Alice Perrin, "Beynon, of the Irrigation Department" (1901)
Tags: Marital dysfunction, Civil engineering, Illness, Crocodiles
Beynon, of the Irrigation Department
Beynon walked down to the edge of the weir and looked out across the Ganges River. The evening air was soft and warm, and heavy with the scent of babool-blossom, for the hot weather was creeping on apace, and already the mangoes had begun to take shape upon the trees, and the brain fever bird’s discordant song had risen to its most aggravating pitch. The sun was sinking with angry reluctance behind the low range of rocky hills that shone purple in the distance, and the smooth, gliding waters reflected the broad bars of crimson and yellow with which the sky was streaked. Here and there the monotony of the river was broken by islets of sand, points of sticks and weeds, the floating carcass of some decaying animal, and the hackled backs of the alligators resting as though dead on the long strips of mud. Flights of birds were swaying and soaring homewards, and clouds of saffron-coloured dust along the river-banks told of the cattle being driven back to the villages after their day’s grazing in the jungle.
Beynon looked at it all and saw nothing, principally because he was thinking of his work—he very seldom thought of anything else—and also because he was so accustomed to the scene; he had walked down to the weir and looked out across the river almost every evening for the past two years. After a few minutes he turned, inspected a tree-spur on his right, made a note of some repairs that seemed necessary, threw a stone at the snub nose of an alligator that appeared for a second above the water, and proceeded to stroll slowly home.
Home consisted of a small, thatched bungalow built on a piece of rising ground overlooking the river, with a little native village behind it, a cluster of workshops and engine-houses on one side, and on the other a row of deserted, tumble-down houses that spoke mournfully of the time when the weir was being built and they had been full of busy men; when the air had resounded with the hum of machinery, rumble of trucks, beating of hammers, and the turmoil of a mighty construction that had made eminent engineers of some men, invalided others, and killed more than one or two from exposure and overwork. Now the only sounds that broke the stillness were the barking of the pariah dogs and murmur of native voices from the little village, the rush of the water over the weir, and the cries of the birds that lived securely in the deserted compounds and revelled in a jungle of old gardens. Patakri was a very lonely spot, but it suited Beynon exactly. Being a civil engineer in the Irrigation Department, he had necessarily led a very lonely life, especially as he never remonstrated, and the authorities were only too willing to conclude in consequence that he liked it. Here was a man who never complained, who never sent up urgent applications for a transfer or made a fuss when he got one, who abstained from pestering them with furious letters and medical certificates when his leave was refused, and who worked as well in the jungle as amid civilisation—possibly a great deal better for aught that had been proved to the contrary.
Therefore Beynon spent the first ten years of his service in passing from one lonely, unpopular subdivision to another, until the solitude grew on him, and the shyness and reserve of his nature developed into a morbid shrinking from companionship, and a dislike almost amounting to horror, of meeting his fellow creatures. He even dreaded the inspections by his superior officers with which the long weeks were sometimes varied, particularly when there happened to be ladies of the party—a situation that filled him with nervous trepidation, and made him shy and quiet to absolute stupidity. So when his turn came for the charge of a division, his relief at finding that he was posted to Patakri, where he knew his solitude would remain undisturbed, far outstripped his appreciation of the official compliment paid to his capabilities, for it was an exceedingly important charge connected with river training and irrigation head-works. He soon grew to love the place, apart from his official interest in it, which was great. He was only inspected once or twice a year, when he went with a precious boat-load of senior officers up the river and down again from point to point, was commended for his conscientious work, and left thanking his stars when they had gone. He had very little camping, and quite as much work as he wanted, and consequently he was as happy as it was possible for him to be in his own negative fashion.
However, during the past few weeks a somewhat disturbing element had entered into his daily routine. Beynon had made a friend—or, rather, somebody had made friends with him. This was a young planter who had lately come to manage an indigo factory on the other side of the river, and hating the lonely life he was forced to lead, had discovered Beynon with joy. He soon began to come over at his own invitation, whenever the mood seized him, and at first Beynon had somewhat resented these intrusions, but now he looked forward to and rather enjoyed the informal visits, all the more so as he found he was not expected to talk much himself. By this time he was acquainted with almost every detail of Jack Massenger’s personal history; how he was the youngest of the many sons of an impoverished Irish baronet; how he had somehow failed to pass “every beastly exam” he had gone up for; how through the timely interest of a relative a billet had been secured for him on probation in the Indian police, from which he was subsequently evicted owing again to the exam difficulty. (“Such rot,” he asserted, “expecting a fellow to pass exams in such an idiotic language as Hindustani!”) How six months’ opium weightments had nearly been the death of him owing to the awful heat and the vile smell; how a year on a tea plantation had been worse than purgatory owing to the brute he was obliged to live with and the “bounders” with whom he had to associate; and how finally a berth in indigo had been found for him, which proved slightly more congenial than the foregoing occupations, for there were fewer bounders of whom to fall foul, the work was fairly light and the shooting good. So Massenger had stuck to indigo for the space of three years, and until lately, when he had been transferred to his present factory, had always been within reach of his fellow-creatures; consequently, he now took his inevitable loneliness in a rebellious spirit, and Beynon, being his only get-at-able neighbour, received the full benefit of his fits of discontent.
