""- = ' T --- -^ Desmond's Daughter " Cette petite fille, EspeVance, Qui a 1'air de rien du tout, Cette petite fille esperance, Immortelle. . . . Comme 1'^toile a conduit les Trois Rois du fin fond de 1'Orient, Ainsi, une flamme tremblante, Elle, seule, conduit les vertus et les mondes." "Within ourselves we have a hope which always walks in front of our present narrow experience. ... It will never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent fact ; it sets no limit to its own scope ; . . . and its wild dreams become true every day." Sir RABINDRANATH TAGORE. Desmond's Daughter BY MAUD DIVER AUTHOR OF 'CAPTAIN DESMOND, V.C.,' 'THE GREAT AMULET, ' THE JUDGMENT OF THE SWORD,' ETC. William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1916 ALL RTGHTS RESERVED Stack Annex PR 6007 TO HELEN, COUSIN, FRIEND, AND MOST INSPIRING CRITIC, BrtiicaU tfjfa Book. M. D. " God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out. ..." BROWNING. 1821568 AUTHOR'S NOTE. As my novel includes the true story of the Tirah campaign, it seems advisable to make it clear that all the characters concerned are my own creations, and are in no way derived from those officers whose parts they play. On the other hand, events and incidents are entirely true to fact : including the presence of women and children in Fort Gulistan, the distinction earned by one of the former, and the unique demonstration at the close of the cam- paign as all Anglo-Indian readers will know. I may add that the whole story was conceived, and partially written, before there was any thought of war. Thus, it so happens, that much of the underlying idea of my tale (with which I did not anticipate a very general agreement) is now being daily proven by the facts of life lived under new and stimulating conditions. Already, from the crucible of war, many Vincent Leighs must have emerged and developed in a manner that has probably surprised none more than themselves. M. D. CONTENTS. PHASE I. PAGE THE COMING OF VINCENT LEIGH i PHASE II. "CETTE PETITE FILLE . . ." . . 37 PHASE III. THE IMPERFECT LOVER 135 PHASE IV. EARTH'S WHEEL 287 PHASE V. FORT GULISTAN 369 PHASE VI. THE CRUCIBLE 469 PHASE I. THE COMING OF VINCENT LEIGH CHAPTER I. "Some have tears that well up in the daylight ; and others have tears that are hidden in the gloom." KABINDRANATH TAGORE. VINCENT LEIGH lay full stretch on the April grass; his hands locked behind his head that rested on a tussock of heather. A cloth cap shielded his neck from the scratchings of twigs and the intrusion of adventurous insects that a summer-like spring had wakened to life. All about him the headland was blotched with deep -toned patches of autumn, still dead asleep to the casual observer; but, even so, beautiful exceedingly to this boy with the blood of Scotland and Devon in his veins. To-morrow he would tramp inland and take his fill of the great moor; earth's masterpiece of tapestry, woven of a thousand greys and browns and sombre greens, with the bloom of rose madder permeating all, as it were a whispered promise of glory yet to be. To-day he was content to lose himself in the blue infinities of sea and sky, to free his spirit from the barrack atmosphere of Sandhurst that had irked him more than ever during this, his second term of military college life. Only yesterday he had left the hated place and sped thankfully back to his mother's grey stone cottage at Tintagel ; to the clean salt breath of the sea and the large draughts of space and silence that were as bread and meat to his soul. Here for a few blessed weeks he could win freedom from the macadamised track of action and thought, from the faces of men who were too good-natured to resent his aloofness, too far re- moved from him to understand. 4 Desmond's Daughter Why should it be only for a few weeks ? Why not for ever ? This was the altogether non-regulation question that had visited his heart that morning, when he stood at his window and greeted those, two unfailing friends of his childhood, sea and sky. To these he dedicated his first day of freedom. Unbroken solitude hours and hours of it was his imperative need ; not merely that he might regain the lost poise of his spirit ; but that he might take fresh stock of himself, and the situation, with as much honesty as a man, whose future hangs upon the issue, can bring to that delicate task. Directly after breakfast, he had left the cottage intent upon a day-long tramp that would clear his thoughts and help him to see things plain. Crossing the rough stretch of meadowland that overlooks Bossiney Haven, he had dropped by a footpath into the depths of Rocky Valley, ice-cool at that early hour, and musical with the plash and swirl of rushing water. Over the stream and on up another ribbon of path, he had climbed to the great bluff that sweeps north- ward to Boscastle Harbour. Rain and thunder in the night had lent a wonderful clarity to the air, a dazzle of brilliance to the turf and even to the grey walls jewelled with living green. Away at the horizon's edge sea and sky were merged in a silver haze; and always, as he went, there travelled with him the heart- stirring wail of gulls and the dull roar of breakers among the rocks four hundred feet below. The young, loosely-built figure had about it a sug- gestion of latent power ; but the slight droop of the shoulders told its own tale. He had discarded his cap that the wind might thrust its fingers through the thick, dark crop of hair that grew low down into his neck, and gave a noticeably square outline to a forehead broad rather than high, with slightly hol- low temples and a well-developed prominence above the brows. There were traces of strain about the mouth that should not have been so firmly scored there at two-and-twenty. The curve of his nostril The Coming of Vincent Leigh 5 was sensitive and proud. The decisive lower lip and chin promised no small measure of self-control. It was the face of one who would suffer unduly from the world's common buffetings, one who would too readily disregard the sound axiom " Life is not meant to be questioned. It is meant to be lived." And he was in danger of disregarding it now. Under a typical Cornish wall of slates, set this way and that, he had emptied several packets of sand- wiches ; and thereafter strolled back across the breezy downs to his favourite headland. Here he had flung himself down to await the pageant in the west before returning to confront his mother with what ? He had walked himself into a calmer mood. But he had not walked himself out of yesterday's con- viction that he could not and would not return to Sandhurst any more. Half ashamed though he felt of such premature surrender, the counter-swing of reaction was strong on this first day of freedom ; and he believed or chose to believe that the "Army prescription " had been given a fair trial and found wanting. It had simply driven home the old, hamper- ing conviction rubbed into him at school, and after- wards at Oxford that he was not as other men. For if Oxford had been difficult, Sandhurst was purgatory. The drill, the uniforms, the unvarying round of duties, the eternal talk of horses and sport and women, had merely thrust him farther into his shell. The very books wore uniforms like the men, and never the ghost of an idea was admitted between their scarlet covers. Already he was beginning to suspect that in losing his last few years of public school life, he had also lost