Chapter II: Part 2

Pelham spent the next two days comforting and uplifting General Brandon, and felt himself comforted and uplifted by association with such a man. He said earnestly, at parting with the General: “Believe me, your daughter has the best of friends as well as husbands in Darrell, but she shall never want a friend as long as I live. India is a treacherous place to men who are out in the hot sun, and life is held there by a very uncertain tenure. So your daughter may survive us both; but as long as either one of us is alive, she shall be as well protected as if she were in your house.”

Two days after the wedding Pelham saw Elizabeth on the deck of the steamer which was to carry them to Havre. Her first words were, “How is my father?” and despite the deep glow of happiness which radiated from her soul through her eyes, she could not speak of him without tears. Nor did she at any time show any forgetfulness of him. She wrote him every day, and posted her letters at every stopping–place on that long journey to India.

Travelling makes people as well acquainted as marriage does, and by the time Captain and Mrs. Darrell and Pelham reached Marseilles, Pelham knew Elizabeth quite as well as Darrell did, and understood her far better. It was a delightful but saddening joy to Pelham when he found Elizabeth soon turning to him, rather than to Darrell, to answer her intelligent questions. In fact, Darrell himself, when she asked him, would say, “Pelham will tell you; he knows a lot more about those old classic beggars and Greek cads and ruffians than I do.” Elizabeth still found Darrell the most charming man in the world.

It was at Marseilles on a late afternoon in early March that Darrell said this to Elizabeth. The three were sitting at a table on the terrace of a café overlooking the old harbor, with its crumbling Vauban forts. The ships’ lights were twinkling against the dark blue of the water and the darker blue of the sky, while afar off they could see faintly the outline of the Château d’If, where Monte Cristo learned his language of the Abbé. Pelham had been telling Elizabeth the story of the city. The ancient Massilia, inhabited by a people whose talk was not, as the old Greek wrote, of seed–time or ploughing or harvest, but of

“Mast and helm and oar–bench,
And the stately ships wherein
They have all joy and pleasure
O’er the wet sea way to win.”

Elizabeth, with the keen delight of a mind newly awakened to books and travel, was capable of enjoying both. Her childhood and first girlhood had been spent in a secluded country house, where the books were few and old and of little value. The two or three years she had spent in Washington since her father’s return from Egypt, enriched only by his Egyptian bonds, had not been of a sort to develop her mind. They had chiefly been spent in dancing and flirting; but Elizabeth, with the Southern girl’s inevitable tendency both to dance and flirt, had that which often goes with it, a depth of intelligence and a serious understanding. It was a like seriousness of understanding in Pelham which attracted her so powerfully. Darrell, whom she still thought, and was to think for some time to come, the most charming man in the world, was never serious about anything except dogs and horses and Elizabeth. He took everything easily, especially life and death, and would have ridden up to a roaring battery or into any other of the many mouths of hell with a smile upon his lips. He did not quite understand why Elizabeth, in the midst of her bridal joy, often shed tears for her father, and although never showing the least impatience at it, or aught but the tenderest kindness, wondered why she should want anybody but him, as he wanted no one but her.

He was, like many men of his kind, perfectly modest, too high–minded if not too large–minded for jealousy, and thought it the most natural thing in the world that Elizabeth should turn to Pelham for sympathy and information, as Darrell himself had always done. At this moment he was very much interested in Pelham’s account of the ancient tunny fisheries, as they had just had among their _hors–d’œuvres_ dried tunny fish, as well as their bouillabaisse. Elizabeth knew something of the man of yesterday who had made bouillabaisse immortal, but Darrell was surprised to hear that Thackeray had ever written verse. Pelham, sitting next Elizabeth and, although habitually a silent man, doing most of the talking, began to wonder sadly how long it would be before Elizabeth became desperately bored by her lover husband. No such thought entered Elizabeth’s mind; she only deemed herself twice fortunate in having the companionship of such a friend as Pelham as well as the love of her hero husband Darrell.

Next morning they sailed through Suez for Bombay. Elizabeth proved a good sailor and spent most of her waking hours on deck. Darrell lay back in his steamer chair and smoked, being quite satisfied with the spectacle of his charming Elizabeth tripping up and down the deck and talking with Pelham. The other passengers were not quite certain at first whose wife she was.

As they sailed over the blue Mediterranean, it was Pelham who told Elizabeth when they would come in sight of Stromboli; and it was on his arm that she watched before daybreak a great, pallid moon sinking into the black world of waters on the west, while on the east the dun sky, across which fled great ragged masses of dark clouds, was lighted by the vast torches of Stromboli waving like a blazing head of Medusa. Meanwhile Darrell was sound asleep in his berth. It would have taken more than ten Strombolis to have gotten him up on deck at that hour. But a gun, a dog, or a fishing–rod would have kept him up all night and made him as alert and watchful as if his life depended upon the issue. It was Pelham who showed to Elizabeth the sickle–shaped port of Messina, and told her of the ancient coins of the city, which bore a sickle upon them. And together, as they sailed along the desolate shores of Crete, they followed the itinerary of Paul of Tarsus.