On this particular evening, when Beynon returned from his customary stroll, he found Jack Massenger established in the verandah with a whisky and soda, and apparently in his most pessimistic mood.
“I hadn’t intended coming over today,” he said gloomily; “but, by Jove, I couldn’t stand another evening alone. I haven’t spoken a word of English for three days. It’s enough to make a fellow take to drink or matrimony, upon my soul it is. How can you stand it, Beynon?” he concluded, with a sudden irritation against the latter.
“I like it,” said Beynon, simply; “but, of course, you’re different—you’re not accustomed to being alone.”
“Why haven’t you ever married?” inquired Jack, abruptly.
“I? Good heavens! What on earth should I do with a wife? It would be wicked to bring a girl out into a jungle like this, especially with such a dull devil as myself for a husband. Besides, I haven’t the least desire to marry.”
“Well, that’s reason enough, I should think, without anything else,” answered Jack, and then the two men sat silent for a few minutes.
“Do you remember,” began Jack again, presently, with a certain amount of hesitation, “my telling you about that girl I met last year whose father turned out to be an old pal of my governor’s?”
Beynon nodded his head. He had heard a good deal about “that girl” on and off. Jack rose from his seat and began to walk up and down.
“Look here, Beynon, I think I’ll take leave and go and marry that girl.”
“But,” inquired Beynon in amazement, “how do you know that she would marry you?”
Jack laughed. “Oh,” he said, in a confident tone, “that part’s all right. The only thing is—” he stopped, and did not conclude his sentence.
“But you couldn’t ask a girl to come and live at Bakrar factory—even with you” (with unconscious sarcasm).
“My good ass,” said Jack indulgently, “that’s just exactly what I shouldn’t do. If I marry Kitty Vawse I’ve seen the last of Bakrar and all the bally indigo in India. Old Vawse is a Member of Council, with a vast amount of interest and more money than he knows what to do with. She’s his only child, and he’s never thwarted her in anything yet. Therefore, should she be determined to marry an indigo planter, he wouldn’t let her go into the jungle, and his son-in-law would be accommodated with a billet worth taking.”
Beynon felt vaguely uncomfortable. He was sure there was something wrong somewhere. Of course he knew very little about such things, but it seemed to him that Jack ought not to look upon the matter in that light, or, at any rate, if he did, that he ought not to talk about it. He felt anxious to express his disapproval of the scheme in becoming language, but his usual reticence and inability to put his feelings into words handicapped him fatally when anything approaching to explanation was necessary.
“Are you in love with her?” he asked shyly.
Jack glanced at him with secret amusement.
“Of course,” he answered. “She’s the prettiest girl in India.”
Beynon sat silent.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said presently.
“Well, I do,” said Jack, with impatience, “and I want a fresh peg, this one’s flat.”
* * *
Another month dragged slowly by. The scorching west winds howled over the shrinking river and whirled up clouds of hot, copper-coloured dust from the widening banks, while the sun blazed pitilessly for twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Massenger, rendered desperate, went off on leave; a native was deputed to do his work, and, until the rains were well on, Beynon saw nobody but his servants and the natives who worked under him. Then one day he read the announcement in the paper of Jack Massenger’s marriage to Miss Vawse up at Simla, and a week later there arrived a letter from Jack himself, apologising for not having written the news sooner, and making every excuse but the real one, which was that he had totally forgotten Beynon’s existence for the time being. He also informed Beynon that his father-in-law had got him a berth in the Court of Wards, not liking the notion of his daughter living in the jungle; that they were coming down to collect and pack his things at Bakrar, and would Beynon, like a good fellow, put them up for a day or two while they were getting it done? If so, he was to telegraph “yes” at once.
Of course Beynon telegraphed “yes”, and then looked about him in despair. He wandered through the house trying to instil a little life and cheerfulness into the position of the furniture. He had a notion that ladies objected to a table in the middle of the room, so he pushed the ugly round object on one side and scattered the latest scientific papers over it. He turned out of his own bedroom because it was larger than the one he must otherwise give his guests, and the next morning he ransacked the deserted compounds and his own garden for flowers, which his bearer tied up into tight little bundles and placed in peg tumblers. These were then arranged symmetrically on the mantelpiece, together with some faded, old-fashioned photographs of Beynon’s home and people, the one long since broken up, and the other dispersed, married, or dead, he hardly knew which, as they had not written to him, nor he to them, for many years.
Still, in spite of all his efforts, the bare, whitewashed walls looked hopelessly cheerless, and the stiff wooden chairs wretchedly meagre and untidy. What on earth would a lady think of it all? And the very worst kind of lady, too, a young bride—of all others calculated to make a shy man feel nervous and ill at ease. He would have been thankful had the earth opened and swallowed him up on that dreaded morning, when he heard the terriers clamorously greeting the returning dogcart that he had sent to meet the bride and bridegroom.
Massenger was beaming. He rushed at Beynon with a shout, and turned with his hand stretched out towards his wife, watching his friend’s face with an expectant smile on his own.