his best chance of battering down the invisible barrier between himself and his kind. In that case nothing remained but to accept the fact like a man and thank God for the two hundred a year that would suffice for his modest needs. Though the fulness of life were denied him, there remained the fulness of work that might yet lead to unimagined heights of achievement. Blessed conviction of youth that effort and ambition 6 Desmond's Daughter cannot fail to reach the goal. It is the symbolical bunch of carrots before the donkey's nose. Though the donkey never attain his carrots nor the man his desire, the race has been run, and that is the great matter after all. Already certain shy, secret literary ambitions were stirring in his brain, large and vague, and the more alluring for their vagueness : a big poetic drama on Greek lines; a philosophic review of history; no mere panorama of battles and politics and the deaths of kings, but a living record of causes and character and psychological influences, the hidden forces that evolve the upward-striving spirit of man. Viewed and studied thus, history, by a natural transition, should merge into prophecy ; her feet set firmly on the rock of the past, her eyes discerning through the mist of the horizon a Pisgah glimpse of things to be. So he lay dreaming, while the sun drew gradually away from the rolling uplands of Tintagel. Moment by moment the splendour in the west grew and spread, till the bluff in the foreground loomed like a silhouette of some primeval monster upon a blaze of gold, splashed with one brush-stroke of purple cloud. Already it was twilight in the bay, while yet the high fantastic rocks of Long Island kept their heads in the sun ; and sea- gulls, dipping, wheeling, and crying, flashed like streaks of silver across the scarred faces of the cliffs. The dreamer, lured out of his dream, lay sideways, blinding his eyes and brain with the glory that perme- ated all things, even his puny, insistent ego, prating of achievement between a sleep and a sleep. And while the glory lasted Time was not. A small, chill wind, the first breath of night, brought Vincent back to earth and time, and realisation that it was but April and that warmth had departed with the sun. Springing briskly to his feet, he clapped on his cap, thrust his chilled hands into his pockets., and stood so for a few moments, his eyes resting on the aftermath of sunset, his mind acutely conscious of the significance of his new decision. In the light of it he saw the highroad ahead of him, The Coming of Vincent Leigh 7 swept clear of action and adventure, of the clash and counter-clash of those volcanic forces that are of the essence of life. He saw the grave, still face of loneli- ness, and told himself it was the face of peace. Impos- sible to ignore the suspicion that a man might pay too heavily for the blessing of peace. But in his case it seemed there was no choice. Better, then, the com- plete eremite than the incomplete man. Upon that stoical yet questionable conclusion he faced about to take the homeward path ; and lo the moon ! There, in the cool grey blue of the eastern sky, she gleamed, a mother-o'-pearl transparency, like some great night-blossoming flower, still half tangled in a blur of trees. An odd thrill shot through him ; a slight shock such as one feels who has imagined him- self alone and becomes suddenly aware of human eyes regarding him. To all true worshippers of the moon, and Vincent Leigh was one, she is no mere dead world masquerading in a borrowed glory, but the very spirit of night and all that night signifies of peace and mysterious beauty, of apartness from the strenuous traffic of the day. To Vincent she seemed also, at that moment, a symbol of the same loneliness and peace that were to be his portion in exchange for the dust of the arena. Spellbound he stood and watched her slow, exquisite change from transparency to radiance, the magic trans- figuration of the sleeping earth. Then he strolled on towards home and his mother, and all that must some- how be made clear to her during the evening. Straight there sprang the question, how would she receive it all ? For the life of him he could not tell. Yet these two were in as close accord as they of the silent clan may achieve. But, silent or no, it is a common experience, a standing proof of the soul's essential isolation, that there, where love and understanding seem deepest, a man may yet stand confronted with bewildering uncertainty in the hour of crisis, that is the hour of his supremest need. 8 CHAPTER II. " Life is stronger than a single soul." CORNELIA SORABJI. To passers-by along the Boscastle road, Greystones showed a more individual aspect than any of its neigh- bours round about. Its deep slate roof, jewelled with lichen and moss, shadowed two miniature windows dating from the dark ages; and for porch two vertical slabs of slate were set upon either side of the door, with a third slab laid across the top. Here began the rough wall bounding the garden that looked across an open stretch of cornfield and headland to the sea : and here Greystones of the dark ages merged into Greystones of the nineteenth century, with windows of reasonable size, and half a second storey that increased the long queer slope of the roof towards the road. To-night, near the slate porch, Vincent paused bracing himself for the thing he must say ; and while he paused, there came to him through an open window the sound of his mother's voice alternating with deep, deliberate tones quite unknown to him. Visitors at the cottage were rare at any time : and a man at this hour! His first sensation was rage against the intruder: his first instinct flight. But it was late. She might be growing anxious ; and he himself was certainly growing curious In the dusk of the tiny hall he charged against Jenny, the devoted but captious commander-in-chief of the cottage ; brushed aside her reproaches, and, The Coming of Vincent Leigh 9 with a sensible flutter of curiosity, opened the drawing- room door. Mrs Leigh, a slender, shapely woman, of deliberate movement, met him on his entrance and took him by the arm. " I was beginning to wonder where you had got to, my son," she said, and he detected a faint note of eagerness in her tone. "This is Colonel Wyndham. A very old friend indeed." "Almost an antediluvian survival!" chimed in the deep-voiced stranger, a tall grey-headed man, who now came forward and shook hands. Vincent, uncommunicative at best, had no trite re- mark at his command : and the mellow voice went on : "I'm not very long retired; and my doctor sent me down here to recruit after a go of Indian fever. The look of this cottage caught my fancy, and when they told me the name of the owner, I couldn't resist look- ing in to find out if I had been quite forgotten ! I haven't, it seems, and here have your mother and I been peopling the twilight with ghosts of more than thirty years ago. You're just back from Sandhurst, she tells me. Very thankful to get out of harness for a few weeks, no doubt ? " " More thankful than I can say," Vincent replied with such unusual fervour that his mother glanced at him in faint surprise. The boy, aware of her glance, tingled with sudden, acute self-consciousness, fell back on monosyllables, and made haste to be gone. But that unexpected hint of sympathy in the stranger's question went far to modify his antagonism and quicken his interest in the talk