When the ship made its slow way through the Canal to Suez, Darrell was roused to study it from the aspect of a military man. But it was Pelham, who had more military science in his ugly head than Darrell had in his whole handsome young body, who watched with Elizabeth the red flamingoes rising from amid the tamarisk trees. Once out of the Canal, Darrell again resumed his life of smoking, sleeping, eating, and adoring Elizabeth; but Elizabeth, who was being educated by Pelham, listened with the eagerness of an intelligent child to Pelham’s stories of those historic lands whose bleak, black–scarred, and rocky shores border the Red Sea. He told her of those strange Mohammedan people who inhabit this country, where nature is as fierce as man, and where “Allah is God of the great deserts,” as Pierre Loti says,—those people in whom Islam is incarnate. Together Elizabeth and Pelham watched the passage around Bab–el–Mandeb, the “Gate of tears.”

At last, on a hot, bright morning, they landed at Bombay, the great busy, dirty city, and after a week’s travel by night and day they finished their journey at Embira, in one of the remotest depths of the Punjab. Elizabeth had travelled far and fast, since that January night when both Pelham and Darrell had searched for the little pearl heart, dropped from around her milk–white throat; but she had travelled farther and faster than she knew.

_Chapter Three_

Embira was like most second and third rate Indian stations, neither better or worse. There were a dirty native city, where plague and famine alternated; a river that was either a rushing torrent or as dry as a bone; and cantonments which had seen little change since the Mutiny. A battalion of Pelham and Darrell’s regiment was stationed there, with large detachments of artillery and cavalry.

The only remarkable thing about the station was that, although it was very far from being garrisoned by any part of a crack regiment, the social status of the officers and their wives appeared to be almost on a level with that of the household troops. The wife of the Colonel commanding was the niece of an Earl besides being the commanding officer of the C. O. There were a couple of titled women among the officers’ wives, and no less than two subalterns would inherit baronetcies. Neither Pelham nor Darrell stood any chance of inheriting his grandfather’s title, nor did there seem much more possibility of Darrell’s inheriting the problematical fortune which was the staple joke between Pelham and himself.

Darrell, who would have been classed as a detrimental in London, was of the sort to be adored by the young ladies of the post; and his appearance with a bride, and that with scarcely a day’s warning, was both a slight and a grievance to the ladies of Embira. And an American wife, too! It was the aim and object of the ladies to maintain the social tone of the regiment, of which they were enormously proud, and here was Darrell, the grandson of a peer, introducing a person among them whom it was taken for granted he had met in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains near Philadelphia, or who was perhaps a miner’s daughter in the vicinity of Boston.

It was in this critical and even hostile circle that Elizabeth made her first appearance, three days after her arrival at Embira. It was on the occasion of the regimental sports, which were rendered brilliant by the presence of a large party of visitors from England, including the noble Earl who was uncle to the C. O.’s wife, a commissioner who had brought his own new wife on purpose to eclipse the pretty wife of the deputy–commissioner, and a vice–regal aide–de–camp,—all together a brilliant party for a remote Indian station.

The afternoon was hot and bright, but the gardens which were reserved for tea and flirtations were still unparched and the white polo grounds adjoining were not as yet dust blinded. When Elizabeth, at five o’clock in the afternoon, appeared dressed for the occasion, on the veranda of their quarters, Darrell surveyed her with pride and pleasure, not unmixed with apprehension. She looked, it is true, exquisitely charming in her pale green muslin, her rose–crowned hat, her white parasol, and with her little, black, silver–buckled shoes, a model of daintiness to the eyes of the Englishmen. But Darrell also felt some anxiety; he suspected that she would be coldly received by the unkind women and patronized by the kind ones, and he feared that Elizabeth might be as crushed by both as an English girl might have been. Pelham, on the contrary, who understood Elizabeth far better than her husband did and felt even a deeper pride in her as his silent adoration for her had grown deep and strong, felt not the slightest fear. Elizabeth was in manner and bearing, as well as in beauty, far above the most patrician woman at the station. Every other woman except herself realized and recognized that there was some one above her in station, she was of necessity the social inferior of somebody. Not so with Elizabeth. As an American woman of good birth, she had never seen or heard of any one who was above her, and would have been perfectly at her ease with royalty itself. The admiring glances and compliments of Pelham and Darrell flattered Elizabeth and brought the wild–rose color to her creamy cheeks; and with the consciousness of looking her best, she entered the gardens with her husband walking on one side of her and Pelham on the other, and was duly presented to the Colonel’s lady.

There is perhaps nowhere in the world that the inability of Englishwomen to dress well and their total subjection to their dressmakers are so obvious as in India. There the woollen gowns which look well on an autumn day among the Scotch hills, and the tailor–made dresses which are suited for Regent Street on a dull morning, the elaborate silks and laces which are fit for London drawing–rooms and theatres, are worn with a serene unconsciousness of unfitness. On this hot afternoon the ladies of Embira had put on their best,—that is to say, their worst clothes as far as unsuitability went. Hats bristling with feathers, large white boas, rustling silks, and gorgeous parasols made the gardens bright, but made the wearers look half–baked. Among these came Elizabeth’s delicate green muslin and airy lightness of attire. The men, on looking at her, felt as if they had just had an iced drink. The ladies saw that she had accomplished something quite beyond them in the way of dress, which, as Darrell half feared, made the unkind determine to be more icy to her and the kind even more patronizing.