“Here’s my missus,” he said, and then Beynon found himself shaking hands with a bright-eyed girl who showed a row of glistening white teeth as she smiled up at him from under her hat.
“I’m so dreadfully dirty,” she said, looking at her clothes and her little patent-leather shoes covered with dust. “We’ve been all night in the train, so it’s not fair to take stock of me now. Let me go to my room and get clean, and then I’ll come out and show myself.”
Poor Beynon was dumb with shyness. The girl’s vivid beauty dazzled him, and her easy, confident manner frightened him. He could only lead the way through the sitting-room (which looked more awful than ever by contrast as she passed through it) and lift the curtain with a silent indication that her room lay beyond. Then Massenger went to change, and half an hour later they appeared together in the dining-room for breakfast, Mrs Massenger dressed in pure, soft white, her eyes sparkling through their long lashes, a delicate pink flush high up on her cheeks, and looking as fresh as though she had never been in a train in her life. Beynon could not quite understand the relations between the newly-married pair. They did not appear to be rapturously in love with each other. Massenger was undoubtedly proud of his wife, but treated her with an amused criticism in his manner, and talked of her to Beynon in a way that was infinitely embarrassing to the latter, while the lady herself laughed carelessly and scarcely seemed to listen. On her side there seemed to be a rather ostentatious indifference mingled with a certain amount of admiration. She evidently appreciated Jack’s beauty of feature, his strength of limb, and the sweetness of his temper.
“I’ve never seen Jack in a rage,” she said to her host after breakfast. “I sometimes wonder what would make him really angry. I think I must try everything till I find out; it would be an excitement.”
Surely this was a joke, thought Beynon, and laughed appropriately.
He did no work at all that day, as Mrs Massenger would not allow it. She said somebody must talk to her, and as Jack was preparing to go down to the weir to try and catch a mahseer, delaying his visit to the factory till tomorrow, it was clearly Mr Beynon’s duty to stay and amuse her.
“I’ll have that long chair taken out into the verandah,” she said, as Jack and his fishing-rod disappeared. “There’s a nice breeze this morning and it’s not too hot, and you can bring that low thing and sit facing me. I hate talking to anyone sitting by my side, it makes my neck ache. Don’t you know the feeling?”
“I scarcely know the feeling of talking to anybody, to begin with,” said Beynon, dragging the low chairs out into the broad, shady verandah and placing them as she wished.
“But that is all your own fault,” she replied. Then she threw herself into the long chair and crossed her small, slender feet, showing a certain amount of delicate open-work stocking and a pair of high-heeled, shiny little shoes. Beynon wondered how she managed to walk in them.
“Oh, my head’s so uncomfortable,” she cried. “I must have a cushion. Have you got one?”
Beynon owned guiltily that he was afraid he had not.
“Well, then there’s one I brought with me in my room—a pink thing with a frill. Go and fetch it. You’ll probably find it on the floor.”
The astonished man rose to do her bidding without a word. What could he say? It was impossible, in the face of her request, to call a servant to fetch the cushion, and yet he felt he ought not to go into her room. It upset all his established notions of delicacy and propriety; however, as she had commanded, he must obey, so he passed through the open door with rather a beating heart. There was a faint perfume in the air that stirred his senses. He remembered noticing the same scent when Mrs Massenger passed near him. He saw the pillow on the ground on the other side of the room, and felt glad it was so far off, but ashamed of his gladness. He could not help glancing round as he made for the spot; silver-backed brushes gleamed on the dressing table, a dainty pink dressing gown covered with lace hung over a chair close to him, and from beneath it peeped a tiny pair of velvet slippers to match. How white the little feet must look thrust into them! He made a determined rush for the cushion, and the next moment was placing it at the back of Mrs Massenger’s head.
“That’s very nice,” she said; “now sit down and let us talk.”
She was so entirely at her ease, and spoke with such winning confidence, that Beynon began to feel a little less uncomfortable, and almost forgot himself and his shortcomings as he gazed respectfully at her pretty face and perfect figure.
“So you live here all by yourself,” she began. “Do you like it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said.
“Do you mean always to go on living like this? Aren’t you perpetually wanting something different or better? I think it such a mistake to be contented,” she concluded decidedly.
“Why?” inquired Beynon, with a smile. He calculated that she could not be more than eighteen or nineteen, and she was talking with the conviction of a woman of fifty.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked quickly. “You think I am a child, perhaps? I am nearly twenty, let me tell you; and a woman of twenty is equal in mind—if she has any at all—to a man of thirty. Think of yourself when you were nineteen. Am I a child?”
Beynon blushed as he remembered himself at that age—over-grown, knock-kneed, awkward, spotty and stupid. Certainly, so far as he was concerned, there was truth in what she said. All the same he resented her tone. Why should he not be content if he liked?
“Why is it a mistake?” he asked again.
“Because if you’re contented you very seldom get any further. A man ought always to want something better than he has got. How can you stay here and let them sit on you, and be content? Why don’t you grumble for a better station or a nicer appointment? Oh, I know all about you from Jack. This lonely life is all your own fault.”
“There is nothing more contemptible than a discontented man or woman,” he said doggedly.