during dinner, which he made small attempt to share : talk of the past, of England and India, and more especially of one Sir Theo Desmond, Wyndham's friend and fellow- soldier, now commanding a Division, and likely before long to command all India. While they talked, Vincent had leisure to observe and speculate upon the new-comer whose appearance had brought that wistful eagerness into his mother's io Desmond's Daughter tone. Paul Wyndham's face was of the type that improves with age. Always it had possessed a certain quality that is to good looks as sunlight to a candle ; and now to that quality was added the subtle impress of a life straightly and strongly lived. So thought Margaret Leigh as she listened to his talk of the past ; now frankly regarding the retired Colonel ; now hearing only the voice of a certain sub- altern, that had made music in the heart of a certain Margaret Donaldson some thirty years ago. Vincent, in his ignorance and young resentment at the frustration of his private plans, merely felt rather more outside things than usual ; he that had imagined an evening of barriers flung down, an evening that should prove a turning-point in his future. He blessed his mother when, on rising, she proposed coffee and cigars in the drawing-room ; and, upon the first plaus- ible pretext, escaped to the long low room upstairs that served him for bedroom and study in one. There, undisturbed by superfluous humans, he could surrender himself to the unfailing companionship of his books ; the only real friends he had made at Oxford ; the only friends he seemed capable of making, there or elsewhere. From the manifold life of that great University, he had been debarred by the curse of his unconquerable shyness, that belied his true nature at every turn. At first he had made spasmodic efforts to mix freely with his fellows ; but the result had proved utterly disproportionate to the strain involved ; and by the end of his third year he had been forced to recog- nise that the disability inherited from his mother was no mere surface defect of youth, but a permanent item of his outfit for life. Happily for himself, his mother's complex nature was leavened in him by the spirit of his soldier father, dead these eleven years ; the father whose reiterate plea had been : " For God's sake, let me put the boy into the Army and make a man of him." Vincent had never forgotten the first time he heard those words through an open window, on a still, grey The Coming of Vincent Leigh 1 1 morning of summer, or the stress on the word ' man,' implying he knew not what, that had made him feel vaguely ashamed. What was wrong in him, he had wondered ruefully, that he could not become a man without being forcibly ' made ' into one ? Was it his ' onlyness ' ? And was he really so different from other boys ? Or was every one ' different ' without knowing it? Two years at a public school had hammered the answer into him painfully enough. There he had dis- covered the gulf fixed between the 'difference' that was permissible and the excess of difference that was the unforgivable sin. Great therefore was his relief when, at his father's death, his mother, in her loneliness, had compromised matters by engaging a private tutor. More than once, before Colonel Leigh died, he had repeated the wish of his heart in his son's hearing ; and his urgency had left so deep an impression on that son, that when the moment for decision came, he had chosen the Army, in the desperate hope that by living and working in communion with his kind, he might eventually break down the barrier between himself and them. His mother had applauded his choice without marked enthusiasm. Secretly she had hoped that the Univer- sity atmosphere might lure his ambition into some other channel : and, in a measure, it was so. There could be no denying the strength of the counter-pull, when he found himself with second-class honours in history to his credit and a collection of thought- ful essays that had attracted the attention of dons. Whether that counter-pull was a temptation to be resisted, or a call to be obeyed there was the rub : and only after a period of painful swaying had the spirit of his father carried the day. Since University commissions were not then given direct, he had set his teeth and gone on to Sandhurst ; while his very few intimates shook their heads over him, with pessimistic allusions to square pegs and round holes. Now, on this critical evening of April, after further 12 Desmond's Daughter heart-searching, he had arrived at the definite conclu- sion that they were right and his father wrong : and there could be no rest till he had imparted the great discovery to his mother. When would that intrusive stranger stop talking futilities and give him, Vincent, a chance to talk of the things that mattered ? The impulse to impart his thoughts was so rare with him, that it was the more maddening to be baulked by a mere outsider, who wanted to sentimentalise over old times. And in the room below him the mere outsider sat silent after he had gone, while Margaret Leigh braced herself to the effort of more intimate speech with this friend who had stepped back into her life as quietly as he had slipped out of it years and years ago. "You see how he is," she said at last. " Very nearly as bad as I was at his age. What will a boy like that do in the Army ? " " He will suffer." Colonel Wyndham spoke steadily, after a perceptible pause. " And he will learn a vast amount that no books would ever teach him. And he will be very glad to have learnt it all afterwards. I venture to prophesy that the Army will do a great deal for that boy. I suspect a strong strain of his father in him, that may prove to be his salvation." She smiled her slow sad smile. " Poor dear ! He stands badly in need of salvation from the Donaldson curse. The word is hardly too strong " " Yet that very curse, bravely handled, may prove a birthright worth a score of obvious blessings." At that she faced him frankly, and her smile was not sad any more. " You haven't changed very much," she said. " And it heartens one to believe you may be right." " I sincerely hope I am. Personally, I would advise India; if possible, the Frontier " She winced visibly. " Am I counselling things too hard for you ? " he The Coming of Vincent Leigh 13 asked, and again the note of sympathy that had attracted Vincent sounded in his voice. " Has he never thought of India himself?" " I don't know. We have never discussed things in detail. He is very reserved, even with me." She broke off with lips compressed and a tightening of her clasped hands. " You would not be entirely against it ? " he urged with the utmost gentleness. " No not if it would really be best for him." Thus tacitly encouraged he enlarged on the value of Frontier service, on its drawbacks and attractions, and of Desmond's influence in high quarters, that he would assuredly be glad to use for the son of an old friend. It was after ten when he rose to go ; and in the firmness of his hand- clasp she felt the deep under- standing that could not be spoken between two who were neither strangers nor intimate friends. He merely said : " I am afraid I must have seemed rather cruel " and she, after a second's hesitation : " N-no. It is only I begin to see how many many mistakes I have made; and I believe you have been ' sent ' to save me from making the last and worst one of all. I wish you could have a talk