The Colonel’s lady, a vast person in purple silk and a collection of diamond ornaments which made her appear as if covered with a breastplate of jewels, was one of the latter kind. She greeted Elizabeth as if she were a fifteen–year–old schoolgirl who must needs be awed by all she saw around her. Elizabeth, who knew well the cosmopolitan society of Washington and was accustomed to see power and importance classed together, was in no way terrified; nor was she even astonished when the Earl, a shabby person who had a turbulent wife whom he was very glad to leave at home, asked to be introduced to Mrs. Darrell.

The Colonel’s wife, who had spent the whole time of her uncle’s visit trying to induce him to be introduced to people against his will, was staggered, but promptly agreed to his proposition. She whispered his name and rank in Elizabeth’s ear and advanced a step or two towards the Earl, but Elizabeth quite unconsciously stood perfectly still and had the Earl brought to her to be introduced, receiving him exactly as she would have done some of the numerous pleasant elderly gentlemen whom she had met in Washington. The Earl, who was not without humor, saw the look of amazement on the face of the Colonel’s lady at Elizabeth’s calm attitude and secretly enjoyed the situation. He was an easy–going person who had but one requirement on the face of the earth, and that was to be perpetually amused and entertained. And this one requirement of his soul was amply satisfied by the charming young American girl. She was not in the least like most of the American girls he had known and met in England, who were usually the daughters of retired tradesmen and rather poor imitations of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. The Earl, however, much to his chagrin was not allowed to have Elizabeth all to himself and was compelled to share her society with a couple of impudent subalterns, who in the pursuit of a pretty face and a dainty foot feared neither man nor devil.

This was only the beginning of an afternoon of triumph for Elizabeth, a triumph which she enjoyed without appreciating its true significance. She had the enormous advantage of being distinctly different from the women around her, and of having the perfect ease which comes from the feeling of perfect equality. She was perhaps the best–born woman of all those present, reckoning good birth to mean many generations of people at the top of the ladder. Ever since the first Brandon, a decayed gentleman, had set foot on American soil in the days of Charles I., the Brandons had been in the front rank, with none better than themselves. The Earl himself had a great–grandmother who began life as a milliner’s apprentice and thence progressed to the London stage. But Elizabeth’s great–grandmothers were all of the Brahmin caste in her own country. The ancestry of the titles in the regiment went back only as far as the early part of the eighteenth century, while Elizabeth’s ancestors had behind them already some hundreds of years as gentle people, before their advent into the new country. It was that perhaps which gave Elizabeth the patrician nose and her delicate hands and feet, and it certainly gave her that perfect composure of manner which, unlike Lady Clara Vere de Vere’s icy stateliness, could not be successfully imitated by any parvenu who ever walked the earth.

Darrell was secretly delighted at the admiration which Elizabeth excited. He had not felt so great a sensation of triumph since he had introduced into the regimental mess a certain Irish setter with a pedigree which could be proved back to the time of Queen Elizabeth. Pelham, who would have been a favorite among the ladies had he allowed it, saw everything out of the tail of his eye and was rather sorry when he saw the drift of men towards Elizabeth. When the trio returned to Darrell’s quarters through the soft Indian twilight, Darrell was openly elated and Elizabeth secretly so, but Pelham felt that Elizabeth’s course lay in dangerous waters.

And Pelham was right. Englishwomen have their charms and their virtues, both of which are great and admirable, but they have no sense of comradeship. Elizabeth was to them an alien, but instead of appealing to their sympathies, they saw her without effort easily become the acknowledged belle of the regiment. There was little in common beyond the mere formal exchange of courtesies between herself and even those women and girls at the station who wished to be kind to her. She had no accomplishments in the usual sense. She neither played, nor sang, nor drew, nor painted, either on china, fans, screens, or picture frames, nor could she do anything in water colors. She had no taste for games, and would not take the trouble even to play tennis. She disliked cards and would not play bridge, nor was she in any sense the athletic woman and had no tales of prowess to tell of tremendous mountain walks or long excursions on horseback. She rode well in a graceful, untaught manner which improved distinctly under Darrell’s masterly coaching, but she did not give up her days to it as did some of the girls with statuesque figures who looked their best on horseback.

The ladies wondered how Mrs. Darrell disposed of her time. If they could have taken a look into Elizabeth’s own sitting room, they would have seen a big sewing–table; and the beautiful and dainty gowns which from time to time Mrs. Darrell appeared in, and the immense variety of hats which caused the other women to think that she was squandering her husband’s substance, came forth from that sewing room. Instead of drawing trashy pictures and embroidering mats and picture frames, Elizabeth with an artist’s eye designed and made beautiful little costumes which looked as if they came from Regent Street or the Rue de la Paix. Her housekeeping, too, was well attended to, and the little dinners which she occasionally gave were remarkably good. Her mind had not been much cultivated, but under Pelham’s direction she learned with avidity—much to the amusement of Darrell, who protested against a learned wife and predicted that Elizabeth would soon be writing a novel or doing some other unholy thing likely to result from women who meddled with books.