“Ah! There I agree. I did not say you ought to be discontented. Being discontented merely means that you haven’t the energy or brains to set about bettering what you don’t like. Perhaps I ought to have said every man should be ambitious instead of no man should be contented. There’s a vast difference between being discontented and ambitious.”
She put her head back into the soft cushion and looked at him through her long curling lashes.
“You are cross?” she asked softly.
“No,” said Beynon, humbly, straightway forgiving her, and then there was a little silence. A seven-sister bird fussed about amongst the creepers and scolded the squirrels that darted to and fro, and a shiny black crow hopped up the verandah steps and scrutinised Mrs Massenger with one bright, suspicious eye.
“Why have you never married?” she inquired presently.
“I’ve never been in love,” he answered simply.
“Never been in love? Just fancy! And”—with a little sigh—“it’s so easy!”
Beynon began to think it must be, under some circumstances.
“But wouldn’t you like to be married?”
“Yes,” said Beynon, slowly, “I should.”
But, strange to say, he had never thought so before.
* * *
It was with a heavy heart that Beynon realised that the last day of the Massengers’ visit had come. The time had passed like a dream for him, and he had never known before what real happiness meant. Jack had spent the days either over at the factory winding up affairs or else fishing down by the weir, while Mrs Massenger and Beynon had sat in the broad verandah and talked, strolled through the tangled gardens and explored the tumbledown houses, or rowed about on the swirling river in the warm evening air. He felt a blissful amazement that she seemed to like his company and to seek it, and as they sauntered down to the water the last evening he looked furtively at her with a tightening at his heart and throat—the sensation produced on some people by the sound of sacred music or the shimmer of moonlight on the sea.
She had asked him to take her for a final row on the river, and he had willingly assented. Indeed, he had reached that stage when he would cheerfully have drowned himself had Mrs Massenger asked him to do so! They got leisurely into the boat, both of them sitting in the cushioned stern, while four strong natives dressed in dark blue and crimson uniforms pulled them swiftly down the river. The islets of sand and long strips of mud had disappeared with the advent of the rains, and the river was now a broad sheet of swollen water, flowing very rapidly, though so silently that it hardly seemed to move. Every now and then a big fish would jump at a fly with a mighty splash, and silence would follow again save for the regular stroke of the oars.
Presently there arose a faint sound of nasal singing from a small native village perched up on the river bank, and winding down the crooked path to the water’s edge came a strange little procession. Ten or a dozen tall native priests swathed in salmon-pink cloth, and with shining shaven heads and faces, walked ahead chanting solemnly through their aquiline noses; then close behind came six more like them carrying a boat-shaped basket slung on bamboo poles, in which sat a dead body, also swathed in salmon-pink cloth, and almost covered with garlands of the sacred jessamine blossom. The procession was completed by a crowd of mourners, who joined in the funeral hymn, and a mixed assemblage of individuals from the village, whose curiosity had impelled them forth. The little column stopped at the river’s edge, and after a few minutes the basket was slowly and carefully launched, chanted prayers being kept up in a continual monotone, and the dead man, sitting upright in his basket, started alone on his last voyage, leaving a little trail of jessamine blossoms in his wake as the water swept him into the middle of the river.
Mrs Massenger looked inquiringly at Beynon.
“It’s a Gussein’s funeral,” he explained. “They are a particularly holy sect of Hindu, and when they die they are always put into the river like this instead of being burned. Look at him twirling round and round in the current. Ah, I thought so; there’s an alligator at him. See, he’s being pulled down.”
The basket with its burden was disappearing deeper into the water with little jerky movements, and then, as they watched it, suddenly went under altogether, leaving a tangled mass of jessamine garlands to mark the spot.
“Oh, how dreadful!” said Mrs Massenger, with a shudder. “Fancy falling in and being seized by one of those horrid brutes! I suppose there would be no chance whatever of being saved?”
“None,” replied Beynon, looking over his shoulder at the salmon-coloured stream of figures wending its way back to the village. “They swarm in the river, especially close to the weir. I’ve seen hundreds of them there of an evening—mostly the fish-eating kind; but there were plenty of the snub-nosed fellows, too; and one would be quite enough for anybody wishing to commit suicide.”
“Oh, don’t!”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m not going to jump in—though it wouldn’t make much difference to anyone if I did.”
“That’s not true.”
“Who would care?”
“I should, for one. Listen to me, Mr Beynon. You have no business to talk like that, and I’m going to seize the opportunity to give you a lecture. You’re behaving very badly to yourself, and some day you’ll be sorry. You’ve allowed yourself to stagnate, instead of making the most of life—even with such an existence as you have chosen you might have done a good deal. Your work? Of course you must do your work—you can’t help that; but you can help never reading an amusing book, never going away whenever you can beg, borrow, or steal a day’s leave, never trying to make any friends, and letting yourself get so shy that you’re miserable if a stranger comes near you.”
“What shall I do? What would you wish?”
“Well, smarten yourself up a little to begin with. Just look at your hair—you might almost do it in a Grecian knot! And then—you won’t mind what I say, will you?—you know your clothes. I’m certain you haven’t had any new ones since you first came out to India. Read some novels, and go away now and then and learn to enjoy yourself. You can begin with us when you’ve got some new clothes; but you couldn’t come and stay with me in the present state of your wardrobe!”
