第1章

There were times when we had to go without puddings to pay John's uniform bills, and always I did the facings myself with a cloth-ball to save getting new ones.I would have polished his sword, too, if I had been allowed; I adored his sword.And once, I remember, we painted and varnished our own dog-cart, and very smart it looked, to save fifty rupees.We had nothing but our pay--John had his company when we were married, but what is that?--and life was made up of small knowing economies, much more amusing in recollection than in practise.We were sodden poor, and that is a fact, poor and conscientious, which was worse.A big fat spider of a money-lender came one day into the veranda and tempted us--we lived in a hut, but it had a veranda--and John threatened to report him to the police.

Poor when everybody else had enough to live in the open-handed Indian fashion, that was what made it so hard; we were alone in our sordid little ways.When the expectation of Cecily came to us we made out to be delighted, knowing that the whole station pitied us, and when Cecily came herself, with a swamping burst of expense, we kept up the pretense splendidly.She was peevish, poor little thing, and she threatened convulsions from the beginning, but we both knew that it was abnormal not to love her a great deal, more than life, immediately and increasingly; and we applied ourselves honestly to do it, with the thermometer at a hundred and two, and the nurse leaving at the end of a fortnight because she discovered that I had only six of everything for the table.To find out a husband's virtues, you must marry a poor man.The regiment was under-officered as usual, and John had to take parade at daylight quite three times a week; but he walked up and down the veranda with Cecily constantly till two in the morning, when a little coolness came.I usually lay awake the rest of the night in fear that a scorpion would drop from the ceiling on her.Nevertheless, we were of excellent mind towards Cecily; we were in such terror, not so much of failing in our duty towards her as towards the ideal standard of mankind.We were very anxious indeed not to come short.

To be found too small for one's place in nature would have been odious.We would talk about her for an hour at a time, even when John's charger was threatening glanders and I could see his mind perpetually wandering to the stable.I would say to John that she had brought a new element into our lives--she had indeed!--and John would reply, 'I know what you mean,' and go on to prophesy that she would 'bind us together.' We didn't need binding together; we were more to each other, there in the desolation of that arid frontier outpost, than most husbands and wives; but it seemed a proper and hopeful thing to believe, so we believed it.Of course, the real experience would have come, we weren't monsters; but fate curtailed the opportunity.She was just five weeks old when the doctor told us that we must either pack her home immediately or lose her, and the very next day John went down with enteric.So Cecily was sent to England with a sergeant's wife who had lost her twins, and Isettled down under the direction of a native doctor, to fight for my husband's life, without ice or proper food, or sickroom comforts of any sort.Ah! Fort Samila, with the sun glaring up from the sand!--however, it is a long time ago now.I trusted the baby willingly to Mrs.Berry and to Providence, and did not fret; my capacity for worry, I suppose, was completely absorbed.Mrs.Berry's letter, describing the child's improvement on the voyage and safe arrival came, I remember, the day on which John was allowed his first solid mouthful; it had been a long siege.'Poor little wretch!' he said when I read it aloud; and after that Cecily became an episode.

She had gone to my husband's people; it was the best arrangement.

We were lucky that it was possible; so many children had to be sent to strangers and hirelings.Since an unfortunate infant must be brought into the world and set adrift, the haven of its grandmother and its Aunt Emma and its Aunt Alice certainly seemed providential.

I had absolutely no cause for anxiety, as I often told people, wondering that I did not feel a little all the same.Nothing, Iknew, could exceed the conscientious devotion of all three Farnham ladies to the child.She would appear upon their somewhat barren horizon as a new and interesting duty, and the small additional income she also represented would be almost nominal compensation for the care she would receive.They were excellent persons of the kind that talk about matins and vespers, and attend both.They helped little charities and gave little teas, and wrote little notes, and made deprecating allowance for the eccentricities of their titled or moneyed acquaintances.They were the subdued, smiling, unimaginatively dressed women on a small definite income that you meet at every rectory garden-party in the country, a little snobbish, a little priggish, wholly conventional, but apart from these weaknesses, sound and simple and dignified, managing their two small servants with a display of the most exact traditions, and keeping a somewhat vague and belated but constant eye upon the doings of their country as chronicled in a bi-weekly paper.They were all immensely interested in royalty, and would read paragraphs aloud to each other about how the Princess Beatrice or the Princess Maud had opened a fancy bazaar, looking remarkably well in plain grey poplin trimmed with Irish lace--an industry which, as is well known, the Royal Family has set its heart on rehabilitating.Upon which Mrs.Farnham's comment invariably would be, 'How thoughtful of them, dear!' and Alice would usually say, 'Well, if I were a princess, I should like something nicer than plain grey poplin.'

Alice, being the youngest, was not always expected to think before she spoke.Alice painted in water-colours, but Emma was supposed to have the most common sense.