Meanwhile Elizabeth’s belle–ship in the regiment became firmly established. Her charming appearance and her graceful and affable manners with men, the subtle way she had of making every man believe that he was her favorite, went farther with the officers of the 178th Foot than the sketching, painting, playing, and singing of the other women. Her manners had that fascinating combination known only to American women, and possibly the secret of their ascendency over men, of something between an appeal and a command; it was like the rule of a favorite and delightful child in a household. It may be imagined that this did not enhance Elizabeth’s popularity with her own sex.

Elizabeth wondered and was piqued at the coldness of the women towards her. She made faint, ineffectual attempts at intimacy with the Colonel’s daughters and the wives of various subalterns, but it was of no avail. She was the daughter of the regiment as far as the officers were concerned, but by no means a sister of the regiment to the ladies. Pelham was surprised that the tongue of scandal passed her by, but with innocence on Elizabeth’s part, and a couple of able–bodied men like Pelham and Darrell to stand by her, the gossips found it safe to let Mrs. Darrell alone.

Elizabeth was for a time quite happy in her new life, her only sorrow being the separation from her father. She wrote him passionate letters imploring him to come to see her; but it costs money to get from Washington to Embira in the Punjaub, and General Brandon was chronically hard up. And so her life moved on, almost as closely linked with Pelham’s as with Darrell’s, for two years. It was, however, moving in a direction which Elizabeth only dimly foresaw and understood. By Pelham’s tact and judgment rather than her own there never was a breath of scandal concerning their deep and obvious intimacy. Pelham was a man to be feared as well as respected, and such people are tolerably safe from criticism.

Every day of these two years found Pelham more and more deeply and hopelessly in love with Elizabeth, with the knightly love which would guard her not only against the whole world but against himself and herself; for in those two years Elizabeth’s mind, ripening and developing, perceived that she had married a man with every grace and virtue joined to a tiresome and amiable commonplaceness. It frightened her sometimes when she discovered how bored she grew by her husband’s conversation, and she was still more frightened at the prospect which sometimes occurred to her of being separated from Pelham, on whom she had learned to depend as other women depend upon a brother or a father or even a husband. But she was not unhappy, although she gradually found her way out of the lover’s paradise into which she had embarked with Darrell.

For Darrell himself she never lost the slightest respect. He was as truthful and honorable and truly unselfish as Pelham himself was. Nevertheless, at the end of two years came the beginning of a crisis. A beautiful boy was born to Elizabeth, a child of fairness and of delightful temper. “The jolliest little chap I ever saw,” swore Darrell at the club, when the baby was less than a week old.

Elizabeth was a devoted mother, but Darrell was the most passionately fond father imaginable. The child merely as a pet was worth to him more than all the dogs and horses in existence, including the Irish setter. In him there was a deep well–spring of fatherhood. He had thought himself perfectly happy before the boy was born, but afterwards he felt he had never known what true happiness was until then; and when the child was a year old Darrell, proudly calling him “my soldier,” used to put his own cap on the baby’s pretty head and his sword in its little hand, and throw his military cloak around it and sit and gaze in rapture at the child as it laughed and crowed, delighted with its trappings.

At the end of a year, like a judgment from heaven, the child died, after a day’s illness. In general it is the father who consoles the heart–broken mother, but in this case it was Elizabeth who kept Darrell sane in the midst of his terrible grief, who sat by him day and night, who checked by her own tears his strange cries of grief, and who upheld him when he passed through the deep waters. She herself was stricken in heart as only mothers can be, and she had a presentiment that she would never again have a child.

Pelham, who would cheerfully have borne all of Elizabeth’s sorrow at the boy’s death, was amazed and even indignant that Darrell should not have sustained her in this dreadful hour. Silently and with a sleepless vigilance and constancy Pelham supported and comforted Elizabeth.

_Chapter Four_

There was no one else to sustain Elizabeth. Darrell needed comforting even more than herself. She had formed no intimacies with any of the ladies of the station. There were among them many kind and tender–hearted women, but a barrier had grown up between them and the stranger from America.

Gradually the truth was beginning to dawn upon Elizabeth, that she depended more upon Pelham than upon Darrell; that is to say, she had married the wrong man, and the full revelation of this terrible truth came to her within two months of the time that she was left childless. It was in the heat of summer, and Elizabeth was one of those two or three of the officers’ wives, who braved the terrors of the hot season away from the hills in order to be with their husbands.

One stifling August evening, about ten o’clock, as Elizabeth was walking in the small grounds around their bungalow, the moon shining upon the tops of the great cypress trees which skirted the grounds, Pelham came down the steps of the veranda at the back of the house and joined her. The night was hot, as only Indian nights can be, but Elizabeth in her filmy white gown looked cool. She was as graceful and charming as ever, for the touch of sorrow, the knowledge of disappointment, and the necessity of keeping ceaseless watch and ward upon her own heart had added a deeper interest to her beauty while robbing her of some of her girlish fairness. Pelham, who was in mufti, wore a suit of white linen, and the two white figures could be seen for half a mile. They had not met since morning, a long time for them to be apart, because Pelham, who had lived with Darrell after the manner of a brother before his marriage, had continued it ever since. As he came up, holding his straw hat in his hand, Elizabeth said to him:—

“Where have you been all day? We waited dinner for you until at last we could wait no longer, as I wanted my poor Jack to go to the club. It doesn’t do for him to stay in this house too much.”