Beynon humbly assented. He wondered more and more how a woman like Mrs Massenger could take any interest in such a stupid chap as himself. He knew how rusty he was, and felt frightened at the amount of labour he would have to expend in improving himself to her satisfaction. But it would be a labour of love, and if he could please her ever so little it would be something.
“I never knew anyone like you,” he said suddenly, with adoration in his voice. “I don’t believe your equal exists.”
“Well, anyway I’m glad you’re not cross,” she answered, smiling.
The sun had disappeared during the last few moments, and the air felt damp and misty. They had rowed some way down the river with the stream, taking no note of time or distance, and Beynon, realising this, said he thought they had better get out and walk. It would perhaps be safer for her than sitting in the boat now the sun had set.
“The path is very fairly good,” he said, “and I’m so afraid of your catching cold. We can be home before it’s quite dark.”
She agreed, and the boat was taken to a cleft in the bank where they could easily get out, and side by side they started off briskly along the uneven pathway. Beynon talked more during that walk than he had done for months previously. Mrs Massenger could always make people talk, for she possessed the rare faculty of being a sympathetic listener; but after a time they were silent, for darkness was rapidly closing in, making it more difficult for them to pick their way, and they had still nearly half a mile before them.
“How dark it’s getting,” said Mrs Massenger; “perhaps I had better take your arm.”
He gave it to her with joyful readiness, and as they stumbled on he noticed the same subtle scent about her that had pervaded her room the day she had sent him to fetch her cushion, and it mounted to his brain and made it reel. Presently, her foot slipped, and she put out her other hand to save herself. In an instant his arm was round her, the blood rushed through his veins, he felt that he must tighten his clasp, must kiss the sweet face that was pressed against his coat, must tell her that he loved her, and pour out the passion that was bursting from his lips.
Then he recovered himself, and shuddered to think how near he had been to losing her friendship. He gently helped her to recover her balance, asked if she was hurt, and walked on beside her with his teeth clenched and his heart thumping against his side. He was thoroughly miserable and ashamed; he felt like a traitor, and dreaded to meet her in the light lest she should see the self-condemnation in his eyes. Poor Beynon! He had taken the disease very violently. Like measles, it is always worse the later we catch it, and his once monotonous, uneventful life had been suddenly turned into a chaos of keen misery and delirious happiness.
He felt he could have cried when he saw the Massengers off the next morning, but he was obliged to harden his heart and be thankful for the few days of bliss that had been his, and go back and put his shoulder to the wheel with more energy than ever. Luckily, he had a good deal to occupy his mind, for his office work had fallen sadly into arrears, but all the same he found time to remember Mrs Massenger’s behests, for he wrote to Calcutta and also to England for clothes, ordered a supply of the newest light literature, and sent for a barber, whom he bribed with fabulous wages to remain as his servant. He had something to buoy him up in his loneliness, too, something he was looking forward to ardently and intensely, which he dreamed of by night, and thought of by day—ten days’ leave to visit the Massengers.
“You may come directly the cold weather begins and you have got your new clothes,” she had called out to him from the train as they were starting. And he had smiled and nodded, and waved his hat, and lived from that moment on the prospect of seeing her again.
At last, one cold weather’s morning, some two months later, Beynon arrayed himself in a brand-new tweed suit and started off for the long-anticipated visit. For days he had been in a state of suppressed excitement, hardly able to eat or sleep, imagining his meeting with Mrs Massenger, the kind look of approval she would give him when he told her he had obeyed her to the letter; the long, confidential talks he would have alone with her; the ten whole days of unalloyed happiness that were in store for him. Perhaps she would be at the Gurpore station to meet him; but no, there was no little dainty figure on the platform, and so, relieved as well as disappointed, he got into a ghari and drove to the Massengers’ house. Jack came out into the porch to meet him, and welcomed him very heartily.
“Come and have a peg, old fellow. My wife’s out. I don’t suppose she’ll be back before dinner-time. She’s going to a dance tonight. Perhaps you’d like to go too, or would you rather stay and smoke with me?”
“Aren’t you going?”
“Oh, no, I never go to these things. They bore me to death. My wife likes them though, and they keep her amused.”
Beynon’s heart sank ever so little. He could not dance, and he would only be in the way if he went with her. But at any rate he would not decide till he had seen her and discovered what her wishes were on the subject. He sat chatting with Jack until it was dark, and the lamps were brought in, and then came a rattle of wheels and the sound of voices and laughter outside. He followed Jack into the verandah. Under the porch stood a high dogcart, from which Mrs Massenger was preparing to climb, while ready to help her was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a clean-cut, soldierly face and an iron-grey moustache.
“Won’t you come in,” she said when she had reached the ground.
“No, thanks, not this evening. How are you, Massenger? Coming to our dance tonight?”
“No, thanks, Colonel, my wife will go for me. Well, goodnight, as you won’t come in.”
