Part 7 (1/2)

”It ain't like it is in the Queen's army,” Harris volunteered, still searching Lindsay's vicinity for a point upon which his eye could permanently rest, ”where, if you remember, ensigns are the smallest officer we have.”

”The commission is, I think, abolished,” replied Lindsay, trying to govern a deep and irritated frown.

”Maybe so. This Army don't pretend to pattern very close on the other--not in discipline, anyhow,” said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. ”But you'll find Ensign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you.

She's a hard-working officer.”

A sharp wail smote the air from a point suspiciously close to the lath and canvas part.i.tion on the other side, followed by hasty hus.h.i.+ngs and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mr.

Sand seemed at present to be sufficiently engaged, at which Mr. Harris s.h.i.+fted one heavy limb over the other, and lapsed into silence, looking sternly at an advertis.e.m.e.nt. The air was full of their mutual annoyance, although Duff tried to feel amused. They were raging as primitively, under the red flannel s.h.i.+rt and the tan-coloured waistcoat with white silk spots, as two cave-men on an Early British coast; their only sophistication lay in Harris's newspaper and Lindsay's idea that he ought to find this person humourous. Then Laura came back and resolved the situation.

”Here it is,” she said, handing the volume to Mr. Harris; ”we have all enjoyed it. Thank you very much.” There was in it the oddest mixture of the supreme feminine and the superior officer. Harris, as he took the book, had no alternative.

”Good-evening, then, Captain,” said he, and went stumbling at the door.

”Mr. Harris,” said Laura, equably, ”found salvation about a month ago.

He is a very steady young man--foreman in one of the carriage works here. He is now struggling with the tobacco habit, and he often drops in in the evening.”

”He seems to be a--a member of the corps,” said Lindsay.

”He would be, only for the carriage works. He says he doesn't find himself strong enough in grace to give up his situation yet. But he wears the uniform at the meetings to show his sympathy, and the Ensign doesn't think there's any objection.”

Laura was sitting straight up in one of the cane-bottomed chairs, her _sari_ drawn over her head, her hands folded in her lap. The native dress clung to her limbs in sculpturable lines, and her consecrated ambitions seemed more insistent than ever. She had nothing to do with anything else, nothing to do with her room or its arrangements, nothing, Lindsay felt profoundly, to do with him. Her personal zeal for him seemed to resolve itself, at the point of contact, into something disappointingly thin; he saw that she counted with him altogether as a unit in a glorious total, and that he himself had no place in her knowledge or her desire. This brought him, with something like a shock, to a sense of how far he had depended on her interest for his soul's sake to introduce her to a wider view of him.

”But you have come to tell me about yourself,” she said, suddenly, it seemed to Lindsay, who was wrapped in the contemplation of her profile.

”Well, is there any special stumbling-block?”

”There are some things I should certainly like you to know,” replied Lindsay; ”but you can't think how difficult”----he glanced at the lath and plaster part.i.tion, but she, to whom publicity was a condition salutary, if not essential, to spiritual experience, naturally had no interpretation for that.

”I know it's sometimes hard to speak,” she said; ”Satan ties our tongues.”

The misunderstanding was almost absurd, but he saw only its difficulties, knitting his brows.

”I fear you will find my story very strange and very mad,” he said. ”I cannot be sure that you will even listen to it.”

”Oh,” Laura said, simply, ”do not be afraid! I have heard confessions! I work at home, you see, a good deal among the hospitals, and--we do not shrink, you know, in the Army from things like that.”

”Good G.o.d!” he exclaimed, staring, ”you don't think--you don't suppose----”

”Ah! don't say that! It's so like swearing.”

As he sat in helpless anger, trying to formulate something intelligible, the curtain parted, and a sallow little Eurasian girl of eighteen, also in the dress of the Army, came through from the bedroom part. She smiled in a conscious, meaningless way, as she sidled past them. At the door her smile broadened, and as she closed it after her she gave them a little nod.

”That's my lieutenant,” said Laura.

”The place is like a warren,” Lindsay groaned. ”How can we talk here?”

Laura looked at him gravely, as one making a diagnosis. ”Do you think,”

she said, ”a word of prayer would help you?”