's smile broadened irresponsibly, and she put a fondling touch upon Hilda's apron string,--"so will you please to make haste!"

"What's the case?" asked Hilda; "I hope it isn't another ship's hold accident." But Alicia, a shade paler than before, put up her hand. "Wait till I'm gone," she said, and went quickly. The girl had opened her lips, however, but to say that she didn't know, she had only been seized to take the message, though it must be something serious since they had sent for both the resident surgeons.


CHAPTER XXX

Dr. Livingstone's concern was personal, that was plain in the way he stood looking at the floor of the corridor with his hands in his pockets, before Hilda reached him. Regret was written all over the lines of his pausing figure with the compressed irritation which saved that feeling in the Englishman's way from being too obvious.

"This is a bad business, Miss Howe."

"I've just come over--I haven't heard. Who is it?"

"It's my cousin, poor chap--Arnold, the padre. He's been badly knifed in the bazar."

The news passed over her and left her looking with a curious face at chance. It was lifted a little, with composed lips, and eyes which refused to be taken by surprise. There was inquiry in them, also a defence. Chance, looking back, saw an invincible silent readiness, and a pallor which might be that of any woman. But the doctor was also looking, so she said, "That is very sad," and moved near enough to the wall to put her hand against it. She was not faint, but the wall was a fact on which one could, for the moment, rely.

"They've got the man--one of those Cabuli money-lenders. The police had no trouble with him. He said it was the order of Allah--the brute! Stray case of fanaticism, I suppose. It seems Arnold was walking along as usual, without a notion, and the fellow sprang on him, and in two seconds the thing was done. Hadn't a chance, poor beggar."

"Where is it?"

"Root of the left lung. About five inches deep. The artery pretty well cut through, I fancy."

"Then--"

"Oh no--we