The dogcart rattled away, and Mrs Massenger turned and greeted Beynon gaily, told him to make himself at home and ask for all he wanted, and then went off to dress. She was just as nice as ever to him, and yet he somehow felt a little damped and uncomfortable. He had a frightful presentiment that his old shyness was going to return, and that he would have to begin his friendship with her all over again. He caught his breath when she came in to dinner, she looked so lovely. It made him ask himself bitterly what was the use of this vain fluttering round the candle? He had much better have stayed and slaved away his days in the jungle, and so saved himself much bitter heartache.
She seemed to take it for granted that he was not going to the dance and said good-night to him after dinner as she wrapped herself in her evening cloak, and added that he was not to let Jack bore him. Then she went off, and he did not see her again until luncheon time the next day. At luncheon also appeared the Colonel with the iron-grey moustache, who looked inquiringly at Beynon through an eyeglass and made him feel profoundly uncomfortable. Mrs Massenger and the Colonel chatted incessantly of all that was going on in the station, and discussed people Beynon had never heard of, while he could only sit stupidly silent and feel convinced that the fellow kept her talking of these things on purpose to annoy him. He assured himself that she would have talked to him too, only the brute never gave her a chance, and she was obliged to answer him out of politeness. Yet was it politeness that made her go out driving with the Colonel directly after luncheon, and ask him in to dinner that night? Beynon became utterly wretched. He never for a moment blamed her; but he felt he was not wanted, and was more keenly alive than ever to his own inferiority and his presumption in dreaming for one moment that his presence would make any difference to her. All the same, he had expected that she would be glad to see him, had anticipated a few words of praise when he told her of the barber, his new library of books, and his renovated wardrobe, and now he had not even had a chance of speaking to her alone at all. She treated him as Jack’s friend. As if he had come all that way with such throbbing pulses merely to see Jack!
The Colonel was constantly at Mrs Massenger’s side. He sat in her boudoir in the morning, drove or rode with her in the afternoon, and generally dined in the house in the evening. Jack did a little work, ate, smoked, slept, went to the club to play poker, and took little note of anything else.
As a matter of fact, Massenger never had gone out much with his wife; he hated garden-parties and dancing, and was only too thankful when she was willing to go without him. In justice to her it must be owned that she had not always been so willing. At first she had implored him to go about with her, but he had only laughed good-humouredly and said:
“Oh, no, Kitty, I couldn’t—I should die of boredom. If you don’t like going alone, stay at home, or get somebody else to take you.”
“If I stay at home you only go off to the club and leave me by myself,” she had pouted.
“Well, if I went with you I should only be bored and bad-tempered,” he returned. “Go off and enjoy yourself in your own way, old girl, and let me do the same.”
She had taken him at his word, and “gone off and enjoyed herself” with a vengeance.
Before Beynon had been in the house three days, he was making plans for his departure. He wished he had never come. He longed for Patakri, and yearned for the weir, the rush of water, the still forms of the crocodiles, and the solitude that would be his in which to try and recover from his disappointment. On the fourth morning he found Mrs Massenger alone in the verandah for a moment.
“I think I had better go back,” he began moodily.
“Nonsense! What’s the matter with you. Don’t look so wretched, there’s a dear fellow. You know how busy I am. I’ve been longing for a talk with you. Do you remember how we used to talk at Patakri?”
Beynon smiled grimly. Did he remember? Rather, should he ever forget?
“Listen,” she said, laying her finger-tips on his arm, “I shall have an hour before dinner tonight. You shall come into my little room, and we’ll have a good chat. You mustn’t dream of going away. We shall have lots of other opportunities before your ten days are up.”
Beynon’s spirits rose. What a fool he had been! Of course it was only that she had had no time to take notice of him—she could not help her engagements—and he would stay his ten days, and be thankful if he only got a meagre half-hour of her society.
That evening he went to the door of the little room she had made her boudoir, and was about to knock and ask if he might enter, when he noticed that the door was slightly open, and heard the sound of voices within. One voice was Mrs Massenger’s, and she was crying. Beynon stood rooted to the spot. He had no intention of listening; his only idea was that she was in trouble, and that he was ready to help her if need be.
The other voice was the Colonel’s, and the next moment Beynon had heard it utter words that made him turn and fly to his own room in an agony of hideous doubt and bewilderment. He felt sick with apprehension, furious with Jack, on whose apathy and carelessness he threw all the blame, and half mad with the sense of his powerlessness to prevent her taking a step that must ruin her whole life. He was helplessly ignorant of what course to pursue. He could not go to Mrs Massenger and reason with her; he could not carry tales to Jack of his wife. Definite action was impossible, but there was one thing he could and would do—tell Jack what he thought of him, and spare him not one jot, so that when the crash came he should feel that he was to blame and no other.
Beynon called his servant and ordered him to pack his clothes and take them to the station. He meant to say things to Jack that would make it impossible for him to stay a night longer in the house. Then, with a singing in his ears and bitter sorrow in his heart, he went to look for his host.
“Will you come out for a walk,” he said, when he had found him. “I want to talk to you.”
Something in his voice and the expression of his face roused Jack, who looked somewhat anxiously at Beynon.
“Go for a walk?” he repeated. “But it’s such an unusual hour to go out, unless you’d like to drive up to the club.”
“No. I only want you to come out with me; I have something to say.”