with him." " Nothing I should like better. I thought of taking a boat out from Boscastle to-morrow afternoon. If he'd care to come with me, I should be delighted." " How good of you ! I'll call him " "No, no. Don't bother him. I'll look in on the chance as I go by." " Why not come to lunch ? " "Thanks very much, I will." So they parted ; and Margaret Leigh went back to her empty drawing-room, stirred and perturbed within herself as she had not been for years. Would Vincent come out of his shell now, she wondered, half longing for another sight of him, half dreading the effort of further talk on a subject that 14 Desmond's Daughter made parting and such a parting! a mere matter of months. A vision of the garden through the uncurtained French window lured her out. The night was aston- ishingly still for April. All open spaces were pools of moonshine. In the midst of them, bushes and borders made islands of shadow, and over all was diffused the pearl-grey twilight which miraculously softens and transforms the commonest features of earth. Margaret Leigh stepping out into it, stepped straightway back into the past, that had so suddenly and so strangely reawakened within her. CHAPTER III. " Neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness is for him whose self is full of misgiving. " Bhagavadgita. " MOTHER Mother ! " His voice coming down through the dark brought her back from the pangs of 'then' to the pangs of 'now.' She stood still right under his window looking up. " What is it, my son ? " she asked ; and for her those words were the supreme term of endearment. " Are you too sleepy for a talk ? " " No. Come down, dear, I was hoping you would." He came accordingly, down and out into the moonlight ; linked his arm through hers, and led her slowly up the whole length of the garden. But even in the dark he found it difficult to begin. All his prepared speeches and arguments had fallen into disarray, and they reached their own low boundary wall without a word spoken between them. Then suddenly Vincent detached himself from his mother, thrust both hands into his pockets, and spoke with a decision that was the outcome of a determined effort rather than unshakeable resolve. " Look here, Mother, I don't know what that man had to say. There seemed a good deal of it. And I suppose he thought me an ill-mannered lout bolting off like that. But / came home with a good deal to say too ; and I felt I couldn't sleep till I'd said it." Once started, the words came with astonishing ease ; not those he had planned, but others, more effective because more simple and direct. 1 6 Desmond's Daughter " Mother, it's no earthly use fighting against the way we're made. I'm sick of knocking my head against a stone wall. So I'm not going back to Sandhurst, and I'm not going into the Army." "My dear !" She murmured on a sharply in- drawn breath that might indicate either relief or dismay. " It's not a sudden notion," he went on in a quieter vein. " It's been there all along. But you see, I wanted to be a man as my father understood the word j and it seemed poor-spirited not to make a fight for it. But it's no good. There seems to be a fundamental antagonism barring the way. I went off this morning to worry things out. And this is the result." He paused, regarding the familiar outline of her profile the long nose, the gentle, close-set lips, the hair that grew squarely on her forehead like his own. She stood there looking away from him into the dim, unfathomable distance, and he could not guess at the struggle within. Accustomed to her odd silences, he never found them disconcerting. " It's not exactly pleasant to own oneself beaten," he explained, addressing that enigmatic yet obviously attentive profile. " But there's one consolation. I needn't leave you yet awhile." At that she turned on him a strange, incredulous smile ; and he led her back, detailing, in broken phrases, the ambitions and possibilities that had not yet taken clear shape in his own mind. Outside the French window, in a panel of lamplight, they stood still again ; and Mrs Leigh let out her breath in a slow sigh. " What is it, Mother ? " the boy asked with a tender pressure of her arm. " Are you disappointed or relieved ? " She turned and looked at him steadily. " My dear, I am thanking God that you should have said these things to-night, and not any sooner." " Why ? " The Coming of Vincent Leigh 17 " Because if you had spoken sooner, I believe I should have agreed. To-night I can't." " But why to-night ? " He slipped his hand from her arm, and a touch of sharpness invaded his tone. " Is it on account of that man ? What earthly right has he to interfere ? " " It is not a question of interference," she answered quietly. "Vincent, I have a good deal to say about all this. I have wished often I could speak to you more freely of my difficulties that are also your own. And to-night something in me has been unlocked. To-night I can speak; and I believe it is good that you should hear. For I can't have you own yourself beaten at the start, my son. The only chance for those cursed with a shyness like ours is to fight it ruthlessly and fight it young. Otherwise we fatally lose touch with life. Our rather grey and unheroic tragedy is not even remotely understood by the many. But mercifully we can sometimes help each other when we seem powerless to help ourselves." The even quiet of her voice was more impressive than any show of emotion. Vincent stood before her amazed, interested and deeply moved. The barriers were down, indeed ! Then he, too, found his tongue. " But, Mother tell me, honestly, isn't it simply a case of beating the air ? Didn't you fight it ruthlessly and fight it young ? " "It is just about those early struggles and mistakes that I must tell you, Vincent. Come in, dear. It's late; but we must take our opportunities when we can." So they passed out of the night and its vastness into the closer intimacy of the softly lit room. There sitting in her accustomed chair, with the boy on a stool beside her knee she told him of a certain summer endless years ago ; of a gauche, lanky girl of thirteen and a certain Sandhurst cadet who was often at her father's house with a handsome boy-friend three years his junior. (" Sir Theo, whom you heard us talk of," she explained.) There was also her own elder sister; B 1 8 Desmond's Daughter and throughout that summer those four had enjoyed the happy casual intimacy of youth. But with the autumn came changes. Young Desmond joined his friend at Sandhurst and the Donaldsons moved elsewhere. " After that," the low, even voice went on, " I did not see the two boys again for nine years, not boys any more, by that time, but Frontier Cavalry officers, home on their first long leave. We met at old General Desmond's, the four of us, and picked up the threads of our old friendship. Then . . . they went back to their regiment and " she paused for a perceptible moment, but Vincent made no move " soon after, there came the one chance that might just have saved me from myself, as I want you to be saved, before it is too late." At that, Vincent looked up quickly. " Are you quite sure," he asked, with his whimsical lift of one eyebrow, " that it wasn't too late an hour after I was born ? " "I am very sure," she answered steadily. " Hope you're right," said he in a tone implying ' I fear you're wrong.' " But what was your chance, Mother?" "India." "India!" The suppressed eagerness