“I have been hard at work all day,” replied Pelham, in a tired voice. “I got a letter at noon to–day, offering me a staff appointment. It would be a very good thing, a great thing, and I have been studying it over and looking things up concerning it all the afternoon and evening. It would take me away from the regiment for a good many years, but still—“

Elizabeth’s face was quite plain to him in the white moonlight. She was already pale from the heat and from her months of suffering, but he saw a total change of expression, a look of terror, come into her eyes. It was unmistakable. Pelham himself had long known how things were with him, and it was chiefly from despair that he had seriously considered that day tearing himself from Elizabeth. He thought she would miss him as a woman misses a friend and brother, but something in her sad and lovely eyes suddenly revealed to him that it was not as a friend and brother she would miss him, but as the being dearest to her on earth; and Pelham, being then tempted of the devil, asked in a low voice:—

“Elizabeth, would it be painful to you if we parted?”

Elizabeth, staggered at the quick blow which had been dealt her, made full revelation of all she felt; she caught him by the arm and whispered: “And could you leave me? What would become of me? I think it would half kill me. First my child was taken, and now you—“

She paused, recalled to herself by the sound of her own words. She dropped Pelham’s arm as quickly as she had taken it and withdrew from him a step. They looked away from each other, alarmed and ashamed that they had drawn so near the brink of the gulf. But the winged word had been spoken; it was now gone, never to be recalled. Neither one of them could move or speak for a time. Pelham was a strong man and Elizabeth was a strong woman, and they loved not as weaklings love; their hearts were not to be conquered in an instant. They remained thus for what seemed to them an interminable time. It was really not five minutes. Then Pelham said quietly:—

“I shall remain with the regiment.”

And Elizabeth, without in the least knowing what she was saying, replied, “Thank God!”

Then, involuntarily and unable to bear longer the stress of the situation, they both turned back to the house. The scene had lasted all told five minutes; it was in full sight of many eyes if any had cared to look; but for both of them it had changed the face of creation itself. It had not, however, changed their natures, which were singularly delicate and high–minded; nor had it involved them in any dishonor.

As they entered the bungalow together, they met Darrell, who had noticed them walking through the shrubbery. Elizabeth went up to him, and placing her hand on his shoulder, a familiarity she had never used before in the presence of Pelham or any other human being, said: “I am so glad you have come back; I was beginning to feel so lonely without you. After this you must stay with me more than you have done, because I am never really happy away from you.”

This was one of the most stupendous lies ever uttered by a woman’s lips; but the recording angel had no occasion to shed a tear over it, as he inscribed it on the records of high heaven. A look of pleasure came into Darrell’s honest, sombre eyes. It was not often that love like this survived the honeymoon, and Elizabeth must indeed be deeply in love with him, if she used such language before Pelham. He put his arm around her slender waist, and spoke to Pelham instead of her.

“You miserable dog,” he said, “why don’t you get a wife like mine?”

Pelham, with a smile upon his dark, expressive, and somewhat homely face, answered quite naturally, “Because I can’t find a wife like yours.”

From that day, in spite of the fact that Elizabeth was a true wife of an honorable man, her whole life was irradiated by the joy of knowing that she was loved by Pelham and even that she loved him in return. It made them both careful in a thousand ways where heretofore they had been without thought. It made Elizabeth the sweetest as well as the most dutiful wife imaginable to Darrell. Her constant ministrations to him, her untiring efforts to please him, did more than he thought possible to soothe his grief over the dead child.

Elizabeth had always been kind and flattering to Darrell’s friends, not only out of respect for him, but from the pleasure which every woman takes in exercising the conscious power to please. But now she was if anything more attractive to them than ever, and Darrell enjoyed a delight most gratifying to his pride in finding himself the preferred admirer of a charming wife who was admired by every man who knew her. Elizabeth felt, without one word being spoken, that her conduct was approved by Pelham. She sometimes suspected what Pelham never did, that he, rather than she, deserved credit for the lofty purity of their relations, and doubted whether after all Pelham were not stronger in a sense of honor and rectitude even than herself, so great was his mastery over her. For, after all, the greatest power which one human being can exercise over another is the power of uplifting and making better; and such Elizabeth felt was Pelham’s influence over her, just as Pelham felt that Elizabeth was his guardian angel.

The Darrells and Pelham spent all together four years at Embira. Every year Elizabeth thought she would be able to return to America to see her father, if for only a few weeks, but every year the Darrell exchequer showed the impossibility of this. Their narrow means did not permit them to travel, or even to entertain except in the simplest manner, and Elizabeth only remained well dressed from the fact that she knew how to make her own gowns better than most Regent Street dressmakers. They often joked and laughed about their old relative Lady Pelham’s fortune, which was to come first to Darrell, and, failing a son and heir, to Pelham. Darrell dolefully related how Lady Pelham’s mother had lived to be ninety–six, and her father to be ninety–seven, and not one of her uncles or aunts had died under ninety years of age, while the lady herself was not more than fifty years of age and reckoned the most robust woman in England. They built castles in the air, of what they would do when they got the Pelham fortune, and Darrell tried to induce Pelham to agree to a division of the spoils in advance. It was a great joke; but one day, nearly nine years after Elizabeth’s marriage, death came to the three lives which stood between Darrell and Lady Pelham’s money, and Darrell came into the life estate of a fortune of forty thousand pounds.