Jack fetched his hat with reluctance, and wonderingly followed Beynon out into the cold, dusky air, which was heavy with the smoke of hundreds of native fires in neighbouring compounds. Jack shuddered and wanted to go back, but Beynon laid a hot, trembling hand on his shoulder and pushed him into the road. A solitary lamp had just been lighted and burned dimly in the smoky atmosphere; a dogcart flashed past them, and the occupants called out ‘Goodnight’ cheerily to Jack; a shivering native, followed by a lean, jackal-like dog, glided silently by and disappeared into the gloom; and then the two men were alone by the side of the dusty, metalled road, with only the murmur and lights of the bazaar a hundred yards ahead of them.
“Poof! This beastly smoke is enough to choke one,” said Jack, in a disgusted voice. “I hate this end of the station; so close to the bazaar, one never gets rid of the smell. What on earth possessed you to want to go out, Beynon? Come back and smoke by the fire.”
“I’m not going back,” said Beynon, hoarsely. “I’m never going into your house again. I’ve brought you out here to tell you what I think of you, and I couldn’t do that in your own house. You’re a selfish, lazy brute; you think of nothing but yourself and your own comfort. You married your wife for what you could get with her, and now you neglect her and leave her for other men to take about and look after, and do things for her that her husband is the proper person to do. As long as you have got all you want, what do you care what danger she is in, what people say about her, what she does? You don’t know her value, and you won’t until, by your own pig-headed laziness and selfishness, you have lost her—”
“Hold your tongue, sir!” cried Jack, in astonished rage. “Who are you to come preaching to me as to how I treat my wife? I never heard of such impudence in my life. You’re drunk or mad!”
“I’m not either,” said Beynon, slowly, a sudden hopelessness coming over him. He put his hands in his pockets doggedly. “I’m going away. Perhaps I’ve made an ass of myself. Of course, you think I’m a meddling fool, and you may for all I care. I may be right and I may be wrong, that is for you to find out. In any case we can never be the same to one another again. I wasn’t made to live with my fellow-creatures, and I sha’n’t try the experiment any more. I have told my bearer to take my things to the station, and I am going to walk there now.”
“Come, come, old chap,” said Jack, still angry and bewildered, but his natural good-temper coming to the fore, “what’s the matter with you? Never mind what you said just now. Of course it was beastly cheek, and God only knows why you said it, but I’ll forget all about it. You’re seedy; you’ve been drinking too much tea out at Patakri, and you take things too seriously. Come in and don’t talk any more rot.”
But Beynon’s mind was made up, and his resolve was not to be shaken. Jack forgot the cold, and the smell and the smoke, and waxed eloquent in his persuasions, but they were of no avail.
“But what am I to say to Kitty?” he asked helplessly. “Tell her exactly what happened,” said Beynon, “and every word I said. It’s no good trying to persuade me, Massenger. I am not going back.”
So finally the two men shook hands and parted, one in about as miserable a frame of mind as a man could well be, and the other in considerable doubt of his late guest’s sanity, yet depressed, puzzled, stirred by Beynon’s onslaught, and apprehensive of he knew not what. As he reached the house the Colonel’s dogcart was in the act of driving away, so he knew his wife would be alone, and he wondered moodily how he was to explain Beynon’s sudden departure to her. He went straight to her boudoir. She was sitting staring into the fire, and Jack saw that she had been crying. Beynon’s words rang in his ears with unpleasant distinctness, “You married your wife for what you could get with her.” Was it true? Well, partly, perhaps. But now, as he looked at her little sunny head, with the rippling brown hair shining in the firelight, and the mournful droop of her slender neck, his indolent, good-natured apathy cleared away like mist from water, and the knowledge of how he had grown to love his wife, and what his life would be without her, struck full upon him. A horrible fear took hold of him. Was it too late? Had he lost her through what Beynon had called his own pig-headed selfishness? He went up to her, and, lifting her chin in his hand, looked into her tear-stained eyes.
“What is it, little woman?” he asked unsteadily.
Her eyes fell and her mouth quivered. “You would not understand,” she answered.
Jack’s hand fell heavily to his side. He moved over to the mantelpiece, and, with one foot on the fender-stool, gazed silently into the fire. Mrs Massenger sat still. She was battling with her desire to break into stormy tears, and Jack looked up and saw the struggle.
“Do you hate me, Kitty?” he said impulsively.
“Do I hate you?” she repeated in wonder.
“I couldn’t blame you if you did,” he went on. “Something happened tonight; someone told me the truth about myself, and I see what a selfish beast I have been. I know, too, what you are to me, and how I love you, and now perhaps you don’t care for me, and it is all too late.” Poor, unhappy Jack put his arms on the mantelpiece and laid his handsome head on them to conceal the smarting in his eyeballs that he had not felt since he was a little boy leaving his mother to go to school.
There was a slight pause, and then Mrs Massenger was standing on the fender-stool to make herself as tall as Jack, her arms were round his neck and her cheek pressed tightly to his.