in his tone showed her that she had touched a hidden spring. " Have you ever thought of it, Vincent, on your own account ? " " Well, naturally . . . it's occurred to me." He had himself in hand now. " I've read and thought a good deal about India her philosophy and religions. Just the fringe of a huge subject. But Indian soldiering it's a far cry, isn't it? Besides there is you I " " No, my dear. In this matter there is only you ! Colonel Wyndham strongly advocates Indian service for you ; and he would not speak so decisively at random. He wants a talk with you about it all. He is coming to lunch, and hopes you will go out to Boscastle with him for the afternoon." The Coming of Vincent Leigh 19 Vincent frowned. " Plucky man ! I'm afraid he'll find me poor company. I'll hear what he has to say, Mother. But I must reserve my own judgment. Naturally the notion of India does make a difference ; a new country, new people, a new language. Some- thing big to tackle outside musketry and drill. And it's not as if I really thought of sticking to the Service." He sat quiet a moment, surveying a future dia- metrically opposed to the one he had mentally accepted a few hours earlier. Then he turned to her with eagerness unfeigned. " But your chance, Mother. Why did you throw it away ? " Her smile had its odd unwilling quality, as if smiling were something of an effort ; and perhaps it was. " Why does one ever do foolish things ? I wonder ! And perhaps it was not so foolish after all, since it gave me you. My chance came in the shape of my mother's sister, wife of a Staff Corps colonel : a lively loveable creature, with no child of her own. She seemed to see the way I was drifting more clearly than my own mother did ; and she begged the loan of me for three years. In that time she undertook to cure me of my shyness and provide me with a husband ! A rather alarming programme ! But I believe she would have carried it through ; and there was wisdom in the idea. But I was so miserable just then that I had not the wit to see it. And I wanted no husband of her providing. But I am wearying you with all this, my boy." " No no. Go on." His low tone was urgent. " You refused ? " " Yes. I was young. I thought there would be plenty o_ other chances. But none such ever came my way again. Within a year my sister married and my mother died. My father, quite heart-broken, re- tired to a small house he had bought on the edge of Dartmoor and I went with him. For seven years he was almost my only companion. Strangers irked him, and I had always been slow to make friends. Yet I 2O Desmond's Daughter was not unhappy then. I had books and music and the moor. I began to fall in love with solitude. Brick by brick, through those uneventful years, I was build- ing up unseen walls that nothing could altogether break down. I only began to realize this when your father came into my life. He was stationed at Plymouth. I was staying there with a cousin, who insisted on occasional visits and threatened me with premature crystallization, all with the best intentions Well, there your father found me and claimed me. For a time I resisted. In my own heart no flame leaped up. But it is difficult to talk of such things. Your father was urgent ; and at last, in response, there came a very real warmth and glow ; a blessed sense that I was necessary to some one else's happiness. No man can quite understand what that means to a woman, Vincent. Yet still I was afraid for him. Too late the truth came home to me that those peaceful years of semi-isolation had been my undoing. I said so to your father. But he believed he could change all that. I knew he could not ; though, indeed, I made a fight for it. I did my wretched best. As for him no man ever tried harder to achieve the impossible. But his strong impetuous nature could not even understand the root of my difficulty. His failure to save me from myself was the hidden tragedy of our married life : and in the end he left the Army on my account, before his time was up." She broke off there and they fell silent. The boy deeply impressed by her revelation, and acutely aware of the effort it must have cost could only put his free hand over hers and grip it hard; and she, stooping, kissed his head. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve clear strokes, and with a start she rose, drawing him up to his feet. " Midnight ! " she sighed, and stood a mo- ment regarding him. Then : " For your own sake, and mine, Vincent," she said at last, " take hold of life with both hands. Get to grips with it, while there is The Coming of Vincent Leigh 21 still time. Too often, I know, I have hindered you where I should have helped. And to-night has been my poor attempt at reparation." " Mother ! " Vincent's low cry came from the depths, that had been so strangely, so profoundly stirred. It was all he could say : but putting his arms round her, he held her close and long. 22 CHAPTER IV. " The true test of manhood is not ' I think, therefore I am,' but ' I act, therefore I am."' WESTMACOTT. IN the bows of an old fishing tub, off Boscastle, Colonel Wyndham and Vincent Leigh lounged smoking and talking very much at their ease. Near the stern sat the owner of the tub red-brown as a weathered brick leisurely dipping his oars into a silken sea that took on iridescent changes of light and colour and was nowhere crested with foam. There, cradled in the heart of peace, their talk was of war, of India's in- hospitable Borderland, of the recurring clash between races and religions, between classes and individuals, that is at once the source of all human tragedy and of all human progress. The walk out to Boscastle had not seemed promising. There had been gaps of silence difficult to break. In the first place, half a lifetime lay between them, and, furthermore, each was hampered by a sense of hidden knowledge underlying their surface strangeness. But when, at length, their tongues were loosed, Vincent had found his unreasoning antagonism steadily under- mined. Thoughtful beyond his years, he could not but appreciate the older man's breadth and mellowness, the large understanding of middle age, the evidences of genuine thought and wide reading, which he had deemed incompatible with a life of soldiering. Some hint of this, cautiously worded, Vincent let fall while their nutshell floated on and out, a mere speck between the dappled blue above and the shimmer- The Coming of Vincent Leigh 23 ing blue beneath ; and Colonel Wyndham smiled, not as one who condoned a childish impertinence, but as one who remembered and understood. " I felt much the same when I first went to Sand- hurst," he said. " It was love of a friend, not love of the Army, that made a soldier of me. Radically I was no better suited to the life than you are ; which is my only excuse for boring you with talk of myself " Vincent muttered a half-articulate disclaimer; and the older man went on : " Well, out there I learnt, among other things, that it takes almost as many sorts of men to make an army as to make a world. I learnt, as you will, that the officers of a regiment do occasion- ally get a little way beyond red books and promotion, pipe-clay and parades. And, after all, my dear boy, you would find the grind of routine, the dominion of trifles and petty jealousies, in every profession under the sun. But there is always even in the Army the deeper significance, the larger view ; and in your case, it might