_Chapter Five_

After nine years in India one is glad to get back to England, particularly as Darrell, in spite of the large stock of health and spirits which he took from England with him, had found as most men do in India that he had a liver. Elizabeth had remained perfectly well during all the nine years of her life under the hard blue Indian skies. She was now in her thirtieth year, and Darrell was nearly forty. Their attachment had assumed the fixed and settled form which nine years of constant association and respect must inevitably produce in every marriage. There were no jars or disagreements between them, and except for the absence of children Darrell reckoned his domestic life absolutely perfect.

Pelham, who like Darrell was now a major with a lieutenant–colonelcy in sight, knew that the time had come, if he was ever to see anything of the world beyond India, England, and his flying trip to the United States, for him to start upon his travels. In one way he was no longer necessary to Elizabeth, as she was now a trained and experienced woman,—the least likely, he thought, of any woman in the world, to make a false step of any kind. Elizabeth herself, although she had never ceased to depend on Pelham, had developed under his tutelage, so that she was in many ways able to stand without him; and, not being a woman to keep a man at her side without cause, she encouraged Pelham in his desire to travel.

The three returned to England together. After being established in the fine London house which was a part of their inheritance, Elizabeth’s first thought was for her father. It was in the spring–time that the Darrells arrived in Europe, and a delightful plan was arranged by which Elizabeth was to send for General Brandon, and he with the Darrells and Pelham were to begin in August a three months’ journey on the Continent. Elizabeth, whose mind was now well formed and furnished, looked forward with eagerness to seeing the brilliant capitals of Continental Europe,—those spots of romantic beauty and poetic sights, of which she had first read and dreamed in the old country house in Virginia and afterwards under the solemn deodars and in the shady bungalows of the Punjaub.

Darrell’s health improved wonderfully from the day he arrived in England, and it was thought that this Continental tour would restore him to the physical perfection which he originally possessed. They found London delightful, as London is apt to be with youth, good looks, beauty, and forty thousand pounds. Pelham had his own lodgings near them, but Darrell’s house was home to him. He saw almost as much of Elizabeth as in the years when they lived in cantonments together, but both Elizabeth and Darrell were fonder of society than Pelham. After they had breakfasted, Darrell and Elizabeth went together shopping, a novel and delightful experience to both of them; and they generally carried Pelham along with them, much to his disgust. They always referred things to him and never took his advice.

Darrell loved to adorn Elizabeth’s beauty, and one of the things which gave him the most pleasure was the making of a fine diamond and pearl necklace for his wife’s white throat. He had inherited a diamond necklace along with the Pelham properties. To these he added other stones and some fine pearls. Elizabeth insisted that the pretty pearl brooch which had been her wedding gift from Darrell should be included in the necklace, and they spent hours together at the jeweller’s planning the making of the necklace. Pelham stood by listening good–naturedly, and never suggesting any reduction in expense where Elizabeth’s wishes were concerned.

When August came, however, Darrell was not so well, but he was eager for the Continental tour, upon which Elizabeth had set her heart. Elizabeth, however, would not hear of his going, and as Pelham’s leave was limited he would be forced to go without the Darrells. The doctors had not absolutely said that Darrell should not go, but considered it best that he remain in England; it was Elizabeth’s over–solicitude for Darrell which really induced her to give up a plan so dear not only to her, but, as she well knew, to Pelham also. It cost her far more to deny Pelham than to deny herself, and this he well understood; for by that time they read each other like an open book, although no word of love had been spoken between them after that sudden out–break of their hearts on that night now eight years past when, standing in the solemn gloom of the cypress trees in the sultry Indian night, they had uttered unforgetable words. Pelham never felt prouder of Elizabeth and her forgetfulness of self than on the day she told him of her decision about the Continental tour, in her pretty London drawing–room, in which she fitted beautifully. It was so, as Pelham thought, that she fitted every place in which he had seen her.

“You know how delightful it would be for us to go,”—she always spoke of “us,” Darrell and herself being in fact never separated,—“but the doctor says it wouldn’t be the best thing for Jack; he would be sure to overdo it, and that is what I don’t intend to let him do.”

“Elizabeth,” said Pelham, after a pause, “I think you are all in all the best wife I ever knew.”

“Why shouldn’t I be a good wife—haven’t I the best husband in the world? Jack often reminds me of my father, who has just such an open, frank, simple nature as Jack’s,—one of those natures which nobody fears and yet of which everybody is a little afraid.”

“That is true,” replied Pelham. “Jack as a little fellow was the straightest lad I ever knew. If your boy had lived, I think he would have been as straight a little fellow as Jack.”

