Gad! If this same Miranda had only been a boy, his boy, there would have been another soldier to carry on the family traditions, if you like!
But this poor Bertram of his . . .
His mother, a Girton girl, and daughter of a Cambridge Don, had prayed that her child might “take after” her father, for whom she entertained a feeling of absolute veneration. She had had her wish indeed—without living to rejoice in the fact.
* * *
When it was known in the cantonment of Sitagur that Major Walsingham Greene was engaged to Prudence Pym, folk were astonished, and a not uncommon comment was “Poor little girl!” in spite of the fact that the Major was admitted by all to be a most honourable and scrupulous gentleman. Another remark which was frequently made was “Hm! Opposites attract. What?”
For Prudence Pym was deeply religious, like her uncle, the Commissioner of the Sitagur Division; she was something of a blue-stocking as became her famous father’s daughter; she was a musician of parts, an artist of more than local note, and was known to be writing a Book. So that if “oppositeness” be desirable, there was plenty of it—since the Major considered attendance at church to be part and parcel of drill-and-parade; religion to be a thing concerning which no gentleman speaks and few gentlemen think; music to be a noise to be endured in the drawing-room after dinner for a little while; art to be the harmless product of long-haired fellers with shockin’ clothes and dirty finger-nails; and books something to read when you were absolutely reduced to doing it—as when travelling. . . .
When Prudence Walsingham Greene knew that she was to have a child, she strove to steep her soul in Beauty, Sweetness and Light, and to feed it on the pure ichor of the finest and best in scenery, music, art and literature. . . .
Entered to her one day—pompous, pleased, and stolid; heavy, dull, and foolish—the worthy Major as she sat revelling in the (to her) marvellous beauties of Rosetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini. As she looked up with the sad mechanical smile of the disappointed and courageous wife, he screwed his monocle into his eye and started the old weary laceration of her feelings, the old weary tramplings and defilements of tastes and thoughts, as he examined the picture wherewith she was nourishing (she hoped and believed) the æsthetic side of her unborn child’s mind.
“Picture of a Girl with Grouse, what?” grunted the Major.
“With a . . . ? There is no bird? I don’t . . . ?” stammered Prudence who, like most women of her kind, was devoid of any sense of humour.
“Looks as though she’s got a frightful grouse about somethin’, I should say. The young party on the bed, I mean,” continued her spouse. “‘Girl with the Hump’ might be a better title p’r’aps—if you say she hasn’t a grouse,” he added.
“Hump?”
“Yes. Got the hump more frightfully about something or other—p’r’aps because the other sportsman’s shirt’s caught alight. . . . Been smokin’, and dropped his cigar. . . .”
“It is an angel shod with fire,” moaned Prudence as she put the picture into its portfolio, and felt for her handkerchief. . . .
A little incident, a straw upon the waters, but a straw showing their steady flow toward distaste, disillusionment, dislike, and hopeless regret. The awful and familiar tragedy of “incompatibility of temperament,” of which law and priests in their wisdom take no count or cognizance, though counting trifles (by comparison) of infidelity and violence as all important.
And when her boy was born, and named Bertram after her father, Dr. Bertram Pym, F.R.S., she was happy and thankful, and happily and thankfully died.
* * *
In due course the Major recovered from his grief and sent his son home to his place, Leighcombe Abbey, where dwelt his elderly spinster relative, Miss Walsingham, and her niece, Miranda Walsingham, daughter of General Walsingham, his second cousin. Here the influence of prim, gentle, and learned Miss Walsingham was all that his mother would have desired, and in the direction of all that his father loathed—the boy growing up bookish, thoughtful, and more like a nice girl than a human boy. Him Miranda mothered, petted, and occasionally excoriated, being an Amazonian young female of his own age, happier on the bare back of a horse than in the seats of the learned.
Chapter II.
Mr. Charles Stayne-Brooker (or Herr Karl Stein-Brücker)
When it was known in the cantonment of Hazarigurh that Major Hugh Walsingham Greene was engaged to Dolly Dennison, folk were astonished, and a not uncommon comment was “Poor old Walsingham Greene,” in spite of the fact that the young lady was very beautiful, accomplished and fascinating.
Here also another remark, that was frequently heard, was that opposites attract, for Dolly was known to be seventeen, and the Major, though not very much more than twice her age, looked as old as her father, the Sessions Judge, and he looked more like the girl’s grandfather than her father.
It was agreed, however, that it was no case of kidnapping, for Dolly knew her way about, knew precisely how many beans made five, and needed no teaching from her grandmother as to the sucking of eggs, or anything else. For Dolly, poor child, had put her hair up and “come out” at the age of fifteen—in an Indian cantonment!
Little more need be said to excuse almost anything she might do or be. Motherless, she had run her father’s hospitable house for the last two years, as well as her weak and amiable father; and when Major Walsingham Greene came to Hazarigurh he found this pitiable spoilt child (a child who had never had any childhood) the burra mem-sahib of the place, in virtue of her position as the head of the household of the Senior Civilian. With the manners, airs, and graces of a woman of thirty, she was a blasé and world-weary babe—“fed up” with dances, gymkhanas, garden parties, race meetings and picnics; and as experienced and cool a hand at a flirtation as any garrison-hack or station-belle in the country. Dolly knew the men with whom one flirts but does not marry, and the men one marries but with whom one does not flirt.
Mr. Charles Stayne-Brooker was the pride of the former; Major Walsingham Greene facile princeps of the latter. Charles was the loveliest, daringest, wickedest flirt you ever—and Hugh was a man of means and position, with an old Tudor “place” in Dorset. So Charles for fun—and Hugh for matrimony, just as soon as he suggested it. She hoped Hugh would be quick, too, for Charles had a terrible fascination and power over her. She had been frightened at herself one moonlight picnic, frightened at Charles’s power and her own feelings—and she feared the result if Hugh (who was most obviously of a coming-on disposition), dallied and doubted. If Hugh were not quick, Charles would get her—for she preferred volcanoes to icebergs, and might very easily forget her worldly wisdom and be carried off her feet some night, as she lurked in a kala jugga with the daring, darling wicked Charles—whose little finger was more attractive and mysterious than the Major’s whole body. Besides—the Major was a grey-haired widower, with a boy at school in England and so dull and prosperous. . . .
But, ere too late, the Major proposed and was accepted. Charles was, or affected to be, ruined and broken-hearted, and the wedding took place. The Major was like a boy again—for a little while. And Dolly felt like a girl taken from an hotel in Mentone and immured in a convent in Siberia.
For Major Hugh Walsingham Greene would have none of the “goings-on” that had made Dolly’s father’s bungalow the centre of life and gaiety for the subalterns and civilian youth of Hazarigurh; whilst Mr. Charles Stayne-Brooker, whom he detested as a flamboyant bounder, he cut dead. He also bade Dolly remove the gentleman’s name finally and completely