just save you " "That is how my mother feels about it," the boy admitted under his breath. " She is amazingly right and wise. She has a Spartan courage that you might do worse than emu- late. She tells me you've a strong leaning towards literary work, which is all to the good. Personally, I see no reason why you should not achieve something in that line and yet not grudge your country a few years of soldier service. You're not cut out for regi- mental life, I admit ; and you won't enjoy it at first. But it will probably grow on you. And at least it will give you a taste of action, co-operation, responsibility, and a few other trifles essential to good work of any kind. When all's said, the military virtues are the bed-rock virtues. And if you have the sense to give soldiering a fair trial, you will find that it makes larger all-round demands on a man's life and character than it is supposed to do by those who know precious little about it. If you've the luck to come in for a taste of the real thing, so much the better for you ! " 24 Desmond's Daughter Vincent sat silent a moment, considering that last, then he looked squarely into the older man's eyes. " If I could cnly be sure " he hesitated. " I sup- pose you've done a good deal of fighting yourself ? " he asked. " A fair amount, here and there. Why ? " " Didn't something inside you always shrink, al- ways rebel at the hideousness the brutality ? " "Yes. Always." " And yet you uphold war ? " "Yes. As a last resort, I uphold war," Colonel Wyndham answered with his grave smile. " That sounds paradoxical ; but war is the great paradox, the greatest in human history. It spells horror ; but it also spells heroism, which is possibly what commends it to most healthy-minded men." " All the same in these enlightened days," Vincent said slowly, " the knock-down blow begins to seem rather an antiquated and elemental form of argument for reasoning beings." Colonel Wyndham's smile deepened. " Quite so. I said ' as a last resort ' ; and happily most of us are still unreasoning beings over those essential things about which men and nations fight. As for the elemental, a dash of that's the very tonic we're needing these days. Strikes one very forcibly after an absence of nearly five years. The trouble with your modern over-educated man is his tendency to forget that all his reading and talking and thinking is of precious little value unless it stimulates to finer action." " And ' peace on earth ' is only a visionary's dream ? " " Permanent peace certainly. A world without conflict is a contradiction in terms. It is merely a question of which form you choose to uphold. Actual war seems the more horrible, because it con- centrates into a given space and time tragedies that are going on everywhere and always, unrealised, ex- cept by the sufferers or those who work in great cities. The Coming of Vincent Leigh 25 Call it which you like, a terrible medicine or an inter- mittent eruption of evil ; it is still, with all its horror and wastefulness, the Great Flail that threshes the wheat from the chaff. So, in the long-run, it makes for the ethical advance of the race. You probably don't agree ? And of course I speak as an old fogey nearly forty years ahead of you in age, which I sup- pose means forty years behind you in other respects ! " Vincent laughed. " 7 don't see it that way, sir." " Glad to hear it. But I didn't bring you out and box you up in a boat in order to thrust my antiquated views of the universe down your throat ! " As the sun dipped westward, in unclouded glory, they made their way to the landlocked haven of Bos- castle Harbour ; dined early at the hotel and strolled home under the rising moon, by a footpath well known to Vincent, whose antagonism was by this time clean gone. Darkness, silvered by moonlight, was not without its influence on both. Their talk dipped again into deeper waters. They discovered a mutual inclination for the philosophic view of life, and fell to battering the age-old problems of whence and whither, of personality, fate, and free-will. Wynd- ham's reading, though wide, had been quite unsystem- atic. The Anglo-Indian cannot accumulate books. Vincent had dug deep in certain regions and had left others untouched. Instinctively he had turned for companionship and sustenance to the pessimists, the Cynics and Stoics, whose principles encouraged con- tempt for consolations that he had grown to believe would never be his. But the man, having run his race in defiance of handicaps, stood upon the higher ground of affir- mation affirmation of choice, will, freedom, and all that makes for the impulse of valiant striving, as against tame acceptance of the inevitable. It was a favourite theme; more than that, it was the backbone of Wyndham's religious and philosophic faith, this belief in the deep reality of human choice and endeavour, that have, between them, made the 26 Desmond's Daughter world what it is, and have evolved the very philo- sophies that deny their existence. A man's convictions are, as a rule, the last things he will talk about ; but the mood and the hour were congenial, and Wyndham felt strongly drawn towards the boy who stood on the threshold of life hampered by a withering conviction that the dice were loaded, the end fore-ordained. Vincent Leigh listened, at first, with the hyper- critical deference of youth for the dictums of middle age, and with a spice of the pessimist's instinctive distrust of all fair-sounding arguments; but, as the mellow, masculine voice went on, there came a change in the colour of his mood. To-night these things, quietly spoken, had upon him almost the effect of a trumpet call to battle ; and as his shy, reluctant spirit stirred in response, he found himself impelled to such frank confession of the fact as pride would permit and his halting tongue could achieve. The effort of screwing up his courage took time; but once the first stumbling sentences were out, the ordeal was as nothing to the unexpected sense of relief. Never before had he talked openly of the enemy; and the mere doing so robbed him of half his terror. It was a relief to discover how little need be said ; how swiftly and completely this comparative stranger understood. To Vincent it seemed that they reached the slate porch far too soon. " Won't you come in, sir ? " he asked, and there was that in his tone that warmed the older man's heart. " I think not, thanks," he said kindly. " We might disturb your mother, and you'd really be better in bed." He held out his hand. " We're not strangers any more, and that's all to the good. I feel years younger since yesterday." The boy had no answer ready. He could only grasp the proffered hand. " And is it going to be the Army after all that ? " The Coming of Vincent Leigh 27 Wyndham asked, " Or have you still a lot more thinking to do? " " N-no. I believe I've done too much of that al- ready. It's paralyzing. It makes things get on one's nerves. Perhaps I'm a coward: but it seems to me that, beyond a certain point, life simply doesn't bear thinking about " " Try living it for a change. You'll find it a whole- somer, pleasanter prescription for yourself and others." 