Elizabeth’s eyes filled. She had not yet learned to bear unmoved any mention of the child, who was quite forgotten by all except Darrell, Pelham, and herself. Just then Darrell entered from riding. He was neither as handsome nor as young–looking as he had been ten years before; and Pelham, who never had been handsome or particularly good–looking, was now quite gray and looked as if he had been baked in an oven, but he had the clearest, kindest eye and the firmest thin–lipped, sensible mouth, which redeemed his face from positive ugliness. Elizabeth was no longer a girl, but with the same striking and touching beauty of her girlhood.

“So,” said Darrell, after kissing Elizabeth’s hand, “you are leaving us next week. By gad, I wish I were going with you, but Elizabeth won’t hear of it. Now if I had married an English wife instead of an American, she would have let me do as I please.”

“And make yourself ill,” replied Elizabeth. “But if you will take care of yourself and do all I tell you, perhaps in the autumn I may take you to the Continent.”

“But Pelham won’t be with us.”

“You’re very complimentary,” replied Elizabeth, with a cheering air of coquetry. “Ten years ago you could get along with only me. Now you must have Pelham and I don’t know how many other men to keep you from being bored to death.” Such speeches are common when husband and wife are sure of each other.

It was the next evening at dinner time that around the table Darrell began to tell of an expedition into West Africa which he had heard talked of at the club. It would be partly private and partly governmental, and would require more than a year’s absence from England. Pelham’s grave eyes lighted up as the story went on. He had an indestructible love of bold adventure, and he had no more been able to indulge his fondness and taste than he had been able to indulge his fondness for intelligent travel. Elizabeth, with prophetic intuition, saw that the idea had taken hold of Pelham’s imagination. She felt assured that if she were to make the same appeal that she had done unconsciously in the garden that night at Embira, Pelham would not resist it, and would remain in England with her; but she was of too generous a nature to wish to hold him back from what would be an advantage as well as a strong man’s delight to him. She was not surprised, therefore, when Pelham turned up next day, to hear that he had been to the War Office and had been looking into the West African expedition.

Pelham spent a fortnight making inquiries, and then one night, as he and Darrell, with Elizabeth sitting by them, sat over their cigars on the balcony of the morning–room, he told the story of what he had heard of the expedition. The command of the expedition had practically been offered him, and it was a tremendous opportunity and one not likely to occur again to a man of his age, for his fortieth birthday was upon him. It would mean much to him in the way of his profession, upon which he was entirely dependent,—that is, unless Darrell should die without an heir. Its opportunities in every way were such, and the offer made him so flattering, that it was out of the question that he should decline them unless there were some specific reason. Darrell told him so.

There were steps from the balcony leading down into a little lawn with a bench at the farther end. Elizabeth quietly rose and, walking down the steps, passed to the farther end of the gravelled path and back again. It was a June night, warm for London, but cool compared with that other sultry night when the question had first been raised of Pelham’s departure from her for a long time. After a while Pelham rose and said to Darrell, “I will go and ask Elizabeth what she thinks of it.”

“Do,” said Darrell. “I bet you five to one she will tell you, just as I have done, that it is the greatest chance you ever had in your life.”

Pelham followed Elizabeth down the gravelled path to the little iron bench under an odorous hedge of rose trees, where she sat. There was no moon, but the starlight made a softened radiance around them. He sat down by her and said in his usual quiet voice and laconic manner, “Elizabeth, what do you think of my accepting the West African offer?”

“I think you ought to accept it,” replied Elizabeth, in a soft voice.

Not another word was spoken for five minutes, and then they rose and walked back to the balcony, where Darrell’s cigar still glowed. Each understood the other perfectly. That day fortnight Pelham started for West Africa, giving up his Continental tour. The London season was in full swing, and Darrell, who was naturally fond of society, liked to go out; nor was this prohibited, in moderation, by the medical men. Elizabeth, too, liked society; and besides, now that Pelham was gone, she felt the need of contact with other minds and natures.

_Chapter Six_

Elizabeth was under no uneasiness concerning Pelham. The West African expedition was one of great responsibility, but of trifling danger, and Elizabeth had the highest respect for Pelham’s ability to take care of himself. The thought had been in her mind, as it was in Pelham’s, that she was far better prepared to do without him then than in those earlier days when she had been a stranger in a strange land. Such indeed was the case, but ten years of close companionship and reliance on Pelham’s judgment and kindness for almost every act of her life had bred in Elizabeth a dependence which she did not fully realize until he was gone. It was as if the sun had dropped out of the heavens when he was away. In Darrell she had the companionship of a husband who adored her, but who except for his love could not give her the least assistance in any other way; while with Pelham it was, besides the intimacy of a great, unspoken love, the ever present aid of sound sense, good judgment, and a cultivated mind.

Elizabeth, with her youth and beauty and her natural taste for gayety and admiration, could not but find the London season charming; and as for Darrell, it seemed the very wine of life to him to be once more in England. They were invited everywhere, and had pleasure in returning the hospitality offered them. As regarded their income the Darrells, it is true, had a large one, as the late Lady Pelham was supposed to have left about forty thousand pounds; but it was hampered in many ways, as the late Lady Pelham was one of those persons who try to transact business after they are dead and buried.