“Oh, Jack, Jack, I love you so awfully, and I thought you didn’t care!” Then it gradually came out how dearly she had always loved him, how bitter had been the discovery that his love for her was as nothing compared with her’s for him. How she had tried flirting with the Colonel just to see if Jack would be jealous, but without effect; how that very evening the man had tried to persuade her to run away with him, and how, when Jack came in, she had been crying because she thought he wouldn’t care a bit if she did run away.
“Hush!” said Jack, stopping her mouth with a kiss.
* * *
When Mrs Massenger heard of Jack’s extraordinary interview with Beynon in the road, and the latter’s sudden departure, she blamed herself bitterly. She felt sure she knew the reason of his flight, for had she not told him to come to her room that evening, and then forgotten all about it? And at that very moment the Colonel had been with her. Poor, dear fellow! Of course he had overheard something, and then he had “gone for” Jack, and blamed him instead of herself, with the result that he had given her the one great happiness she had longed for—Jack’s love.
“Why did you let him go?” she exclaimed. “We can’t get him back, because he must have caught the train by this time easily. You will have to take a week’s leave, Jack, and we will go and have a second honeymoon with him at Patakri. I will telegraph to him that we are coming, and then he will have plenty of time to clear out of his own room and make himself as uncomfortable as he likes for us. Oh, I am so sorry I wasn’t nicer to him; and I never told him how becoming his new clothes were, or how well he had had his hair cut, or how improved he was, or anything!” and she wrung her little hands.
“Don’t worry yourself,” said Jack. “I’ll get the leave, and then you can tell him what you like to your heart’s content.”
The next morning Mrs Massenger wired to Patakri, and after some hours a reply came to her telegram, but it was not from Beynon. It was from the native assistant-engineer, and it said, “Beynon ill with fever.” This hastened the Massengers’ departure, for they felt they must be with the sick man in his loneliness without delay.
Early the next morning they arrived at the little roadside station, which, being a tiny place of a primitive order, boasted of no ticca gharis. Jack wanted to send a man to Patakri to fetch Beynon’s dogcart, but Mrs Massenger insisted that they could not afford to lose the time, and they finally drove the six miles in an ekka. Mrs Massenger’s head ached, and her feet went to sleep, but she did not complain, and said little, except to urge the driver to make his scraggy little pony go faster.
Everything was very still when they reached the house. She thought of the first time she had entered it; Beynon’s embarrassment, the clamour of the dogs, the dust on her smart new shoes, and a dozen other trifles. In the verandah stood the native assistant, a portly gentleman in a tight cloth coat, a many-coloured worsted comforter round his neck, oily black hair, and large patent-leather shoes.
“Good morning, sir,” he began in halting English. “I have very much regret to inform your honour that Mr Beynon, Esq., executive engineer, is no longer in the land of the living. I have already wired to superintending engineer to make report, and to Mr Smith in next division.”
Jack turned to his wife in silent dismay. Her face was deathly white.
“Where is he?” she whispered, stepping forward to enter the house.
“Madam, he is not there,” said the babu, with officious importance. “Mr Beynon, Esq., I am very sad to report, lost his sanity with the effect of the fever; I absent. In this state he, rising from his bed last night, walked down to weir, where Bewani, watchman, was witness that he made false step and was fallen into water. Being full moon, this same Bewani was enabled to witness foregoing sad event. He used all endeavour to save Mr Beynon, Esq., but, being a poor man, was unable to take plunge into water from dread of the—er—the—er—the saurians, which would without doubt have caused his death also, therefore—”
“Hold your tongue, you ass!” shouted Jack, angrily, and was just in time to catch his wife’s figure as she fell back senseless.
* * *
It was all only too true, for the babu’s story was corroborated by the servants and the frightened watchman, whose mind was assailed by a terrible fear that he might be held accountable for the sahib’s death. Beynon had returned to Patakri with fever on him, and all the next day had lain tossing and raving in delirium. The bearer said he had not considered it serious, for the sahib often had illnesses like this; they were only common fever, and seldom lasted long. The native doctor had come to see him and given him medicine, and he had seemed better by the evening, so the bearer had allowed himself to go to sleep. He had awoke in the middle of the night to find his master delirious again and walking about the room. “He would not be persuaded to go back to bed,” continued the weeping bearer, “but he put on his new clothes that had come from England, and insisted on going out. I could not stay him, sahib; he was too strong, and I am growing old and feeble. I could only follow him to see that he came to no harm. He said he was going to the railway station, but he turned his steps towards the water, and ran swiftly down the slope. Before I could overtake him he had reached the weir and cast himself into the water. Bewani, watchman, says his foot slipped, but the sahib was light-headed and he sought the water to cool the burning of his skin. His body will not be found. Mother Ganga seldom gives back what she takes.”
The old bearer was right. Beynon’s body was not recovered, and Mrs Massenger had to go back without having told him how greatly she thought he had improved himself, or how much better he looked with his hair cut properly.
Her life must ever be tinged with the bitterness of remorse, and the remembrance of a man’s patient, honest eyes looking in vain to her for a word of approbation. And there is one corner in her heart from which, even in her happiest hours, there will still creep haunting visions of a little thatched bungalow overlooking the River Ganges, the deep, swirling water reflecting the sunset glow, a Gussein’s funeral, and the cruel, hungry alligators waiting so quietly for their prey.