28 CHAPTER V. " I must keep a steady helm By the star I cannot see." HERBERT TRENCH. HE was up and out, at an early hour, tramping hat- less down the path that dips steeply to Bossiney Cove. The world seemed new-created on this radiant morn- ing, and the boy breasting its spacious emptiness, with a towel over his shoulder knew that to-day there was no more need for thinking. The hour was con- ducive rather to high hope and high resolve, to the forward looking visions of youth that have a bravery and a pathos peculiarly their own. Down there in the Cove, it was not yet morning. The narrow inlet of water lay still and limpid, among rugged masses of rock, like an aquamarine set in ebony. Yet no aquamarine ever gleamed with quite that in- tensity of colour as of emeralds and turquoises melted into one. On a slab, well placed for diving, Vincent stripped, shivering, yet rejoicing in the sting of cold. Above him the great cliff struck upward, like a menace. Be- neath him rocks and sand, lightly swaying weeds and bright fish darting among them, like arrows of light, showed clear as in a mirror. And into the midst of them he dived. It was far too early for bathing, though March and April had borrowed the robes of June. But he wel- The Coming of Vincent Leigh 29 corned the icy shock of the water as he had welcomed the preliminary shiver. Both were in tune with the spring and with his own Spartan mood. He had chosen the stony path of courage ; and this was his baptism. It could only be a plunge and a few vigorous side- strokes out of the Cove and back. But while it lasted body and spirit revelled in an ecstatic sense of unity with sea and sky and the glory of the morning. In the crystalline water every movement of his limbs was revealed. But for the soft yet strong resistance of the Atlantic it was as if he swam through air, free as the gulls that sailed above his head. All too soon he was back on the rock, rubbing his body till it tingled again. Then flinging on his clothes, he took the upward path at a steady trot and emerged into full sunlight on the high level of the down. There he stood awhile looking seaward, his heart filled with a confused, irresistible impulse of worship, an instinc- tive reaching out to that ' Brilliance at the core of brilliance ' which is the quickening spirit of prayer. More than that he could not achieve : but it served to strengthen his new resolve and to send him rejoicing on his way. He covered the remaining distance at a brisk trot, and entered the dining-room, with glowing face and damp dishevelled hair, just as his mother had blown out the spirit-lamp under her urn. At sight of him her grey eyes lightened, and he kissed her twice without a word. " Boy, it's much too ear!)' for bathing," she rebuked him, smiling. " But you look transfigured ! " " I feel transfigured. Something like Moses must have felt when he came down from the mountain." He helped himself in speaking, ate a few mouthfuls and emptied his cup, while she filled her own and awaited further revelation. Very soon it came. " Mother my mind is made up once for all. No more talk of turning my back on Sandhurst. I must 30 Desmond's Daughter just go ahead ; and if I prove an utter failure, at least I shall feel I have done my best." It was no less than she had expected : but her glow of pride was chilled by a keen realisation of the price she must pay for his victory. " That's a brave resolve, Vincent," she said quietly, and added under her breath : " God bless you." "I think it ought to be 'God bless Colonel Wynd- ham ! '" he retorted, instinctively sheering away from the danger zone of emotion. " He's a genuine brick ; the biggest in creation." " Yes. I am very grateful to Colonel Wyndham," she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. " I knew he would help you to see things." Then, further speech being difficult, she unob- trusively changed the subject. It was the turning-point. If secret qualms still visited the boy's heart, he never spoke of them either to his mother or to Wyndham, who, by the end of the vacation, had become tacitly accepted as a third member of the household. His health, it seemed, needed a deal of recruiting, or perhaps he had simply forgotten that it needed recruit- ing at all. They are hard years, for a man not prema- turely aged, those first years of being inexorably set aside to make room for the onward-surging mass of younger men, hungry for their own share of achieve- ment, for their own brief ' place in the sun ' ; and to Paul Wyndham it seemed a gift from God, this chance discovery of an old friend and a new interest ; an interest peculiarly welcome to one who would have given the world for a son of his own. Together they tramped or rode over the moorland and the downs, that incongruous pair the man who had run his race, the boy with all his triumphs and pitfalls before him. Wyndham undertook to coach him in the language, to make arrangements for his outfit, and to ensure for him the hard, priceless privi- lege of Frontier service after his preliminary spell in a British regiment. Perhaps only a woman left deso- The Coming of Vincent Leigh 31 late, after years of marriage, knows quite what it means to have a man step back into her life; to feel the guiding, protecting hand again upon the helm. And it was all done so simply and unobtrusively, with what his brother officers used to call 'the Wyndham touch,' that could not but go straight to the heart of Margaret Leigh and her son. Jenny alone disapproved, and that openly, of these quite irregular 'goings on.' That a mere stranger should be allowed to pass in and out as if the house were his own, and to make hay, unimpugned, with the sacred weekly books she wouldn't have believed it, not if Isaiah himself had come down, in wings, to prophesy the astounding fact ! One secret consola- tion upheld her. When ' holidays ' were over, and Mr Vincent back at ' school,' that Colonel - man surely couldn't ' have the face ' to stay on ; and strong in that hope she continued to endure. In May, Vincent returned to Sandhurst and dis- illusion. Though he went back with courage renewed and the edge of intolerance blunted, he found himself no nearer to the spirit of the college than before. One only ray of genuine fellowship lightened that last term. Through Wyndham he achieved fuller knowledge of Wyndham's godson, Paul Desmond a handsome, strapping boy of nineteen, whom he had formerly ad- mired, afar off, and dismissed as " the regular Army type." Young Desmond's enthusiasm for the Border proved infectious as it was tonic ; and a mutual faith in Wyndham linked the boys closer still. Meanwhile, away at Tintagel, the egregious ' Colonel- man ' had the ' face ' to stay on ; and though he came less often to Greystones, his visits were still too fre- quent to suit Jenny Baxter's jealousy or her bristling sense of propriety. To this last, neither Margaret Leigh nor Wyndham gave a thought ; and no worldly eyes were on them to make them unduly conscious of the fact that they were more and more often together as the summer wore on. Once Wyndham went to stay with a friend near 32 Desmond's Daughter Sandhurst, and once again, for a fortnight, to Mavins, the Merediths' place in Surrey, where more young Desmonds two daughters and three sons spent part of the year with their mother's brother, Sir Howard Meredith, G.C.B. ; and on both occasions he was surprised at the alacrity with which he returned to his lonely room at the King's Arms Hotel. It was about this time that he deliberately asked himself one evening : " Why not ? " And heard, not without a pang, the whisper of his heart : " Im- possible ! " For there, imperishably enshrined, was the radiant image of