Darrell knew nothing of business, and seemed incapable of learning. He spent money liberally for himself and more liberally still for Elizabeth. She had only to express a wish for it to be gratified. Darrell desired to cover her with jewels, but Elizabeth with better taste preferred to wear only one ornament, the handsome diamond and pearl necklace which seemed so peculiarly hers. Of the new gems in it, she and Darrell and Pelham had spent hours examining and deciding; and the idea of inserting in it her wedding gift of a pearl brooch, was Elizabeth’s entirely and she was proud of it. Darrell, who grew more in love with his wife each day, was charmed at this bit of sentiment, on which they had united in defeating the jeweller.

On the night before the Goodwood races, there was a great ball at Marlborough House, to which Elizabeth and Darrell were commanded. Never had Elizabeth looked handsomer. A black evening gown showed off the perfections, the exquisite beauty, of her white shoulders and slender arms. The necklace around her milky white throat looked like moonlight and starlight combined.

“You will make a sensation to–night, my girl,” said Darrell, kissing her.

“If you like my looks, that is the main point,” replied Elizabeth. She habitually made him these pretty speeches, which was gratifying to Darrell, as the husband of a beauty.

They went to the ball, which had a gayety unsurpassed in balls. It established Elizabeth’s place in society as one of the beauties of the season. She received vast attention from those London exquisites who claim to fix a woman’s place in beauty’s calendar. She was noticed, admired, and conversed with by royalty itself, and the Prince having thus set his mark of approval on her, Elizabeth’s title as a London beauty was settled beyond cavil. She enjoyed it thoroughly, of course; but the image of Pelham did not leave her mind. She would turn her head in the midst of the splendor and magnificence of the ball, wishing to herself, “Could I but see him now!”

The ball lasted late, and it was not over until night had flown and the rosy dawn had come. Elizabeth was one of the few women sufficiently natural to look well after a night of dancing, and she looked as fresh as the dawn itself when she stepped into her carriage. Not so Darrell, who appeared so wearied that Elizabeth reproached herself at not having left earlier.

“I didn’t wish to bring you away,” he said with his usual kindness of tone. “Nine years in the Punjaub entitles you to some indulgences, and besides I was proud of you. I like to see you happy and admired.”

Elizabeth laid her head on his shoulder in the seclusion of the brougham, and Darrell, after a pause, said in a low voice: “This is the anniversary of the boy’s death. I wouldn’t speak of it before, Elizabeth, but I hadn’t forgotten it.”

“And I,” said Elizabeth, her heart suddenly turning to the dead child, sleeping under the cypress trees in the military cemetery at Embira, “had not forgotten it, but I hoped that you had, dearest.”

They talked together for a little while of their lost darling, as the parents of dead children do, and then Darrell suddenly grew quiet. Elizabeth thought he was asleep, and would not move for fear she might disturb him. When she reached their own door, she raised her head from his shoulder. Darrell was dead.

* * * * *

Of all that happened in the succeeding weeks, Elizabeth had afterward but a confused recollection. She was stunned by the blow and deeply grieved. Although she had long ceased to return Darrell’s affection in kind, yet she had a deep love for him. It was so deep, so sincere, so unselfish, that his death could not fail to be a heavy grief to her,—the heaviest but one that she could know: that other was Pelham’s. Her sorrow was not joined with remorse. She had honestly and earnestly devoted her life to Darrell, and felt sure that she had made him happy; but nevertheless it was a deep and sincere sorrow.

Her first thought had been naturally and inevitably for Pelham. She was so ignorant of business, so absolutely untrained in affairs, and so much a stranger in England, that she scarcely knew where to turn. Darrell had plenty of relatives, but Elizabeth had never known them, except during her few short months in England, and none of them were particularly near Darrell either in blood or friendship. His grandfather was long since dead, and the cousin who inherited the title was in West Africa. From the beginning Elizabeth seemed overwhelmed with difficulties, with annoying details which she was called upon to decide without having the slightest experience in them. She knew nothing of the value of money, having had but little until she came into what seemed to both Darrell and herself an enormous fortune. She knew not what she had spent nor what she was spending. Thus, as in everything else, could she have only turned to Pelham and asked him what to do, everything would have gone right. But Pelham was in West Africa; it would possibly take anywhere from four to five months to communicate with him, nor was it possible for him to return for at least a year from the time he had started.

It was Pelham, however, who inherited everything that came from Lady Pelham. The sole provision for Elizabeth was about one hundred pounds a year, which was Darrell’s own small inheritance. But the fact that Pelham was the sole heir relieved Elizabeth’s mind when it was brought home to her that she would be obliged to account for everything Darrell and she had received,—every chair and table in Lady Pelham’s house, and every jewel, however trifling. Elizabeth, who was as high–minded as she was inexperienced, desired to hand over everything to Pelham direct, but she knew him, or thought she knew him, too well to suppose it possible that he should make her position the least painful or embarrassing to her. In the first weeks of her widowhood, when she had wished to remain alone in her London house, entirely secluded from the world and its affairs, she was forced to see solicitors, attorneys, business men, and persons of all sorts. Some of these presented unpaid bills for large amounts, and foremost among the intruders was one Andrew McBean, a Scotch attorney who was Pelham’s agent.