a girl who had never grown up Honor Meredith, as he had first seen her in the old days at Kohat. By some mysterious process, such as only a lover could achieve, he had succeeded in cherishing his sublimated passion for that girl, while honestly ac- cepting the friendship of Honor Desmond, the still radiant woman, now queening it over Rawal Pindi and Theo's household. But there remained, none the less, his undeniable gravitation toward this lonely woman, whose real need of him he now began to divine, for all his own modesty and her innate reserve. No question now of youth's imperative desire to possess; but he could, and in- creasingly did, feel for her the large, protective tender- ness of manhood at its best. Was that, he wondered in his ignorance, enough to offer a woman as proud as she was lonely? And was he genuinely anxious to offer it ? On the whole, he found her friendship so dear and pleasant a possession, that he felt in no hurry for doubtful developments. " Afterwards per- haps," he said in his heart ; and turned his steps in the usual direction. As for Margaret Leigh absorbed in her son, she had accepted Paul Wyndham's re-entrance into her life with a glow of quiet satisfaction ; a glow that, week by week, had deepened and intensified till it needed but a word, a breath, to set it aflame. She had so confidently believed herself too old for ' that sort of The Coming of Vincent Leigh 33 thing.' And now, of a sudden, she found herself wondering It was his return, after the second absence, that had flashed the truth upon her. He had come back full of Desmond's children, especially of Thea, a lovely child, just turned seventeen, who was to join her parents at Pindi in a year's time. And Margaret Leigh had listened to it all with a queer dizzying emotion that had no concern at all with Sir Theo's boys and girls. By reason of this her manner had been more repressed than usual ; so that Wyndham had reproached himself for boring her, and had gone home puzzled and a little dismayed. From that day the nature of their friendship suffered a perceptible change. They talked less readily of themselves. There were times when they found it hard to talk at all. There was a troubled fascination when their eyes met and nothing was said. But before they realised it, summer was more than half over ; and here was Vincent back again to divert their thoughts into a dozen other channels. For now the shadow of parting obliterated every other thought from the mother's heart. Vain to tell herself that this was the common lot of woman; that every day, somewhere, some mother was enduring the pang toward which the whole creation moves. The joy and pain that comes to each one of us is never quite like anything that has come to others before, in our own estimation at least. They were grateful, all three of them, for the tem- porary obsession of clothes. There seemed no end to the number of coats and boots a 2nd Lieutenant of Her Majesty's Army was required to possess ; to say nothing of caps and a helmet, a revolver and a sword. The two men spent a strenuous week in London, and soon the cottage at Tintagel began to be filled with the fruits of their labours ; with bags and trunks and cases that flauntingly announced themselves the property of 2nd Lieutenant V. A. Leigh. And beneath c 34 Desmond's Daughter his name stood that of his father's British regiment, the battalion serving in India. To the two women it seemed as if they could hardly stir a foot without stumbling over one or other of these superfluous reminders. Jenny, good soul, christened most of them with her tears ; but the tears of Margaret Leigh fell only on her pillow, and that not often. Her stoicism and courage were more than skin deep ; and she had need of both to carry her through the ordeal of the last weeks, the last days, the last day, when hours and even minutes were like fine gold. On the morning of that day Vincent rose at dawn, slipped out of the house, and betook himself to the glen of the great wateiiall known as St Nectan's Kieve. Here, according to legend, St Nectan dwelt in his hermitage, beside the chapel with the silver bell ; and here, it is said, came Arthur's Knights to kneel upon the slab beside the waterfall, and receive the old man's blessing before adventuring upon the quests of chivalry or vision that were the order of their day. Now, after the lapse of centuries, there kneeled upon the same stone yet another knight, with none of their outer trappings and little of their inner exaltation : a knight self-dedicated to a quest of more than doubtful issue. To-day that doubt hung like a fog about his heart, contracted already with the pain of parting and the dread of strange people in crowds that had been his most hampering weakness from a boy. Bareheaded, he knelt in the dew-drenched twilight of early morning with the brave music of falling water in his ears, and in his soul the braver music of renewed resolve. Poet as he was by temperament, and sensi- tized to receive life's finer impressions, the hour had its message for him in response to his dumb appeal. The chill pressure of the stone against his knees coun- selled hardness; and, as he knelt on, some measure of the strength that upheld those far-off worshippers seemed to flow into his veins. Fantasy or no, the effect upon himself was undeniable : and now as light increased and the stillness within him deepened, that The Coming of Vincent Leigh 35 Greater Stillness which is above and beneath and around all things did, in some wordless, exquisite fashion, apco.li romfnrt tn his heart. That night he sat alone with his mother on the low stool beside her, his arm resting on her knee ; and they forced themselves to speak in some detail of the days to come, a subject tacitly avoided during those last weeks. And they laid unwonted stress on trivial things, because the things that could not be spoken clamoured within. Early next morning he would start for Southampton with Colonel Wyndham. Though she had the strength to bid him go, she lacked the strength to stand alone upon the edge of England and watch the inexorable steamer dwindle to a speck between sea and sky. Vincent was thankful for this, but he did not say so. He dilated instead on all that he owed to the man who, for months, had made their life his own. " Seems queer to think how hotly I resented him that first evening ; and now see what a godsend he's been to me. He'll go on being a godsend to you, won't he, when I'm gone?" " I rather suspect," she said, evading the direct question, "that it's been his chief role in life. I am so very glad that you two should have met and become friends in spite of all the years between." " Yes. It's been a stunning bit of luck for me." Silence again ; and her next remark, when it came, gave no hint of the tears that ached in her throat. "You have your key-ring, dear? I left it on your tray." " Yes. It's in my pocket all safe." Another silence, longer than the last, and this time it was Vincent who spoke. " I think Jenny was pleased with my present, though she could hardly speak, poor old thing. It's a comfort to feel you've such a faithful watch-dog " He tried to clear his throat. The attempt proved a failure. So he gave it up and bowed his head upon her hand that lay on his arm. 36 Desmond's Daughter Outside the wind blew gustily and set a loquacious tassel tap -tapping against a pane. Margaret Leicrh. looking down at her son's bo-wed hco.